ONUG preview: Rethinking the Public Cloud Journey

https://youtu.be/iOg8QsFyuO8

Over the last 5 years, many companies have been on a public cloud journey, but now they're starting to assess the real cost of it and whether they're getting the operational and agility benefits associated with it. 

The upcoming ONUG Spring event in Dallas brings together enterprise cloud enablement solutions around connectivity, security, automation and most importantly, control. In this video, Nick Lippi shares a preview of some of the major themes.

While you are here - if you had 2-minutes to deliver an elevator pitch to all the CXOs and influencers at ONUG Spring 2023 (and beyond), what would you say? We'll be sharing key insights from the event in a showcase of short videos.  

Book your on-camera spot here: https://nextgeninfra-onug.as.me/schedule.php

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Fiber Broadband Association sees supply chain improvements

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) reports significant improvements in industry supply chain lead times in several key fiber broadband component categories:

• 92% decrease in minimum lead times for fiber optic cables (from 52-60 weeks in Summer 2022 to 4-10 weeks as of March 2023)
• 
  60% decrease in minimum lead times for fiber cabinets and splitters (from 10-20 weeks in Summer 2022 to 4-8 weeks as of March 2023)
• 80% decrease in minimum lead times for fiber multiport terminals (from 20-35 weeks in Summer 2022 to 4-8 weeks as of March 2023)
• 80% decrease in minimum lead times for conduit (from 15-20 weeks in Summer 2022 to 3-7 weeks as of March 2023)
• 64% decrease in minimum lead times for hand holes (from 22-26 weeks in Summer 2022 to 8-14 weeks as of March 2023)
• 67% decrease in minimum lead times for home equipment (from 12-24 weeks in Summer 2022 to 4-10 weeks as of March 2023)

FBA’s updated Supply Chain white paper, titled “Strategies to Mitigate Bottlenecks in the Current Fiber Broadband Supply Chain,” helps companies carefully plan to overcome supply chain challenges and build more robust systems and processes to buffer them from future challenges and keep fiber projects on target. The paper provides vital statistics on fiber broadband supply chain fluctuations and examples of how to protect fiber-related projects from the negative effects of supply chain stressors.

“This latest supply chain information is encouraging for fiber broadband providers today that are building reliable, high-speed fiber broadband networks to connect their communities and close the digital equity gap,” said Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association. “However, our Supply Chain Working Group does caution that while it is reporting current relief in the supply chain, it expects to see an uptick in demand going forward. Therefore, it encourages companies to continue to put a hard focus on long-range planning and to follow FBA mitigation strategies presented in the white paper.”

“Our supply chain white paper serves as an important resource for FBA members to mitigate supply chain challenges and accelerate fiber broadband deployments, so it is crucial that we provide the most up-to-date information and strategies,” said Scott Jackson, National Broadband Market Manager at Graybar, Fiber Broadband Association Board Member and Chair of the Supply Chain Working Group. “Beyond statistics, it also provides recommendations on how to pursue stronger partnerships, long-range planning, high-level design optimization, changing how companies recruit and train their labor force, and smarter technology options to plan and maintain stocking levels.”

https://youtu.be/oJbrUGAJISA

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Mavenir bulks up with $100M capital raise

Mavenir announced the closing of a $100 million capital raise, adding to its $250 million capital raise in 2022. The fundraising round was anchored by Siris, a leading technology focused private equity firm and Mavenir’s largest equity holder, along with investment from two highly strategic ecosystem partners.

The company said the new financing supports its mission to enable the digitization of telco networks with cloud-native applications that include IMS, Converged Packet Core and Open RAN.

Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO of Mavenir, commented: “This new capital will allow us to accelerate our capabilities in automation, sustainability, and use of AI as we enable our customers to efficiently deploy and operate Open RAN based end-to-end cloud-native networks. Our unique strategy incorporates best practices from the hyperscale, cloud and IT industries, to transform how the world connects and builds the future of networks.”

“Importantly, this investment enables Mavenir to further scale its business and maintain its leadership in Open RAN and 5G transformation,” said Hubert de Pesquidoux, a Siris Executive Partner and Executive Chairman of Mavenir. “We firmly believe in the automated networks of the future that are cloud-native, AI-native and Green-native, and we are confident that Mavenir’s innovations are essential in driving that evolution.”

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Box integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT API into its content cloud

Box will natively integrate advanced AI models into its Box Content Cloud, enabling organizations to securely run ChatGPT functions on their enterprise data. 

Box currently has more than 115,000 customers storing files on their cloud.

Possibilities with the new  Box AI:

• Sales teams will be able to use Box AI to get answers to questions in complex contracts to speed up the sales cycle.
• Analysts will be able to have Box AI summarize lengthy financial reports to inform their rating recommendations.
  
• Legal teams will be able to ask Box AI to identify key clauses, terms, and obligations from a contract to speed up review cycles.
• Operations teams will be able to tell Box AI to extract key takeaways from a budget to update corporate strategy decks without waiting on a co-worker from the finance team for the right piece of information.
• Customer service teams will be able to use Box AI to surface insights from hundreds of customer feedback surveys to identify key areas for improvement.

In the future, Box plans to embed Box AI across the Box product suite and power more complex use cases. For example, customers will be able to leverage Box AI to automate workflows and tasks to drive faster business outcomes, power security at scale by automatically classifying files, and enhance the developer ecosystem with access to custom APIs.

“We are at the start of a platform shift in enterprise software driven by recent advancements in generative AI, and nowhere is the potential impact greater than in enterprise content,” said Aaron Levie, Co-Founder and CEO of Box. “We’ve seen a step function improvement in our ability to analyze and synthesize the massive amounts of data contained within an organization’s unique documents, videos, presentations, spreadsheets, and more. When combined with AI, we will be able to unlock the value of this content and make every person in a company smarter and more productive. Content is an organization’s most important data, and with Box AI we’re just getting started with how we’ll transform the way work gets done.”

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AMD's Q1 revenue dips 9% to $5.4 billion

AMD reported Q1 revenue of $5.4 billion, gross margin of 44%, operating loss of $145 million, net loss of $139 million and diluted loss per share of $0.09. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 50%, operating income was $1.1 billion, net income was $970 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.60.

“We executed very well in the first quarter as we delivered better than expected revenue and earnings in a mixed demand environment,” said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. “We launched multiple leadership products and made significant progress accelerating our AI roadmap and customer engagements in the quarter. Longer-term, we see significant growth opportunities as we successfully deliver our roadmaps, execute our strategic data center and embedded priorities and accelerate adoption of our AI portfolio.”

“Our strategically important Data Center and Embedded segments contributed more than 50 percent of revenue in the first quarter," said AMD EVP, CFO and Treasurer Jean Hu. "For the second quarter we expect sequential growth in our Data Center and Client segments offset by modest declines in our Gaming and Embedded segments. We remain confident in our growth in the second half of the year as the PC and server markets strengthen and our new products ramp.”

https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1128/amd-reports-first-quarter-2023-financial-results

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VIAVI's sales drop 21.5% yoy to $248 million

 Citing lower than expected NEMs and semiconductor R&D spending, VIAVI reported quarterly net revenue was $247.8 million, down $67.7 million or 21.5% year-over-year. GAAP net loss was $(15.4) million, or $(0.07) per share. Non-GAAP net income was $18.0 million, or $0.08 per share.

"Fiscal Q3 2023 revenue and non-GAAP operating margin came in within our revised guidance range.  As we mentioned in early April, lower than expected NEMs and semiconductor R&D spend during the March quarter adversely impacted our initial NSE revenue expectations," said Oleg Khaykin, VIAVI's President and Chief Executive Officer. 

Khaykin added, "On a positive side, we saw the beginning of stabilization of demand for our field instruments during the March quarter.  In the current quarter, we are seeing the signs of recovery in our Field Instruments and stabilization in the Lab & Production business. We expect the stabilization and recovery momentum to continue into the second half of calendar 2023."

• Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA customers represented 40.5%, 30.5% and 29.0%, respectively, of total net revenue for the quarter ended April 1, 2023.
• As of April 1, 2023, the company held $586.6 million in total cash, short-term restricted cash and short-term investments.

https://investor.viavisolutions.com/overview/default.aspx

From 17-April-2023: "The pullback in R&D spend at network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and semiconductor companies was much higher than anticipated leading to revenue and non-GAAP operating margin coming in below the lower end of our guidance" said Oleg Khaykin, VIAVI's President and Chief Executive Officer. "The spending conservatism and rapid slowdown that we saw in the Service Provider and Data Center spend at the end of fiscal first quarter is now percolating down to the system and component suppliers."

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Consortium aims for European satellite constellation

A partnership has been formed by a group of European space and telecommunications players in response to the European Commission's call for tender related to the future European satellite constellation IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite).

Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, Hispasat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space will govern the open consortium. The core team of Deutsche Telekom, OHB, Orange, Hisdesat, Telespazio, and Thales will also be involved. Together, they aim to create a cutting-edge satellite constellation that uses a multi-orbit architecture and is interoperable with the terrestrial ecosystem.

IRIS² is the EU's new flagship space programm with a mission to deliver resilient and secure connectivity  to governments to protect European citizens and will provide commercial services in the interest of European economies and societies.

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-space-policy/eu-space-programme/iriss_en

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IOWN Global Forum adds to its Board

The IOWN Global Forum announced five new members to its Board of Directors:

• Ciena, Steve Alexander, Chief Technology Officer
• Orange, Gilles Bourdon, Vice President, Wireline Networks and Infrastructure
• Fujitsu, Shingo Mizuno, Corporate Executive Officer, Vice Head of System Platform Business
• KDDI, Dr. Tomohiro Otani, General Manager
• Accenture, Jefferson Wang, Senior Managing Director and Global Network Practice Lead

In addition, the IOWN Global Forum posted highlights from its recent third Annual Member Meeting, which welcomed nearly 400 registrants from 78 organizations. A

Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of IOWN Global Forum, opened the meeting sharing that “Vision to Reality” was the goal for this eighth member meeting. To do so, the focus of the meeting was to define the next stage of work items needed to deliver Vision 2030 supporting defined use cases, technologies, and architectures while also solving these challenges for a sustainable world. Using a growing list of Proof of Concepts (PoC), members shared their progress in a variety of keynotes, sessions, and workshops for bringing the Vision 2030 into reality.

Chris Wright, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Red Hat, Inc., presented on “IOWN and LINUX for the Environment Sustainability” where he described how IOWN technologies together with open source communities will be the shortest path for our connected world to deliver data-centric communication and computing infrastructure that support environmental sustainability.

Caroline Chan, the Vice President of the Network and Edge Solutions Group at Intel Corporation, shared a keynote titled “Digital Life Enhanced by Rich Compute and Connectivity.” The talk highlighted technology trends of future digital world experiences and how Intel and the ecosystem are best positioned to deliver the network and edge solutions that solve industry challenges. In addition, the discussion underscored why the work of the Forum is essential for developing next-generation global infrastructure, including the 6G system.

https://iowngf.org

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