IBM Cloud Satellite brings edge capabilities built on Red Hat OpenShift

IBM announced the general availability of its hybrid cloud services - IBM Cloud Satellite.

IBM Cloud Satellite promises a secured, unifying layer of cloud services for clients across environments, whether on-premise or in the public cloud.  IBM said its architecture addresses critical data privacy and data sovereignty requirements for industries including telecommunications, financial services, healthcare and government.

In addition, Lumen Technologies and IBM have integrated IBM Cloud Satellite with the Lumen edge platform to enable clients to harness hybrid cloud services in near real-time and build innovative solutions at the edge.  Applications can be hosted on Red Hat OpenShift via IBM Cloud Satellite from the close proximity of a Lumen edge location. 

Customers using the Lumen platform and IBM Cloud Satellite can deploy data-intensive applications like video analytics across highly distributed environments such as offices and retail spaces, and take advantage of infrastructure designed for single digit millisecond latency. 

"With the Lumen platform's broad reach, we are giving our enterprise customers access to IBM Cloud Satellite to help them drive innovation more rapidly at the edge," said Paul Savill, SVP Enterprise Product Management and Services at Lumen. "Our enterprise customers can now extend IBM Cloud services across Lumen's robust global network, enabling them to deploy data-heavy edge applications that demand high security and ultra-low latency. By bringing secure and open hybrid cloud capabilities to the edge, our customers can propel their businesses forward and take advantage of the emerging applications of the 4th Industrial Revolution."

IBM also noted that it is collaborating with more than 65 ecosystem partners, including Cisco, Dell Technologies and Intel to build secure cloud services helping clients run workloads in any environment via IBM Cloud Satellite. 

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2021-03-01-IBM-Cloud-Satellite-Enables-Clients-to-Deliver-Cloud-Securely-in-Any-Environment-Including-at-the-Edge

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IBM: Are Telcos Embracing Public Cloud or Hybrid Cloud Models?

Will telecom operators embrace the public cloud for their operational workloads? Or is a hybrid model a better fit? Bill Lambertson introduces IBM Cloud Satellite and talks about building a distributed cloud for network and edge workloads based on Red Hat OpenShift.

https://youtu.be/GAZNfOU7kCg

Download the 2021 Telco Infrastructure Report here: http://ngi.how/telco-2021

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Cisco completes acquisition of Acacia

Cisco completed its acquisition of Acacia Communications (NASDAQ: ACIA) following approval by a majority of Acacia’s shareholders. Cisco paid $115.00 per share in cash, or approximately $4.5 billion on a fully diluted basis, net of cash and marketable securities. Acacia employees join Cisco’s Optics business as part of the Mass-Scale Infrastructure Group.

Acacia offers a complete portfolio of long-distance data transmission solutions that address the full range of applications in the Data Center Interconnect and Wide Area Network segments for Metro, Regional, Long Haul and Subsea links.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Acacia team to Cisco,” said Chuck Robbins, Cisco chairman and CEO. “Our Internet for the Future strategy puts Acacia’s high-speed coherent optics technologies front and center as we work to empower webscale companies, service providers and data center operators to meet today’s fast-growing demands for data.”

In a blog post, Acacia's Raj Shanmugaraj writes "With the explosion of bandwidth in the multi-cloud era, optical interconnect technology is becoming an increasingly strategic part of the network. Coherent technology has been a game-changer for optical networking and continues to evolve with the deployment of pluggable coherent optics. Bringing the innovative talent of our two companies together will help expand Cisco’s optical systems offerings for customers and drive Cisco’s Internet for the Future strategy."

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=2144825

https://acacia-inc.com/blog/our-next-chapter-with-cisco/

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Marvell to supply OpenRAN Distributed Unit design for Facebook's Evenstar

 Marvell  will join the Evenstar program and work with Facebook Connectivity to provide a 4G/5G OpenRAN Distributed Unit (DU) design for Evenstar based on its OCTEON Fusion baseband processors and Arm-based OCTEON multi-core digital processing units (DPUs). 

The Evenstar program is a collaborative effort focused on building a general-purpose RAN reference architecture for 4G and 5G networks in the OpenRAN ecosystem. 

Specifically, Marvell will supply a fully integrated DU reference board featuring the OCTEON Fusion-O baseband, providing 4G and 5G PHY layer processing and an OCTEON DPU to run software functions. Facebook Connectivity will collaborate with Marvell to enable software operations on this solution and encourage multiple third parties to port protocol stack software as well. The DU supports up to 16 downlink layers at 100 MHz channelization with 10 Gbps downlink and 5Gbps uplink performance. The goal is to have Evenstar DU equipment ready for network operator trials next year.

“Marvell demonstrated its commitment to OpenRAN by introducing our O-RAN Platform in December 2020 based on our industry-leading OCTEON Fusion architecture,” said Raj Singh, executive vice president of the Processors Business Group at Marvell. “We also realize that the key to success – not just for our platform, but for the industry as a whole – involves collaboration such as this Evenstar DU engagement with Facebook Connectivity and other partners. We look forward to delivering a high performance, cost-optimized DU design that supports the capacity and interoperability requirements necessary to deploy versatile, next-generation networks by the operator community.”

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Cignal AI: North American Transport Spending Plummets in Q4

North American network operator purchases of optical and packet transport hardware dropped sharply in the fourth quarter, according to the most recent Transport Hardware Report from research firm Cignal AI, while European spending trends improved in Q4 but were also down on an exchange rate adjusted basis.

“Despite the massive disruptions during 2020, overall spending declined only slightly in 2020,” said Scott Wilkinson, Transport Hardware lead analyst at Cignal AI. “But this quarter, almost all vendors felt the impact of capex pulled forward in the year due to operators scrambling to secure safety stock.”

Additional 4Q20 Transport Hardware Report Findings:

For the entire year of 2020, NA optical transport hardware spending was down slightly vs. 2019, with Ciena and Infinera reporting flat YoY sales and Cisco, Nokia, and Fujitsu reporting declines.

Optical sales growth in EMEA was steady for the quarter and for the year, while sales in China were flat. Huawei continued to lead market share in both regions despite political pressure and new design wins by competitors.

The pattern of NA packet switching and routing sales closely mirrored that of optical sales, producing a decline of almost -20% this quarter. Nokia sales grew for the quarter and the year, while Cisco market share declined. Nokia gained share in the region, and Ribbon led YoY growth as it secured a significant win in the region to boost sales by more than 10x.

https://cignal.ai/2021/03/north-american-transport-spending-plummets-in-q4/

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AWS launches Osaka Local Region, its 2nd in Japan

Amazon Web Services launched its second full region in Japan, the AWS Asia Pacific (Osaka) Region. The region is an expansion of the existing AWS Osaka Local Region, which opened to select customers in February 2018. The new region consists of three Availability Zones (AZs) and joins the existing 25 Availability Zones in eight AWS Regions across Asia Pacific in Beijing, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Ningxia, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo. 

“We launched the AWS Osaka Local Region to help select customers run specific workloads in western Japan. Since then, customers have asked AWS to launch a second full region with multiple Availability Zones and broad service selection in the country, and today we're excited to deliver on those requests,” said Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, AWS. “Together with the AWS Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region, the AWS Asia Pacific (Osaka) Region provides customers with even lower latency to end users in Japan, as well as the ability to architect workloads across multiple Availability Zones and multiple regions in Japan for even greater fault tolerance, resiliency, and availability.”

Globally, AWS has 80 Availability Zones across 25 geographic regions, with plans to launch 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Spain, and Switzerland. 

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

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Boingo to be acquired by Digital Colony for $854 Million

Digital Colony Management, a private equity firm, agreed to acquire Boingo Wireless for $14.00 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $854 million, including the assumption of $199 million of Boingo’s net debt obligations. The acquisition price represents a 23% premium to Boingo’s closing price of $11.40 on February 26, 2021.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Digital Colony, which will deliver significant and immediate value to Boingo’s stockholders and concludes a robust strategic review process undertaken by Boingo over the past year,” said Mike Finley, Chief Executive Officer of Boingo Wireless. “We believe Digital Colony’s expertise owning and operating digital infrastructure businesses, combined with its relationships, resources and access to long-term, private capital markets, will provide greater flexibility for Boingo to continue advancing its business strategy.”

Warren Roll, Managing Director of Digital Colony, added, “Boingo is a leader in indoor wireless infrastructure, operating networks that serve a large and growing addressable market. We look forward to working with the experienced Boingo team as they continue to develop and deploy reliable networks serving their diverse set of high-quality customers.”

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Twilio to invest up to $750 million in Syniverse

Twilio to invest up to $750 million cash in Syniverse and become a significant minority owner of the company. The Carlyle Group, Syniverse’s current majority owner, will maintain its majority interest in Syniverse.

Syniverse, which provides secure networking and connectivity solutions to mobile network operators and enterprises, is one of the largest private IP Packet Exchange (IPX) providers in the world. 

Twilio's customer engagement platform provides next-generation communications services for channels like voice, text, chat, video, and email to over 220,000 customer accounts globally. Twilio enables software developers and companies to programmatically make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and perform other communication functions using its web service application programming interfaces (APIs).

In addition, Syniverse and Twilio will enter into a wholesale agreement whereby Syniverse will process, route and deliver application-to-person (A2P) messages originating and/or terminating between Twilio’s customers and mobile network operators.

James Attwood, Executive Chairman of Syniverse said, “We are thrilled to enter into this partnership with Twilio, which we believe will accelerate our next phase of growth as the world’s most connected company. The partnership will provide Syniverse access to Twilio’s extensive enterprise and API services expertise, creating opportunities to continue to build on Syniverse’s highly innovative product portfolio that helps mobile network operators and enterprises make communications better for their customers.”

“Twilio’s vision is to build the world’s leading customer engagement platform. As messaging becomes a preferred way for consumers to communicate with brands, Syniverse helps remove the complexity of the interconnected telecommunications ecosystem, so Twilio can provide best-in-class messaging services to its customers globally,” said Chee Chew, Chief Product Officer at Twilio. 

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