Enea unveils NFV platform for Virtualisation of Network Edge

Stockholm-based Enea, a supplier of network software platforms, announced the introduction of Enea NFV Core, a high performance, deployment-ready NFV software platform designed to enable central office virtualisation at the network edge.

Enea's new NFV Core software is designed to allow network operators, service providers and telecom and network equipment vendors to develop solutions enabling a virtualised network edge that can deliver lower costs and increased flexibility in creating new services.

Enea noted that while the data centre/cloud side of NFV software is maturing and becoming commoditised, in the base station and customer premise equipment segment there are currently few independent software vendors with viable offerings. In addition, there is significant potential for differentiation as the use cases differ for each deployment scenario.

Enea aims to address typical distributed NFV use cases such as virtual CPE (vCPE), and the new Enea NFV Core platform targets central office applications. The solution provides multi-architecture support that enables virtualised network functions (VNF) to execute on both Intel x86 and ARM commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware.

Enea NFV Core is based on the open technology standards OPNFV and OpenStack, and so can benefit from the speed of innovation provided by the open source community. However, Enea noted that unlike open source offerings NFV Core is hardened and deployment-ready, which speeds development time.

The Enea NFV Core software has been configured, enhanced and optimised to deliver the performance and availability required for edge use cases, and has been integrated, tested and validated.

At MWC 2017, Enea partnered with Lanner Electronics to demonstrate a proof-of-concept of a commercial NFV solution for vCPE built on OPNFV and able to run on x86 and ARM-based COTS hardware. The PoC involved Enea running its network virtualisation software on a central office server that sets up and initiates a video call between two tablets, one connected to an x86-based Lanner device, and one connected to an ARM-based device.

http://www.enea.com/press-releases/Item/?id=6E6A8FA117EE8CEB

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ECI Apollo Selected for Lepida Regional Network in Italy

ECI, a global provider of Elastic Network solutions, announced that it has been selected to upgrade Lepida SpA's regional broadband network in northern Italy.

Lepida, based in Bologna, is a communications provider that was established in 2007 by the Emilia-Romagna regional government to design, implement and manage broadband infrastructures for the public administrations and public entities in the region.

ECI has been selected to provide a turnkey, end-to-end, 10/100/200 Gbit/s regional WDM network featuring 96 channel, tunable flex grid and high-capacity OTN cross-connect functionality in the main network PoPs, based on its Apollo packet-optical solution.

ECI noted that its solution met the technical requirements of Lepida's tailored approach, while the service provider will also be able to select from a range of pay-as-you grow options to expand network capacity and capabilities in the future.

ECI's Apollo platform provides transparent and flexible DWDM transport for a range of customer requirements. The platform combines low latency with software configurable, colourless, directionless and gridless optical routing, OTN switching and grooming and is designed to enable efficient and fully programmable networking.

In addition, ECI's planning tools and management platforms can provide Lepida with independence when planning and provisioning its network in the future. ECI also offer an evolution path across its platforms enabling customers to prepare for the transition to SDN technology.

Lepida operates a network linking local administrations in Emilia-Romagna that includes 2.700 km of infrastructure and 64,000 km of fibre with more than 720 points of access. The NGN network supports minimum 2 Gbit/s bandwidth at fibre points with backbone connectivity to MIX Milan, AmsIX Amsterdam, DECIX in  Frankfurt, LINX in London, FRANCEIX in Paris, LUCIX in Luxemburg, VSIX in Padoa, TOPIX in Turin and SIX in the U.S.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news/eci

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NTT Com Acquires International LD License in India

NTT Communications (NTT Com) announced that it recently acquired a Virtual Network Operator - International Long Distance (VNO-ILD) license in India through its local affiliate NTT Communications India Network Services (NTTCINS).

The new license for India will enable NTT Com to add Arcstar Universal One International Network Services to its existing portfolio of services in India. At present, in India NTT Com provides national long distance (NLD) network services through affiliate NTTCINS, as well as colocation, managed hosting, cloud and ICT management services via affiliate company Netmagic.

Following the award of the virtual network operator license, from July of this year NTT Com plans to leverage its portfolio of ICT solutions to help enterprise customers build ICT environments to support their business operations in India. NTT Com will specifically offer ICT solutions including WAN, LAN, data centre and associated value added services to Indian businesses and multinational corporations.

In addition, NTT Com plans to enhance its network services via the addition of Internet access options and to improve service quality through expanded relationships with local carriers.

NTTCINS launched operations in India in 2003 and has established nodes in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi in cooperation with local carrier Tata Communications. The operator operates a backbone network with diverse routes and has offices in major cities across India.

Netmagic, based in Mumbai, is a major managed hosting and cloud service provider in India, with 9 carrier-neutral data centres. The company claims more than 2,000 enterprises customers worldwide. Netmagic also delivers remote infrastructure management (RIM) services to enterprise customers globally, including NTT Com customers in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

http://www.ntt.com/en/about-us/press-releases/news/article/2017/0425.html?_ga=1.142259378.1897876473.1492805105

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AT&T Q1 Revenue Dips to $39.4 Billion

AT&T reported Q1 revenues of $39.4 billion versus $40.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. The company cited record-low equipment sales in wireless for the revenue dip, but said it recorded its best-ever first-quarter postpaid phone churn of 0.90%

Compared with results for the first quarter of 2016, operating expenses were $32.5 billion versus $33.4 billion; operating income was $6.9 billion versus $7.1 billion; and operating income margin was 17.4% versus 17.6%.

“In a very competitive quarter, we continued to execute on our goals of driving efficiencies in our business while growing adjusted earnings per share. But just as important, the strategic moves we’ve made over the last few months to expand our wireless capacity and fortify our 5G leadership will be felt for years to come,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO. “FirstNet gives us access to 20 megahertz of valuable, low-band spectrum and allows us to deploy our spectrum assets more efficiently as we build a high-quality, mobile broadband network for our first responders. And our planned acquisitions of Fiber Tower and Straight Path will add valuable millimeter wave spectrum assets to our 5G tool kit as we lead the way to the next generation of wireless technology.”

Here are some highlights from AT&T Q1 financial report:

• Total revenues from Consumer Mobility customers totaled $7.7 billion, down 7.1% versus the year-earlier quarter, reflecting fewer phone sales and upgrades and lower postpaid service revenues mostly due to migrations to business plans. In the quarter, Consumer Mobility lost 353,000 total subscribers with 282,000 prepaid and 19,000 connected device net adds partially offsetting a loss of 66,000 postpaid and 588,000 reseller subscribers. 
• Total first-quarter revenues from business customers were $16.8 billion, down 4.3% versus the year-earlier quarter due to declines in legacy wireline services and fewer wireless equipment upgrades. Strategic business services, the next-generation wireline services, including VPNs, Ethernet, cloud, hosting, IP conferencing, voice over IP, dedicated internet, IP broadband and security services, grew by $223 million, or 8.1%, versus the year-earlier quarter. These services represent 40% of total business wireline revenues and an annualized revenue stream of nearly $12 billion. Growth in strategic business services helped offset a decline of $743 million in legacy services in the quarter.
• At the end of the first quarter, AT&T had more than 82 million business wireless subscribers.
• AT&T Entertainment Group (including DirecTV) total revenues were $12.6 billion, generally flat versus the year-earlier quarter. The Entertainment Group had a net gain of 242,000 IP broadband subscribers in the first quarter with DSL losses of 127,000, for total broadband subscriber growth of 115,000. IP broadband subscribers at the end of the quarter totaled 13.1 million. 

http://www.att.com

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Ericsson's Quarterly Sales Drop by 11%

Ericsson reported Q1 2017 sales of 46.4 billion, down by -11% compared to year earlier due to lower mobile infrastructure investments in certain markets,lower IPR licensing revenues and the renewed managed services contract with reduced scope in North America. Operating income was SEK -12.3 b., after provisions, write-downs and restructuring charges of SEK -13.4 b. Excluding these items the operating income amounted to SEK 1.1 b.

"Our performance in the first quarter continued to be unsatisfactory," stated Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm. "The immediate priority is to improve profitability while also taking action to revitalize technology and market leadership...We are not satisfied with the cost structure of the company and the existing cost and efficiency program is not yielding sufficient results. Based on current profitability, we will intensify our efforts to reduce cost with focus on structural changes to generate lasting efficiency gains and increase cost competitiveness. Our target is to surpass previous ambitions. However, we need to increase investment in certain core areas to develop our product portfolio, which can temporarily increase cost levels."

Some highlights:

• Despite lower sales, Networks delivered a solid result. The new Ericsson Radio System platform contributed to improving profitability and stabilizing the market share position, after several years of decline.
• The concerning developments in IT & Cloud continued with significantly increased losses. 
• Ericsson is seeking alternatives for its IT cloud infrastructure hardware business.
• The accelerated losses in Media were caused by a faster than anticipated decline in legacy product sales, not offset by growth in the new portfolio. Ericsson is exploring strategic opportunities for Media.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2098356

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Juniper's Quarterly Sales Jump by 11%

Juniper Networks reported Q1 2017 net revenues of $1,221.0 million, an increase of 11% year-over-year and a decrease of 12% sequentially. GAAP operating margin for the first quarter of 2017 was 12.8%, a decrease from 13.5% in the first quarter of 2016, and a decrease from 20.7% in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Juniper posted GAAP net income of $108.8 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year, and a decrease of 42% sequentially. GAAP diluted earnings per share for the first quarter of 2017 was $0.28.

"We had a positive start to 2017, delivering strong year-over year revenue and earnings growth," said Rami Rahim, chief executive officer at Juniper Networks. "I am proud of the strength of our product and solution portfolios, pleased with the diversification of our customer base, and confident in our ability to execute to our strategy. We continue to drive strong momentum with cloud solutions across our key verticals."

http://www.juniper.net

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Gigamon Delivers Security Intelligence at 10/40/100G

Gigamon introduced its GigaVUE-HC3, a high-performance appliance to enable pervasive visibility and security intelligence at scale in 10Gb, 40Gb and 100Gb networks.

The new GigaVUE-HC3 extends Gigamon's Visibility Platform and GigaSMART technologies with higher compute and throughput performance, offering:

• A total of 800Gbps of GigaSMART traffic intelligence per node, scaling to 25Tbps in clustered configurations
• Up to 3.2Tbps of processing per node that scales to over 100Tbps per cluster.

“Organizations that deal with large volumes of network traffic are increasingly concerned about the attack surface posed by high-speed, distributed infrastructure and the ensuing challenges created for network security teams,” said Ananda Rajagopal, vice president of products at Gigamon. “Ensuring visibility and control in such environments is not just about tapping network traffic but also rapidly finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. The GigaVUE-HC3 is the first platform in the industry to provide intelligent visibility at scale.”

GigaVUE-HC3 will be generally available in May 2017.

http://www.gigamon.com

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Russia's MTS and Ericsson Demo 25G in 5G testing

MTS, a major telco in Russia and the CIS serving over 100 million subscribers, and Ericsson announced that during trials of 5G technology they achieved claimed record data transmission rates of up to 25 Gbit/s using a portable prototype of a smartphone, representing an advance on previous 5G trials that involved only stationary devices.

The testing was conducted by Ericsson and MTS at the Opening Arena stadium in Moscow, where a base station operating in the range of 14.5 to 15.3 GHz transmitted a signal to a portable prototype of a subscriber' device at the speeds of up to 25 Gbit/s. During the trials, MTS and Ericsson tested 5G technology in a range of scenarios requiring high bandwidth and low latency, such as 4K video streaming, virtual reality services and remote robot control over a mobile network.

The latest trials featured technologies including:

1.         Multi-user and massive MIMO with an array of transmit-receive antennas, including serving multiple subscribers in one sector of a cell over the same frequency band.

2.         Beam tracking, designed to provide user devices with a stable, reliable connection and the optimum throughput performance when on the move.

3.         Dynamic TDD, which enhances the data transfer rate and efficiency of wireless network resource utilisation by dynamically redistributing the bandwidth when transmitting traffic in the downlink and upstream channels.

Ericsson noted that the trials were conducted as part of its strategic partnership with MTS established in December 2015. Under the agreement, Ericsson and MTS planned to cooperate on 5G R&D in Russia, encompassing areas including spectrum studies of the next generation network and implementation of a test system.

Subsequently, in June 2016 the companies tested LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed), demonstrating the aggregation of two frequency bands, 10 MHz in the 1800 MHz band of LTE and 20 MHz in the unlicensed 5 GHz band at WiFi access points, demonstrating data rates of 200 Mbit/s.

Also in June last year, the companies signed a 3 year agreement for the supply of software for the modernisation of the MTS network, to include implementing IoT technology and testing extended GSM technology (EC-GSM-IoT).

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mts-and-ericsson-secure-new-record-data-speed-for-russia-during-5g-test-619936003.html

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Windstream Intros Business Continuity Solution

Windstream, a major provider of advanced network communications, announced the availability of a new business continuity solution, Diverse Connect, designed to ensure reliable connectivity for enterprises that rely on the cloud to support mission-critical applications.

Windstream's Diverse Connect is designed to keep a customer's network endpoints connected and ensure the performance of business functions including in the event of a major network issue. Diverse Connect is offered with a 99.999% (5-9s) uptime SLA that covers services from end-to-end, including over the last mile from Windstream's provider service point to the business' internal network.

The company noted that the migration of applications and real-time communications to the cloud means that enterprises of all sizes increasingly consider highly available network connectivity as a necessity. Diverse Connect serves to remove single points of failure while establishing access diversity and ensuring cloud-based business applications are always up and running.

Windstream's Diverse Connect is available immediately as part of the suite that includes voice, data, unified communications and security. The solution allows customers to provision and customise their services based on specific requirements and to maintain network redundancy at all times.

Key capabilities of Windstream Diverse Connect include:

1.         High availability, ensuring staff can stay connected with sites in the event of a network issue, mitigating potential loss of business or revenue due to outages.

2.         Diversity, providing an additional level of resiliency beyond redundancy by using multiple backup paths with no shared points of failure to keep critical endpoints connected.

3.         Business continuity, ensuring all services provided by Windstream continue to run even in the event of a fibre cut or other last-mile access impairment.

4.         Guaranteed service uptime with 5-9s end-to-end service level agreement that includes a commitment to credit customers for time lost if downtime exceeds 5 minutes per year.

Earlier in April, as part of its cloud services strategy, Windstream announced an agreement to acquire Broadview Networks, a provider of cloud-based unified communications solutions to SMBs, for approximately $227.5 million in cash. Subject to customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017.

Based in Rye Brook, New York, Broadview offers cloud-based unified communications solutions to businesses via its suite of cloud-based services under the OfficeSuite UC brand.

http://news.windstream.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1805

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ZTE Implements Virtual SDM for Banglalink in Bangladesh

ZTE announced that it has signed an agreement with Banglalink, a leading digital communications service providers in Bangladesh, to build what is believed will be the largest virtual Subscriber Data Management (vSDM) platform deployed to date.

The transformation project is designed to improve services for the approximately 35 million users of Banglalink's network. Specifically, the vSDM platform will help Banglalink to manage customer data more efficiently, as well as improve service availability.

The upgraded network will offer simultaneous support 2G, 3G and 4G, VoWiFi and VoLTE and other advanced services. The virtualised network is designed to provide faster mobile broadband services and enable services such as video chat, multimedia conferencing and multimedia messaging.

Banglalink Digital Communications is a company of Telecom Ventures, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Global Telecom Holding, owned 51.9% by VEON (formerly known as VimpelCom). VEON, with over 235 million customers, operates in 13 markets, including Russia, Italy, Algeria, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Georgia and Laos, under the Beeline, Kyivstar, WIND, Jazz, banglalink and Djezzy brands.

http://www.zte.com.cn/global/about/press-center/news/2017ma4/0424ma1

• On April 20th, ZTE and VEON announced a global framework agreement covering network function virtualisation infrastructure (NFVI) and virtual evolved packet core (vEPC), as a part of which they plan to cooperate on the development of virtualisation technology. Under the agreement, ZTE is to supply the VEON group with NFVI solutions and deploy large-scale NFVI and vEPC networks in a number of countries where VEON operates, including Russia. The cooperation between the companies is intended to promote VEON's wider NFV strategic planning and digitalisation initiative.
• In January, ZTE and velcom, a major mobile operator in Belarus and part of Telekom Austria Group, announced the migration of the core of velcom's network to a virtualised, 'vCore' platform. Through the project, all legacy core network components, including HLR/HSS, EPC, MSC and PCRF, were migrated to a fully virtualised platform on OpenStack-based NFV and standard hardware.
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AT&T launches fixed wireless Internet service in Georgia under CAF program

AT&T announced the completion of a first wave of fixed wireless Internet availability for rural and underserved locations in Georgia as part of the company's involvement with the FCC Connect America Fund (CAF), through which it has committed to connect over 400,000 locations by the end of 2017 and over 1.1 million locations by 2020.

AT&T noted that the work in Georgia will be expanded to a further 17 states during 2017, namely: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

The fixed wireless Internet offering provides a home Internet connection delivering a minimum download speed of 10 Mbit/s. Connectivity is provided via a wireless tower to a fixed antenna on the customer's home or business, which is designed to offer a cost-effective means of delivering quality, high-speed Internet to customers in rural and underserved areas.

AT&T plans to reach a total of more than 67,000 locations across Georgia using the fixed wireless technology by 2020.

http://about.att.com/story/first_wave_of_fixed_wireless_internet.html

• In January, AT&T announced that, following trials of fixed wireless Internet (FWI) service in 2016 in a number of states as part of efforts to expand access to primarily rural locations with slow or no Internet connectivity through its participation in the FCC CAF II, it planned to launch FWI in areas where it had accepted CAF support.
  
  At that time, AT&T noted it was trialing point-to-point millimetre-wave wireless technology that utilised in-building wiring to deliver a 100 Mbit/s connection accessible to each unit. The initial trial was using wired and wireless technologies to provide high speed Internet to multiple apartment complexes in Minneapolis, outside of its traditional 21 state wireline service area. AT&T added that it was aiming to offer speeds of up to 500 Mbit/s in trial properties using the fixed-wireless solution.

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Nokia and Kaltura Partner on OTT TV

New York-based Kaltura, a specialist video technology supplier, announced that it has partnered with Nokia under an agreement designed to facilitate the delivery of a more personalised viewing experience leveraging its TV Platform for OTT TV service and Nokia's IP video delivery and storage platforms.

The two companies noted that, based on multiple live deployments for Tier-1 operators and media companies worldwide, they can offer a comprehensive, modular solution that integrates Nokia's Velocix product family, combined with the vendor's experience and capabilities, with Kaltura's proven TV Platform.

Through the partnership, Nokia will offer Kaltura's technology and expertise to customers worldwide to help them meet their business goals and provide a more personalised experience to consumers, while Kaltura will integrate Nokia's IP video products and leverage its systems integration experience to deliver enhanced solutions.

The combined offering encompasses advanced technology and capabilities including cloud DVR, CDN, flexible monetisation models and social media integration.

Kaltura stated that the new partnership with Nokia follows a number of deployments where the two companies were chosen and sourced separately by the telco customer. Building on this, the partnership is intended to enable tighter integration, increased synergy and a more streamlined process for customers.

Kaltura's product offering includes OTT TV and video monetisation solutions for media companies, operators, service providers and content owners, enterprise and education video solutions, and Kaltura VPaaS (Video-Platform-as-a-Service), a self-serve cloud video service designed to enable the creation and deployment of video applications, workflows and services. Kaltua claims customers for its video solutions including Viacom, Vodafone, HBO, ABC, Turner, Warner Brothers and Paramount.

https://corp.kaltura.com/company/news/

• In August 2016, Kaltura announced it had secured $50 million in pre-IPO funding from Goldman Sachs' Private Capital Investing group, which it planned to use to extend its footprint across all six continents, and to strengthen its position as the Everything Video company. In conjunction with the funding, Holger Staude, VP, Goldman Sachs' Private Capital Investing group, joined the Kaltura board.

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Verizon introduces Fios Gigabit Connection for 8m homes

Verizon, serving nearly 114 million retail connections across the U.S., has announced the launch of Fios Gigabit Connection, a national deployment of gigabit Internet service offering download speed of up to 940 Mbit/s and upload speed as fast as 880 Mbit/s.

Following the launch of Fios Instant Internet service in January, Verizon noted that network performance exceeded expectations, with Instant Internet customers experiencing actual speeds above the advertised symmetrical 750 Mbit/s upload and download rates. Verizon has subsequently fine-tuned the service with new firmware and diagnostic tools to enhance performance to deliver the Fios Gigabit Connection service.

Fios Gigabit Connection is available to more than 8 million homes in parts of the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond and Hampton Roads, Virginia, Boston, Providence and Washington DC areas. The coverage area adds more than one million homes to the Instant Internet footprint, with Verizon's highest speed Internet service available in the Washington DC and Providence markets for the first time.

In areas where Fios Gigabit Connection service is available, Verizon is offering two tiers of standalone Internet service - 50 Mbit/s and Gigabit Connection. Existing customers to Instant Internet service will automatically receive Fios Gigabit Connection.

As part of its fibre strategy, Verizon launched the One Fiber approach in Boston in 2016 and cited plans to invest $300 million over six years to deploy fibre throughout the city. Verizon originally announced plans in April 2016 to build a new fibre network to support services including Fios in Boston.

In January of this year, the company announced the launch of Fios Instant Internet in parts of Boston and Norfolk, Virginia offering symmetrical 750 Mbit/s bandwidth. Verizon also announced the launch of Fios Instant Internet in greater New York City and northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Richmond, providing over 7 million premises on the East Coast with access to its Instant Internet offering.

Earlier in April, Verizon announced a three-year minimum purchase agreement with Corning for the provision of fibre optic cable and associated hardware equipment to ensure coverage and capacity for its nationwide wireless broadband network. Under the agreement, Verizon will purchase from Corning up to 20 million km (12.4 million miles) of fibre in each of the three years from 2018 through to 2020, with a minimum purchase commitment of $1.05 billion.

http://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-launches-fios-gigabit-connection-service-delivering-millions-customers-speeds-they

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Ixia provides Test and Monitoring for CORD

Ixia, a provider of network testing, visibility and security solutions and now a Keysight Technologies company, has announced a collaboration with the CORD Project, developing the open source CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) platform for software defined networks (SDN), network functions virtualisation (NFV) and cloud-based service delivery.

Ixia noted that as service providers begin re-architecting their networks in preparation for 5G, there is a need to carry out comprehensive pre-deployment testing to ensure quality of service and performance, as well as to maintain visibility after deployments to ensure performance.

Ixia test solutions are designed to help service providers deploy and monitor advanced networks and services, such as Voice over LTE and LTE RAN, as well as transition to 5G. The Ixia IxLoad Wireless solution provides end-to-end performance testing for networks and components with emulation of multi-play services, enabling service providers to ensure services perform as expected.

In addition, Ixia's PerfectStorm application and security test hardware is designed to allow service providers to maintain optimal data centre infrastructure performance via testing based on realistic data, video voice, storage and network traffic.

Ixia's network visibility portfolio, which includes network packet brokers (NBP) such as Vision ONE, is designed to enable real-time, end-to-end visibility and deliver insight and security across physical, virtual, SDN and NFV infrastructure.

Ixia noted that the CORD Project, hosted by The Linux Foundation and launched by Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab), the non-profit organization that is merging with Open Networking Foundation (ONF), was established with the aim of accelerating the adoption of SDN and NFV.

https://www.ixiacom.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/ixia-announces-collaboration-cord-project

• Keysight Technologies and Ixia announced on April 18th the closing of the acquisition of Ixia by Keysight through an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.6 billion, net of cash.

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See you at #ITW2017 in Chicago

International Telecoms Week (ITW) is the annual meeting for the global wholesale telecoms industry. This year's event is scheduled for 14-17 May 2017 at the Hyatt Regency & Swissotel in Chicago..

See trailer:  https://youtu.be/onr_2CGsoE0

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The New Open Source Networking Universe, managed by The Linux Foundation

This month's Open Networking Summit (ONS 2017) in Silicon Valley, which marked the sixth instalment of the annual event since its origin at Stanford University, once again brought many key thought leaders together for keynotes, tutorials, conference sessions, panel discussions and a small exhibition. ONS was the event that set off alarm bells across the industry in 2012 when Google announced that SDN had moved well beyond the research phase and into its commercial network, using a home-grown solution and no routing equipment from conventional vendors.

As far as the current state of open source networking is concerned, perhaps Margaret Chiosi, formerly at AT&T and now with Huawei, put it best, commenting (paraphrased from her keynote), 'open networking has reached the peak of exuberance and not yet crossed the chasm of despair'. In other words, great ideas are flourishing but no one is yet really making money or saving money with open networking. In addition, Guru Parulkar, executive director of ON.Lab, observed that while there are many proof-of-concepts and early deployments, a 'resource gap' of qualified professionals may delay large scale deployments. New technology is difficult and committed resources must be in place if network transformations are to really happen.

ONS 2017 was presented by The Linux Foundation, the San Francisco-based organisation with the lofty ambition of creating the 'largest shared technology investment' in history. A mural at the entrance to the exhibition depicts the New Open Source Networking Universe, and certainly a tremendous amount of intellectual capital is being collected, curated and assembled into specifications and frameworks impacting every layer of the network.

The following is the line-up of networking related projects underway at the Linux Foundation (although there are more non-networking LF projects and other open source networking projects, such as Open Stack, that are not managed by LF).

ONAP

The Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) unites two major open networking and orchestration projects, AT&T's open source ECOMP and the Open Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O). This newly launched LF project is one of the largest open source networking initiatives, with members including Amdocs, AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom, Cisco, Ericsson, GigaSpaces, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Metaswitch, Nokia, Orange, Tech Mahindra, Reliance Jio, VMware, ZTE and other leading network operators, OEMs and platform providers.

OPNFV

A carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new NFV products and services. OPNFV is mainly focused on building NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM) by integrating components from upstream projects such as OpenDaylight, OpenStack, Ceph Storage, KVM, Open vSwitch and Linux. At ONS 2017, OPNFV made its 4th major release, codenamed Danube, adding foundational support for MANO. The next release, codenamed Euphrates and targeted for completion by October, is expected to include more containerisation support.

Open Daylight

One of the largest projects, this promotes and advances the global development, distribution, and adoption of the OpenDaylight (ODL), the largest open source SDN controller. Many industry vendors participate in ODL.

ONOS

A SDN operating system for service providers that has scalability, high availability, high performance and abstractions to make it easy to create applications and services. At ONS 2017 the ONOS community made its next platform release, adding support for IPv6 routing, vLAN tagged external interfaces and AAA endpoint authentication, a better GUI interface, VPLS support and various southbound enhancements. Notable members of the ONOS community include AT&T, Comcast, China Unicom, Google, NTT Communications, SK Telecom and Verizon.

CORD

Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) combines NFV, SDN and the elasticity of commodity clouds to bring data centre economics and cloud agility to the telco central office (CO). CORD lets the operator manage central offices using declarative modelling languages for agile, real-time configuration of new customer services. Three versions are underway - Mobile CORD, Residential CORD, Enterprise CORD – and each has multiple proof-of-concept demos.

DPDK

The Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) consists of libraries to accelerate packet processing workloads running on a wide variety of CPU architectures. DPDK was created in 2010 by Intel and made available under a permissive open source license. Today, more than 20 key open source projects build on DPDK libraries, including MoonGen, mTCP, Ostinato, Lagopus, Fast Data (FD.io), Open vSwitch, OPNFV, and OpenStack. This community has just moved to the Linux Foundation. Gold members of the project are ARM, AT&T, Cavium, Intel, Mellanox, NXP, Red Hat, and ZTE; Silver members include 6WIND, Atomic Rules, Huawei, Spirent, and Wind River. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), University of Limerick, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Tsinghua University are Associate members.

FRRouting (FRR)

Free range routing (FRR) is a project endeavouring to make the best open source routing stack. FRR, which originated in the Quagga project, includes protocol daemons for BGP, IS-IS, LDP, OSPF, PIM and RIP. At ONS, it was announced that this project will now be managed by the Linux Foundation.

Open Switch (OVS)

An open-source implementation of a distributed virtual multi-layer switch, the main purpose of Open vSwitch is to provide a switching stack for hardware virtualisation in a network.

PNDA

Platform for Network Data Analytics (PNDA) aims to eliminate complexity by integrating, scaling and managing a set of open data processing technologies and by providing an end-to- end platform for deploying analytics applications and services. The big idea is that open source big data analytics can play in accelerating the transition to more agile, assured and orchestrated services. At ONS 2017, the MEF demonstrated a reference implementation of LSO (Lifecycle Services Orchestration) analytics using PNDA.

AllJoyn

AllJoyn is developing an open source framework for IoT.

Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry aims to make it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation

This group focuses on the development of open source technologies, reference architectures and common formats for cloud-native applications or services.

The Open Container Initiative

Building a vendor-neutral, portable and open specification and runtime for container-based solutions, founding members of this initiative include nine new companies committed to the OCI, with members including: Amazon Web Services, Apcera, Apprenda, AT&T, ClusterHQ, Cisco, CoreOS, Datera, Dell, Docker, EMC, Fujitsu Limited, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Infoblox, Intel, Joyent, Kismatic, Kyup, Mesosphere, Microsoft, Midokura, Nutanix, Odin, Oracle, Pivotal, Polyverse, Portworx, Rancher Labs, Red Hat, Resin.io, Scalock, Sysdig, SUSE, Twistlock, Twitter, Univa, Verizon Labs, VMware and Weaveworks.

The Xen Project

This is the leading open source virtualisation platform that powers some of the largest clouds in production today. Amazon Web Services, Aliyun, Rackspace Public Cloud, Verizon Cloud, and many hosting services use Xen Project software.

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IBM Joins AIM Photonics Consortium

IBM and The American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics), announced a patent and intellectual property licensing agreement and confirmed IBM has joined the AIM Photonics consortium, which seeks to advance integrated photonic circuit manufacturing and technology development.

Under the intellectual property licensing agreement , IBM will help AIM Photonics establish standard processes in the development of silicon photonics assemblies, such as couplings for communication signals and light sources. Industry and academic AIM Photonics members will access these technologies through a process design kit (PDK) and prototype development at the Rochester Test Assembly and Packaging (TAP) facility and the 300mm chip facility at SUNY Poly's Albany campus.

"Adding IBM as a member of AIM Photonics not only significantly strengthens this outstanding institute, but highlights the momentum the Finger Lakes region is experiencing in the high tech sector," said John Maggiore, New York State photonics board of officers chairman. "This announcement further validates the importance of this institute and the goals it has set out to achieve."

http://www.ibm.com

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AT&T Fiber Adds 8 new Metros

AT&T has announced that as part of its program to deploy fibre across its service footprint in 21 states it plans to extend its fibre network to parts of eight new metro areas, bringing the total markets where the service is available to 75 major metro areas.

The metro areas where AT&T is planning to roll-out its 100% fibre network are as follows: Dayton (Ohio); Macon (Georgia); Madison (Wisconsin); Monterey-Salinas (California); Savannah (Georgia); South Bend (Indiana); Springfield (Missouri); and western Michigan.

AT&T also announced the launch of fibre-based service delivering up to 1 Gbit/s bandwidth in the East Bay area of California, including in parts of the cities of Fremont, Newark, Oakland and the surrounding areas. The company also expects to offer fibre-based Internet access in parts of Hayward, San Leandro and Union City in California shortly.

AT&T noted that the Oakland metro is one of 52 metro markets nationwide where its fibre Internet service is currently available.

The company stated that it is now offering a 1 gigabit connection over its all-fibre network to more than 4.6 million locations nationwide, and during 2017 plans to add 2 million locations as it progresses towards the target of reaching a total of at least 12.5 million locations with fibre by mid-2019.

http://about.att.com/story/att_fiber_coming_to_8_new_metros.html

• In mid-February, AT&T Fiber announced it would shortly be launching its gigabit Internet service in the metro areas of Columbia (South Carolina), Jackson (Mississippi). Knoxville (Tennessee), Milwaukee (Wisconsin) and Shreveport, (Louisiana). It stated the expansion would bring the total markets where gigabit Internet service was available to 51.
  
  At that time, AT&T Fiber also announced the launch of fibre-based gigabit connectivity for customer locations in parts of the Milwaukee area and its expansion in the Louisville area. In Milwaukee AT&T announced the launch of service in parts of Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, Waukesha and surrounding communities; in the Louisville area, it introduced service in parts of Jeffersonville and New Albany in Indiana.

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Huawei and GE Partner on Industrial Cloud-based Predictive Maintenance

Huawei and GE Digital announced an Industrial Cloud-based Predictive Maintenance Solution that integrates Huawei's Edge Computing IoT (EC-IoT) with GE's Industrial Internet cloud platform Predix to enable end-to-end connectivity between industrial assets and cloud applications.

The joint solution could be used for real-time machine health monitoring, data analysis and perception, and smart maintenance decision-making. In the digital industrial era, the solution helps manufacturers reduce maintenance costs and prevent unplanned asset downtime, as well as drive innovation in products and services.

"The digital industry era not only brings development opportunities for traditional industries, but also creates challenges with interconnectivity between numerous devices, Big Data computing, and intelligent applications. Huawei collaborates with partners to explore the industrial Internet field and address these challenges based on our experience in digital transformation and leading ICT technology, stated Diana Yuan, President of Marketing and Solution Sales Department of Huawei Enterprise Business Group.

Harel Kodesh, CTO of GE Digital, said: "The growth of the Industrial Internet depends on the cultivation of an ecosystem and a commitment to jointly build solutions to accelerate digital transformation for industry. This new solution brings together the strengths of two great companies – Huawei and GE – and is already driving positive outcomes for innovation-driven customers like Schindler. These partnerships will help industrial companies take advantage of the Industrial Internet and drive unprecedented gains in productivity."

http://e.huawei.com/topic/hannovemesse2017-en/index.html.

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OpenStack User Survey Finds Increasing Deployments

The OpenStack Foundation announced that its user survey for 2016 showed that it achieved 44% more deployments and gained input from 22% more organisations than a year ago, while also revealing increased scale of deployments and a more diverse user base as users seek to avoid vendor lock-in.

OpenStack notes that the ninth user survey indicates that the open infrastructure platform for private and public clouds and telecom networks has growing appeal for organisations of all sizes. Specifically, the survey shows that 32% of users have 10,000 employees or more and 25% of organisations have fewer than 100 employees, with around 61% of users and 74% of deployments physically located outside of the U.S.

In addition, OpenStack notes that the typical (median) OpenStack user is running 61% to 80% of infrastructure on OpenStack, while for larger clouds with 1,000 cores or more, the median user is running 81% to 100% of the overall infrastructure on OpenStack.

Further key findings revealed by the OpenStack user survey include:

1.         The typical size of an OpenStack cloud increased, with 37% of clouds having 1,000 or more cores, compared to 29% in 2015, and 3% of clouds with more than 100,000 cores; the number of users operating Nova cells increased by 218%.

2.         Swift object provisioning also showed increased scale, with 16% of deployments provisioning more than 1 petabyte of object storage (4% last year), while 33% reported storing 100,000 or more objects (13% last year).

3.         The business drivers for OpenStack adoption highlight its competitive advantages, including accelerated innovation and avoiding vendor-lock in; respondents stated that these factors are more important than reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency, which ranked No. 1 and 2 in past surveys.

4.         Containers remain the leading technology of interest to users, with 65% of those running OpenStack services inside containers using Docker runtime, while 47% of those using containers to orchestrate apps on OpenStack employing Kubernetes.

5.         The proportion of OpenStack deployments in production remains stable, with around two-thirds of clouds in production, while number of clouds in proof-of-concept and test stages indicating healthy growth for the future.

6.         A typical deployment runs nine projects, with 16% running 12 or more projects; all of OpenStack's core services are in use by 89–98% of clouds, significantly higher than last year for core projects in production.

https://www.openstack.org/news/view/311https://www.openstack.org/assets/survey/April2017SurveyReport.pdf

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