AWS pursues Local Zones strategy to cut latency

 AWS announced the availability of Local Zones in Boston, Houston, and Miami to serve latency-sensitive and throughput-sensitive workloads. The first AWS Local Zone was previously opened in Los Angeles. AWS has now announced plans to open an additional 12 Local Zones in 2021 in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle.

Currently, AWS spans 77 Availability Zones within 24 geographic regions around the world, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones, which each comprise of one or more data centers and are located in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high-availability applications. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networking. 

AWS Local Zones, which are managed and supported by AWS, are designed to support ultra-low latency applications. AWS Local Zones provide customers a high-bandwidth, secure connection between their local workloads and those running in the closest AWS Region. Customers can use the same AWS APIs and tools to run latency-sensitive workloads nearby to end-users, while seamlessly connecting to the full range of services in the AWS Region.

AWS says the vast majority of customers get the necessary performance for their applications in public AWS Regions, however, its Local Zone options will be better for applications such as remote real-time gaming, machine learning inference, and live video streaming. Previously, developers had to build and run these low latency application components with a different set of APIs and tools than the other parts of their applications running in AWS. 

In Southern California, AWS reports single-digit latency to end-users located in the Southern California area.

“Whether your organization has been all-in on the cloud since day one or is just beginning to move workloads to the cloud, all customers want to optimize for price performance,” said Dave Brown, Vice President, EC2, AWS. “As customers bring more and more workloads to the cloud, AWS continues to expand the industry’s leading compute portfolio to meet their increasingly diverse needs. With the new EC2 instance types, AWS Outposts and AWS Local Zones options we’re introducing today, we’re providing customers with an unmatched breadth and depth of capabilities to help them innovate more cost-effectively, with the right compute for the right job.”

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/localzones

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Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength now available in eight cities

Verizon has activated its 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength service in Las Vegas, its eighth mobile edge computing location.  

Verizon and AWS announced their partnership at AWS re:Invent in 2019 and have since launched mobile edge computing (MEC) capabilities in Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington, DC, with plans to add two additional cities by year end.

Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength is optimized for applications that require ultra-low latency and responsiveness enabled by 5G. 

“By leveraging the powerful combination of Verizon 5G Edge and AWS Wavelength, developers can deliver a wide range of transformative, latency-sensitive use cases like automated robotic systems in manufacturing facilities and smart cars and cities,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “We already have customers today creating exciting new applications in industries ranging from healthcare to sports and we can’t wait to see the next game-changing app that will be built on 5G and MEC.”

AWS also confirmed plans to launch AWS Wavelength with KDDI in Tokyo, SK Telecom in Daejeon (Korea), and Vodafone in London.

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Measuring the latency of AWS Wavelength on Verizon 5G

AvidThink recently performed a series of basic throughput and latency tests on AWS Wavelength on Verizon’s network: 

Part 1 - https://avidthink.com/analysis/aws-wavelength-verizon-real-world-perspective/ 

Part 2 - https://avidthink.com/analysis/aws-wavelength-verizon-real-world-perspectives-part-2/ 

In this video, Roy Chua, founder and principal of AvidThink, and Jim Carroll, Editor of Converge! Network Digest, discuss the test methodology and results. A key takeaway: application developers need to determine their workload placement strategy based on the location of nearby EC2 regions and available Wavelength sites.

https://youtu.be/09QHGHoMEjc

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Aqua Comms activates AEC-2 transatlantic cable

Aqua Comms activated AEC-2 (America Europe Connect-2), the company’s second Trans-Atlantic subsea cable system and complementing its existing AEC-1 (America Europe Connect-1) cable, which went Ready for Service in 2016. 

AEC-2 connects New Jersey, U.S.A to Denmark, and is a wholly diverse and resilient new Trans-Atlantic subsea route, doubling fibre connectivity between North America and Denmark making it the first new subsea system directly linking North America to Denmark and the Nordic region in twenty years. AEC-2 leaves North America from NJFX, a carrier-neutral cable landing station and Tier 3 colocation facility in New Jersey, providing the option to bypass New York City and a route that offers complete diversity from existing Trans-Atlantic cables.

AEC-2 offers wavelength services ranging from 10G, 100G and 400G. It was designed for complete redundancy and diversity to support key data centre connectivity routes across the North Atlantic. These include connecting key US locations such as Ashburn, VA and 165 Halsey Street in New Jersey to Copenhagen in Denmark and the wider Nordic region as well as critical existing locations throughout Europe including Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Hamburg.  

“As part of Aqua Comms’ expansion in the North Atlantic and across the globe, we are delighted to launch our second Trans-Atlantic cable, AEC-2, providing a new and diverse route that supports the critical data centre markets in the US and Northern Europe,” comments Nigel Bayliff, Chief Executive Officer of Aqua Comms. “Data traffic continues to grow exponentially and we are looking forward to delivering industry-leading services to our customers over this new cable system.” 

AEC-2 forms part of the North Atlantic Loop, that along with two new cables planned to go RFS in early 2021, will form a resilient, ring-based subsea infrastructure link between the East Coast of the United States, Ireland, the UK and the Nordics. 

http://www.aquacomms.com

Aqua Comm's AEC-2 subsea cable to tie into Interxion Copenhagen

Sunday, June 23, 2019  Aqua Comms, Interxion, Subsea  

Aqua Comms will interconnect its America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2) subsea cable system at Interxion’s data center in Copenhagen.

AEC-2 is Aqua Comms’s portion of the Havfrue subsea cable project, connecting New Jersey, U.S.A., to Ireland, and Denmark. The America Europe Connect-2 cable is scheduled to land in Blaabjerg, near Esbjerg in September 2019 and will be the first new cable connecting Denmark to the U.S. in nearly two decades.

Aqua Comms supplies fiber pairs, spectrum and capacity networking solutions to the global media, content and carrier markets.

“The large number of networks and content platforms present at Interxion’s Copenhagen campus makes it an efficient location for AEC-2 to interconnect with our target customers,” said Nigel Bayliff, CEO of Aqua Comms. “The investment Interxion is making to develop its campus in Copenhagen aligns with the growth in demand we are seeing for highly resilient network capacity between northern Europe and the U.S”.

AEC-2 will complement Aqua Comms’ existing transatlantic cable, AEC-1, and deliver on its vision of creating a “North Atlantic Loop”, a resilient dual-path network across the Atlantic. This will be further enhanced by North Sea Connect (NSC) from Denmark to the UK and Celtix-Connect-2 (CC-2) as a second Irish Sea cable crossing from the UK to Ireland, both of which will follow shortly after AEC-2.

“The AEC-1 subsea cable already extends to the Interxion facility in Dublin, so we are pleased to expand our collaboration with Aqua Comms on this new cable into Denmark,” said Peder Bank, Managing Director of Interxion, Nordics. “Our community of customers greatly value international capacity on diverse, modern and resilient routes which is exactly what the ring topology of the North Atlantic Loop provides. The system further strengthens Interxion’s position as the main Gateway to the Nordic Region”.

AEC-2 is scheduled to go live in the fourth quarter of 2019 and will more than double fiber connectivity to Denmark from the US, increasing the diversity and reliability of the Internet to the region. Aqua Comms investment in subsea cables to northern Europe complements Interxion’s increased investments in its Nordic data centers in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

HAVFRUE subsea cable to link NJ and Denmark with 108 Tbps capacity

Tuesday, January 09, 2018  Submarine Cable, Subsea, TE Subcom, Undersea  

TE SubCom will serve as the system supplier for HAFVRUE, a new subsea cable that will link New Jersey to the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark with a branch landing in County Mayo, Ireland. Optional branch extensions to Northern and Southern Norway are also included in the design.

The HAVFRU system will be owned and operated by multiple parties, including Aqua Comms, Bulk Infrastructure, Facebook, and others. Aqua Comms, the Irish cable owner/operator and carriers’ carrier, will serve as the system operator and landing party in U.S.A., Ireland, and Denmark. Bulk Infrastructure of Norway will be the owner and landing party for the Norwegian branch options.

The HAFVRUE subsea cable system will be optimized for coherent transmission and will offer a cross-sectional cable capacity of 108Tbps, scalable to higher capacities utilizing future generation SLTE technology. SubCom will incorporate their Wavelength Selective Switching Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer (WSS-ROADM) for flexible wavelength allocation over the system design life. It is the first new cable system in almost two decades that will traverse the North Atlantic to connect mainland Northern Europe to the U.S.A.

HAVFRUE is the Danish word for mermaid.

Preparation work is underway and system ready-for-service (RFS) is expected in Q4 2019.

“The HAVFRUE cable will provide state-of-the-art connectivity for increasing needs of users, ranging from individual consumers to businesses and the research community. SubCom is proud to be selected as the supplier for this project,” said Sanjay Chowbey, president of TE SubCom.

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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 brings 3rd gen 5G modem, 6th gen processor

Qualcomm previewed its new flagship - the Snapdragon 888 - featuring its 3rd generation X60 5G Modem-RF System with global band coverage and a 6th generation AI Engine operating at an astonishing 26 tera operations per second (TOPS).

The 5G modem operates in mmWave and sub-6 across all major bands worldwide, and it brings support for 5G carrier aggregation, global multi-SIM, stand alone, non-stand alone, and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing.

The new 6th generation Qualcomm AI Engine features completely re-engineered Qualcomm Hexagon processor that improves performance and power efficiency.

“Creating premium experiences takes a relentless focus on innovation. It takes long term commitment, even in the face of immense uncertainty,” said Cristiano Amon, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. “It takes an organization that’s focused on tomorrow, to continue to deliver the technologies that redefine premium experiences.”

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2020/12/01/qualcomm-redefines-premium-snapdragon-tech-summit-digital-2020

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Salesforce's $27.7B acquisition of Slack brings enterprise communications tools

Salesforce agreed to acquire Slack in a deal valued at approximately $27.7 billion ($26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share).

Slack’s enterprise communications platform integrates with more than 2,400 apps that people use to collaborate, communicate and get work done. 

The companies plan to integrate Slack's enterprise communication tools into every Salesforce Cloud. This will make Slack into the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360.

"Stewart and his team have built one of the most beloved platforms in enterprise software history, with an incredible ecosystem around it,” said Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce. “This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. I’m thrilled to welcome Slack to the Salesforce Ohana once the transaction closes.”

“Salesforce started the cloud revolution, and two decades later, we are still tapping into all the possibilities it offers to transform the way we work. The opportunity we see together is massive,” said Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and Co-Founder. “As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organizational agility. Personally, I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going.”

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SSE Enterprise Telecoms selects Infinera’s XTM for UK expansion

SSE Enterprise Telecoms, one of the UK’s leading connectivity providers, has selected Infinera’s XTM Series for the second phase of its UK-wide network expansion. 

SSE Enterprise Telecoms operates a 20,000km private telecoms network and 15 data centres that span the UK and offers a range of connectivity solutions including leading edge SD-WAN, Ethernet, Optical and dark fibre services.

With Infinera’s XTM Series, SSE Enterprise Telecoms leverages an industry-leading optical solution optimized for 5G transport with high-performance synchronization capabilities and low latency. The network’s Layer 2 packet optical aggregation features also provide enterprise customers with high-bandwidth connectivity services over the same network. These benefits extend across SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ network, which upon completion will span over 30,000 km. 

“This network expansion with Infinera’s XTM Series is key to our UK initiative as it enables new technologies including the IIoT and autonomous vehicles, as well as opening the door to new business technologies such as seamless, instant video streaming and immersive virtual and augmented reality,” said Dave Eddy, COO, SSE Enterprise Telecoms. “Infinera’s XTM solution provided the high performance, scalability, and flexibility required to meet our network needs.”

“The UK market’s bandwidth is growing exponentially, and SSE Enterprise Telecoms is poised to meet this growing demand as it more than doubles its number of connected exchanges,” said Nick Walden, Senior Vice President, Sales at Infinera. “We are proud to be a part of SSE Enterprise Telecoms’ network expansion as it ushers the era of 5G with the unique capabilities of Infinera’s XTM.”

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AWS to deploy Intel's Gaudi AI accelerators in EC2 instances

AWS will begin offering EC2 instances with up to eight of Intel's Habana Gaudi accelerators for machine learning workloads.

Gaudi accelerators are specifically designed for training deep learning models for workloads that include natural language processing, object detection and machine learning training, classification, recommendation and personalization.

“We are proud that AWS has chosen Habana Gaudi processors for its forthcoming EC2 training instances. The Habana team looks forward to our continued collaboration with AWS to deliver on a roadmap that will provide customers with continuity and advances over time,” states David Dahan, chief executive officer at Habana Labs, an Intel Company.

ntel acquires Habana Labs for $2 billion - AI chipset

Monday, December 16, 2019  AI, Haba, Intel, Israel, Mergers And Acquisitions, Start-Ups  

Intel has acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-based developer of programmable deep learning accelerators for the data center, for approximately $2 billion.

Habana’s Gaudi AI Training Processor is currently sampling with select hyperscale customers. Large-node training systems based on Gaudi are expected to deliver up to a 4x increase in throughput versus systems built with the equivalent number of GPUs. Gaudi is designed for efficient and flexible system scale-up and scale-out.

Additionally, Habana’s Goya AI Inference Processor, which is commercially available, has demonstrated excellent inference performance including throughput and real-time latency in a highly competitive power envelope. Gaudi for training and Goya for inference offer a rich, easy-to-program development environment to help customers deploy and differentiate their solutions as AI workloads continue to evolve with growing demands on compute, memory and connectivity.

Habana will remain an independent business unit and will continue to be led by its current management team. Habana will report to Intel’s Data Platforms Group, home to Intel’s broad portfolio of data center class AI technologies.

“This acquisition advances our AI strategy, which is to provide customers with solutions to fit every performance need – from the intelligent edge to the data center,” said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel. “More specifically, Habana turbo-charges our AI offerings for the data center with a high-performance training processor family and a standards-based programming environment to address evolving AI workloads.”

Habana Labs chairman Avigdor Willenz will serve as a senior adviser to the business unit as well as to Intel Corporation after Intel’s purchase of Habana.

“We have been fortunate to get to know and collaborate with Intel given its investment in Habana, and we’re thrilled to be officially joining the team,” said David Dahan, CEO of Habana. “Intel has created a world-class AI team and capability. We are excited to partner with Intel to accelerate and scale our business. Together, we will deliver our customers more AI innovation, faster.”

Interview: Habana Labs targets AI processors

Monday, September 17, 2018  Habana, OND  

Habana Labs, a start-up based in Israel with offices in Silicon Valley, emerged from stealth to unveil its first AI processor. Habana's deep learning inference processor, named Goya, is >2 orders of magnitude better in throughput & power than commonly deployed CPUs, according to the company. The company will offer a PCIe 4.0 card that incorporates a single Goya HL-1000 processor and designed to accelerate various AI inferencing workloads,...

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HPE returns to pre-pandemic levels of $7.2 billion, relocates to Texas

 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE) reported revenue of $7.2 billion for the 4th quarter of its fiscal year, up 6% from the prior quarter and flat from the prior-year period. GAAP was $0.12, above the previously provided outlook of $0.02 to $0.06 per share. Non-GAAP was $0.37, above the previously provided outlook of $0.32 to $0.36 per share.

“Hewlett Packard Enterprise finished the year with a very strong performance,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “In Q4 we saw a notable rebound in our overall revenue, with particular acceleration in key growth areas of our business.”

“The global pandemic has forced businesses to rethink everything from remote work and collaboration to business continuity and data insight,” he continued. “Over the last several months, customers have increasingly turned to HPE for our unique capabilities from edge to cloud that help them empower their workforces, deploy resilient new IT solutions and extract insights from critical data, while consuming these solutions more flexibly as a service.”

HPE also announced plans to relocate its headquarters from San Jose, California, to Houston, Texas. 

Highlights:

• Intelligent Edge revenue was $786 million, up 6% year over year or 5% when adjusted for currency, with 10.1% operating profit margin, compared to 6.2% from the prior-year period. Revenue grew 15% sequentially or 14% when adjusted for currency. Intelligent Edge best-in-class portfolio was recognized as a leader for the 15th year in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for wired and WLAN access infrastructure. The Company also expects to take share in both campus switching and WLAN.
• High Performance Compute & Mission Critical Systems (HPC & MCS) revenue was $975 million, up 25% year over year, with 12.2% operating profit margin, compared to 10.2% from the prior-year period. Revenue grew 50% sequentially driven by strong performance in Cray, HPC-Apollo and MCS.
• Compute revenue was $3.2 billion, down 5% year over year or down 4% when adjusted for currency, with 6.1% operating profit margin, compared to 13.9% from the prior-year period. Revenue was down 6% sequentially or 7% when adjusted for currency but was up low single-digits when adjusted for backlog conversion.
• Storage revenue was $1.2 billion, down 3% year over year, with 16.7% operating profit margin, compared to 17.4% from the prior-year period. Revenue grew 8% sequentially or 7% when adjusted for currency driven by strong operational execution, reduction of backlog and momentum in key areas of the portfolio.
• Advisory & Professional Services (A&PS) revenue was $245 million, down 9% year over year or 10% when adjusted for currency, with (0.4%) operating profit margin, compared to 0.4% from the prior-year period. Revenue was up 8% sequentially or 6% when adjusted for currency even as COVID-19 impacted consulting activities and chargeability levels of our team members. A&PS is a strategic business that pulls through significant infrastructure and operational services sales.
• Financial Services revenue was $849 million, down 3% year over year or 4% when adjusted for currency. 

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ADTRAN expands its access routing portfolio

ADTRAN introduced two access routers for fiber-based IP connectivity to the enterprise.

The NetVanta 3148 and 4148 expand on ADTRAN’s suite of NetVanta access routers by combining routing and switching capabilities for both copper and fiber into VoIP-ready platforms. Routing performance and eSBC capacity vary among the new routers, providing flexible and scalable options for managed service providers and their customers. The NetVanta 3148 supports up to 500Mbps of routing performance and up to 300 eSBC calls, while the NetVanta 4148 supports a full Gigabit and up to 1,000 eSBC calls.

“ADTRAN’s enterprise and SMB solutions have a long heritage and highly-diversified customer base, which built a solid foundation for our latest expansion to the NetVanta portfolio,” said Brian Lenahan, Product Line Manager of Enterprise Subscriber Solutions at ADTRAN. “The new options we developed address the growing bandwidth demands on the enterprise network and help managed service providers apply the right solution to build the best network for each of their customers.”

http://www.adtran.com

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