Swiss data center operator secures US$512M refinancing

Green, the leading Swiss data center operator, completed a refinancing package valued at CHF 480 million (approximately US$512.3 million) from leading international and Swiss banks. 

Green, which is owned by InfraVia Capital Partners, said the deal will fund the expansion of its current capacity from 33MW to 81MW through the construction of additional capacity in Dielsdorf campus, the expansion of the existing high-performance campus in Lupfig and through opportunities of new campuses in Switzerland.

In the last three years, Green has intensified its cooperation with leading enterprises and public cloud providers (hyperscale companies), invested in sustainable technologies and pioneering innovations and completed new, energy-efficient and high-performance data centers in Zurich and vicinity.

Roger Süess, CEO Green: “With the acceleration of the growth program, Green is responding to the high demand from hyperscale companies who put their trust in Green when it comes to geo-redundant solutions. Green provides space, networks and sustainable growth to the benefit of hyperscale companies, enterprises and Switzerland as a whole.”

https://www.green.ch/en/blog/detail/green-completes-a-chf-480-million-refinancing-and-accelerates-its-investment-programs-in-switzerland

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Swiss operator Sunrise UPC consolidates OSS with Nokia

Sunrise UPC Communications AG has deployed Nokia’s Digital Operations software to modernize and consolidate its Operations Support Systems (OSS) for existing services and new IoT and 5G-era services, like network slicing.

Nokia claims Digital Operations software provides Sunrise UPC with an Open API catalog-driven fulfillment solution that eliminates silo-based network management and enables agile product launches by leveraging 5G and IoT technology to reduce time-to-market by up to 50 percent.

Working in tandem with Nokia’s Converged Charging software, Sunrise UPC and Nokia are utilizing joint continuous integration or continuous delivery (CICD) deployment and testing framework to further increase productivity and prepare for future IoT and 5G services.

Nokia’s fulfillment solution modernizes OSS catalog, inventory, order management and provisioning, with pre-integrated processes for end-to-end automation. 

Fabio Pellegrino, VP, IT Platform Delivery at Sunrise UPC, said: “Nokia’s OSS solution eliminates silos within our network to greatly increase the speed at which we can deploy new IoT and 5G services. We look forward to the increased flexibility this solution provides as we move into the 5G-era.”

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Veeam to be acquired for $5 billion - cloud back-up solutions

Insight Partners agreed to acquire Veeam Software in a deal valued at approximately $5 billion. Financial details were not disclosed.

Veeam Software offers backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management. The company, which was founded in 2006 and currently is headquartered in Switzerland, has estimated 2019 revenues of US$1 billion. Veeam has approximately 4,000 employees.

Under the ownership of Insight Partners, Veeam will become a U.S. company, with a U.S.-based leadership team, while continuing its global expansion from offices in 30 countries and with customers in over 160 countries.  Veeam co-founders, Ratmir Timashev and Andrei Baronov, will be stepping down as members of the Board of Directors at the close of the transaction and will not be employed by the company, although they will continue as consultants. Bill Largent will assume the role Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in addition to his position as Chairman of the Board of Directors.  In addition, Jim Kruger has been promoted to Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Danny Allan promoted to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Senior Vice President (SVP) of Product Strategy.

https://www.veeam.com/

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Swisscom picks Ericsson + Juniper for 5G IP transport

Ericsson will supply a new end-to-end 5G IP transport network to Swisscom. The deployment will use Ericsson's Router 6000 and Juniper Networks' 5G core routing portfolio. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ericsson said it takes end-to-end responsibility for Swisscom's 4G and 5G networks – from radio base stations to the data center. This includes hosting core applications such as IMS and Packet Core and managing network slices end to end with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration.

Heinz Herren, CIO and CTO at Swisscom, says: "We have selected Ericsson's transport solution for our 5G network. Partnering with Juniper Networks, Ericsson has extended its transport coverage and can now take end-to-end transport responsibility all the way from the Radio Access Network (RAN) to the next generation core. Seamlessly managed and orchestrated, this reduces our complexity and affords a more efficient, high-performing network."

Arun Bansal, Senior Vice President and Head of Ericsson in Europe & Latin America, says: "Ericsson has stepped up and taken responsibility for transport. This deal is an important proof point for the end-to-end 5G transport solutions that we recently launched. The ease of use of our one-stop shop reduces not only complexity for Swisscom but also their total cost of ownership."

Swisscom has previously announced that it will be ready to launch its 5G network by the end of 2018.

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Google Cloud Platform to open region in Zurich

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is building a new region in Zürich, Switzerland. The facility is expected to be online in the first half of 2019.

This will be GCP's sixth region in Europe, joining our future region in Finland, and existing regions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, he United Kingdom, and another facility under development in Finland. With Switzerlan, GCP will have 20 regions in service or announced.

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Swisscom launches Enterprise Cloud in Swiss jurisdiction

Swisscom announced the launch of two new cloud solutions:Enterprise Service Cloud from Switzerland and the Enterprise Cloud for SAP Solutions, which has been specially designed for efficient SAP operations.

Swisscom is also extending its portfolio with global offerings from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The Enterprise Service Cloud is an integrated cloud that covers everything from infrastructure via platform services to Managed Services and outsourcing. All data storage and functionality resides within Swiss jurisdiction. The cloud runs in tier IV-certified Swisscom data centres. From 2018 there will also be industry-specific services, for the banking or health sector for instance, with tighter compliance guidelines.

Enterprise Cloud for SAP Solutions is a SAP-certified, flexible and reliable service. As the largest SAP provider in Switzerland, Swisscom said it can offer the expertise of its 300 SAP consultants and its 80 full outsourcing customers to provide flexible infrastructure and dedicated SAP operations for Switzerland.

https://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/medien/press-releases/2017/09/20170907-die-swisscom-familie-waechst.html

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Internet Society: 56 Cases of Deliberate Government Shutdowns 2016

The Internet Society said there were 56 documented cases in 2016 where governments issued orders to temporarily shut down or restrict access to Internet services, often during elections, demonstrations or periods of social unrest. This compares to 15 such cases in 2015.

“Before they take action, we are calling policymakers to think twice: Internet shutdowns and content filtering are not the answer,” said Constance Bommelaer, Senior Director for Global Internet Policy at the Internet Society. “We are at a crossroads, and the actions we take today will determine whether the Internet will continue to be a driver of empowerment, or whether it will threaten personal freedoms and rights online,” added Bommelaer.

https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/#problem
http://www.isoc.org

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Equinix Expands Zurich Data Center Campus with Acquisition

Equinix will acquire ICT-Center AG, Zurich's data center operating business in Zurich, Switzerland. The deal was valued at under $5 million.

The facility, which is adjacent to Equinix's existing Zurich International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers – ZH2 and ZH4, will add approximately 60 cabinets of sold capacity and a total colocation space of approximately 230 cabs. Equinix noted that the data center currently has a large number of network customers, which further increases network density at its Zurich campus, as well as global enterprises and financial services companies.

Equinix's Zurich data centers (ZH1, ZH2, ZH4, ZH5) are tethered together forming a campus environment.  The company says customers at its Zurich campus can reach 90 percent of Europe within 20ms.

http://www.equinix.com

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Coriant Supplices DCI for SwissIX

SwissIX Internet Exchange, the largest Internet exchange point in Switzerland, has deployed the Coriant Groove G30 DCI Platform.

“This upgrade represents an important milestone in the SwissIX 2020 infrastructure project as we future-proof our network for the surging bandwidth demands of our peers,” said Ulf Kieber, President, SwissIX Internet Exchange. “The best-in-class Groove solution not only gives us tremendous efficiencies in terms of power and space, but also enables us to expand end-user connectivity to 100G while laying the foundation for core network scalability to 200G and beyond.”

http://www.swissix.ch
http://www.coriant.com

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"5G for Switzerland" Backed by Swisscom and Ericsson

Swisscom, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Ericsson are launching a "5G for Switzerland" program that aims to understand to how 5G can play a transformative role in areas such as smart transportation, autonomous driving, automated traffic control systems, smart grid, IoT, and virtual reality.

Heinz Herren, CTO and CIO Swisscom said: “5G is still in the early stages of development. For Swisscom it is essential to be in on the planning from the start, preparing for future applications.”

Martin Buerki, Ericsson Country Manager, Switzerland, said: “We are delighted to partner with Swisscom and EPFL to extend our 5G for Europe program to Switzerland where we can address the innovation potential that 5G communications technology will bring by working together with local industries.”

http://www.ericsson.com

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Swisscom: Flat Revenues, Higher CAPEX for Broadband Upgrades

Swisscom reported 2015 revenue of 11,678 million (CHF), down 0.2% from 2014.  Net income came in at 1,362 million (CHF).

“Currency effects and more intense competition with stronger price dynamic characterised our business in the last year”, said CEO Urs Schaeppi. “In view of the challenging environment in the ICT market, I am satisfied with our operating business. On a like-for-like basis, we achieved a slight increase in revenue as well as operating income (EBITDA). The expansion of the national infrastructure and new offerings according to the needs of our customers will continue to call for high capital expenditure. Fastweb recorded positive customer growth of 6.2% in the Italian market. As a result of strong competition and price pressure, we set ourselves the goal of reducing our costs by over CHF 300 million by 2020.”

Some highlights from the report:

• Swisscom TV access lines in Switzerland reached 1,331,000 as of 31-Dec-2015, up 14.2% from a year earlier.
• Mobile lines in Switzerland reached 6,625,00 as of 31-Dec-2015, up 1.3% from a year earlier.
• Broadband access lines Fastweb reached 2,201,000 as of 31-Dec-2015, up 6.2% from a year earlier.
• CAPEX in Switzerland reached 1,822 (CHF million), up 4.1 %
• Group-wide capital expenditure fell by CHF 27 million or 1.1% to CHF 2,409 million

https://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/medien/press-releases/2016/02/20160204-MM-Jahresbericht-2015.html

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euNetworks Trims Latency 9% on New Frankfurt-Zurich Route

euNetworks announced a new Frankfurt-to-Zurich fibre service with dedicated, low-latency DWDM equipment that trims latency by 9% over the prior best Frankfurt to Zurich fibre based routes.

This route extends euNetworks’ existing London to Frankfurt fibre based route to Equinix’s ZH2 International Business ExchangeTM (IBX) data centre in Zurich and delivers a latency 9% lower than the prior best Frankfurt to Zurich fibre based routes. In February 2015, euNetworks also optimised their key London to Frankfurt low latency route, with an improvement of -0.18ms round trip delay. In February 2015, euNetworks also optimised their key London to Frankfurt low latency route, with an improvement of -0.18ms round trip delay.

The new low latency route provides financial services firms with direct access to Zurich- Equinix ZH4, where SIX Swiss Exchange is hosted, from London, with round trip delay of 12.58 milliseconds, and from Equinix’s Frankfurt data centre (FR2), with round trip delay of 4.65 milliseconds. euNetworks offers market leading latency performance from all major Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTFs) across Europe, enabling greater access to its euTrade service portfolio and some of the shortest routes in the market today. euNetworks first began offering ultra-low latency services to Zurich in May 2011.

http://www.eunetworks.com/

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Swisscom Marches Forward with Vectored VDSL

Swisscom announced a broadband milestone: over a million homes and businesses already connected to ultra-fast broadband network.

At the beginning of 2014, Swisscom started to roll out VDSL vectoring technology into those areas where Fibre to the Curb had been installed/  Across Switzerland, Swisscom has switched 200,000 homes and businesses over to vectoring, which makes it one of Europe's top providers. The roll-out of Fibre to the Street (FTTS) has already been completed in ten municipalities, for example Croy (VD), Wila (ZH), Iragna (TI), Prêles (BE) and Rothenthurm (SZ). The network is currently being rolled out to over 100 further municipalities.

Thanks to FTTS, broadband speeds of up to 100 Mbps can now be achieved. Swisscom is also collaborating with Huawei to develop G.fast, a successor technology to VDSL.

http://www.swisscom.ch/en/about/medien/press-releases/2014/07/20140730-Netzausbau-Ultrabreitband.html

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Orange Business Builds Global WAN for Switzerland's Oetiker Group

The Oetiker Group, a worldwide supplier of clamps, rings and quick connectors based in Switzerland, has selected Orange Business Services to provide a global wide area network and embedded security services.   The Orange network will connect 1,200 Oetiker employees in 21 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Orange Business Services is providing a Web protection suite with malware scanning and Zscaler, a Web filtering bundle, as part of the solution.

The global WAN will support Oetiker's new centralized SAP ERP and CRM system.

http://www.orange.com

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u-blox acquires connectBlue for Wi-Fi + Bluetooth

Switzerland-based u-blox has acquired connectBlue AB, a supplier of industrial-grade short range radio modules including Bluetooth and 802.11 Wi-Fi, for SEK 185 million (CHF 25 million). The connectBlue modules are used to enable the last hundreds of meters of connectivity between equipment and the internet. connectBlue is based in Malmo, Sweden.

"The Internet of Things requires end-to-end connectivity to allow powerful applications to manage mission- and business-critical devices such as health monitoring and point of sales terminals, factory automation and vehicle sensors," said Thomas Seiler, u-blox CEO. "connectBlue's short range radio technology combined with our comprehensive line of cellular modems and satellite positioning receivers allow us to provide a complete communication solution for thousands of existing and future applications. We are very pleased to work with our new colleagues in Sweden to build on the deep synergies between our businesses."

u-blox supplies wireless and positioning semiconductors and modules for the automotive, industrial and consumer markets.

http://www.u-blox.com
http://www.connectblue.com

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CERN Data Center Deploys Red Hat Virtualization

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Technical Account Management services across nearly 600 servers in its Geneva data centre.

Red Hat said its Enterprise Linux is running some of CERN's most critical applications, including the Large Hadron Collider Logging Server and the central financial and HR systems for CERN's members of personnel and 11,000 users. CERN also runs Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in its cutting-edge LHCb experiment, which focuses primarily on identifying the differences between matter and antimatter.

The infrastructure is comprised of physical two-socket servers and is virtualized using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on Dell PowerEdge M610 servers (with Intel Nehalem or Ivy Bridge processors with between 96 GB and 256 GB RAM per server) and a Brocade FC8 SAN with a NetApp data storage system. The infrastructure is designed for high availability and is built to be completely redundant, a critical feature for CERN as control system downtime almost always results in data loss.

http://www.redhat.com

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Swisscom Picks ALU for 1 Gbps FTTH

Swisscom has selected Alcatel-Lucent to bring ultra-broadband access speeds of up to 1 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) to one million households in metropolitan areas of Switzerland.

Specifically, Swisscom is using Alcatel-Lucent’s 7302 Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) using point-to-point gigabit Ethernet technology to offer fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) residential broadband services up to 1 Gbps – the fastest in Switzerland.

The deployment is part of Swisscom’s strategy to bring the benefits of ultra-broadband to 85 percent of the country’s households and businesses by 2020, using both optical fiber and existing copper infrastructure.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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JDSU Acquires Trendium and Time-Bandwidth

JDSU announced two acquisitions:  Trendium, a provider of real-time intelligence software solutions for customer experience assurance, asset optimization and monetization of big data for 4G/LTE mobile network operators; and Time-Bandwidth Products, a provider of high-powered and ultrafast lasers for the industrial and scientific markets. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Trendium, which is based in Boulder, Colorado, helps mobile operators improve the quality of services by leveraging application and traffic analysis with correlation technology. JDSU said the acquisition enables it to introduce a new paradigm of customer experience assurance (CEA) in 4G/LTE networks.  Trendium will become part of JDSU's mobile assurance and analytics solution, which recently selected by one of the top five mobile operators in the world.

Time-Bandwidth Products, which is a spin-off from the Ultrafast Laser Physics group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, offers a range of OEM and customized picosecond and femtosecond laser systems. The company specializes in ultrafast diode-pumped solid-state laser systems (DPSSLs). JDSU said this acquisition strengthens its position as a leading provider of lasers for micromachining applications. Ultrafast lasers can rapidly and precisely process parts at high volumes and use very short light pulses during the manufacturing process to minimize heat, which can negatively impact the quality and functionality of the processed part. Time-Bandwidth Products is based in Zurich.

“Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, making mergers and acquisitions an important part of JDSU’s growth strategy as a diversified technology company,” said Tom Waechter, president and CEO of JDSU. “These two acquisitions reflect our approach to selectively acquire technology and talent that help meet our customer’s rapidly evolving needs in the markets we serve.”

http://www.jdsu.com/
http://www.time-bandwidth.com/
http://www.trendium.com/

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Swiss National Railway Implements HP TippingPoint IPS

Swiss Federal Railways has deployed HP TippingPoint technology to secure the national railway’s network infrastructure.  The deployment uses the HP TippingPoint 7500NX platform and HP TippingPoint SMS XL Appliance for next-generation intrusion prevention system (NGIPS).

 “Even with strong security measures already in place, the highly sensitive nature of the railway’s network, along with the escalation of cyberthreats, presented a need for greater visibility and proactive defense,” said Erwin Jud, senior security engineer, Swiss Federal Railways. “The HP TippingPoint IPS combines advanced threat intelligence and thorough visibility, enabling us to better protect our infrastructure with minimal administrative effort.”

HP said its TippingPoint NX platform delivers a real-time NGIPS to proactively defend against cyberthreats that target the network, applications and critical data.

http://www.hpenterprisesecurity.com

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Huawei Purchased US$3.4 billion from Europe in 2013

Saying that its business practices are a win-win, Huawei announced that it procured US$3.4 billion worth of components, engineering services, and logistical services from Europe in 2013. In addition, Huawei said it now has more than 7,700 employees in Europe and it has has set up two R&D centers with total 14 locations, and established six centers of expertise encompassing finance, marketing, service, and other fields.  Huawei has also set-up partnerships with leading European carriers, universities, and industry organizations.

"Our core business principle in Europe is to achieve mutual benefits and win-win outcomes," said Ken Hu, Huawei's Deputy Chairman and Rotating CEO, at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2014 in Davos. "Europe benefits from a deep-rooted history of culture, management, and technology expertise as well as a great tradition for innovation. Huawei regards Europe as a key competency center. By localizing our operations and collaborating extensively with European partners, we have improved our overall capabilities. At the same time, our global value chain enabled the capability transfer from Europe to other parts of the world, which generated even greater value from these capabilities. In this process, we have also created a large number of job opportunities for Europe and helped move the industry forward."

Looking into the future, Ken Hu remarked: “We believe that open and free trade policies, the foundation of Europe’s prosperity for the past centuries, will continue to pave the way for improving ICT industry’s competitiveness and fueling the growth of digital economy. With full confidence in the future of Europe, we will continue to invest in this region, cooperate with European industry players to promote innovations, and play a more active role in reshaping the society."

http://www.huawei.com

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