Seacom to acquire South Africa's FibreCo

SEACOM, which operates subsea cable systems encircling the African continent, agreed to acquire FibreCo Telecommunications, which owns and operates a national open access dark fibre network in South Africa.

FibreCo connects over 60 points of presence across South Africa, including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.  FibreCo’s network also connects the SEACOM subsea cable system (which lands in Mtunzini on the east coast of South Africa) to the WACS cable (which lands at Yzerfontein, on the west coast of South Africa), enabling fully redundant high-speed ring protection for diversity around the African continent.

SEACOM said the FibreCo acquisition significantly strengthens its operations in South Africa by creating a platform for the expansion of its business services.

The acquisition is subject to approval by the South African Competition Commission.

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MARS subsea cable brings terabit capacity to Rodrigues Island

The MARS subsea cable has landed on Rodrigues Island, a 108-square-kilometre outer island with a population of 41,000 that forms part of the nation of Mauritius.

MARS, which is the first submarine cable system to connect the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, was deployed by Huawei Marine on behalf of PCCW Global. The 730km cable uses Huawei's advanced 100G WDM transmission technology for system design capacity of 16 Tbps.

Frederick Chui, Senior Vice President, Global Data Sales and Presales of PCCW Global, emphasizes: "Despite being traditionally underserved, Africa has the fastest-growing youth population in the world and a constantly increasing appetite for connectivity across both the continent and its neighboring islands. The linking of Rodrigues to the main island of Mauritius through the MARS project will result in substantial economic benefit and demonstrates PCCW Global’ s long-standing commitment to building infrastructure in Africa to support and grow the continent's emerging digital economy.”

http://www.huaweimarine.com

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Equinix plans new data center at its London Slough campus

Equinix will build a new International Business Exchange (IBX) data center at its London Slough campus.

The LD7 data center will cost approximately $120M (£90M) and scheduled to open Q2 2019. The facility will be built to LEED gold certified standards. This will bring the company's UK portfolio to 12 IBXs.

Equinix said it remains confident in the future of London as Europe's major financial hub and one of the world's greatest commercial cities, regardless of the outcome of the ongoing negotiations around the UK's departure from the European Union. The new $120M (£90M GBP) data center forms part of a total $387M (£295M GBP) investment in the UK's digital economy from Equinix throughout 2018/19.

Russell Poole, managing director UK, Equinix, states: "London is one of the most important connection points in the world and we expect this growth to continue as the city continues to play a crucial role in powering the global digital economy. LD7 will be one of the most technologically advanced colocation data centers in the world and will be a major addition to our thriving London Slough campus. This latest data center will also act as a sustainability benchmark for future data centers – something we are very passionate about."

http://www.equinix.com/

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Cisco: 400G Data Center Outlook - 1 min video

Ish Limkakeng gives a one minute perspective on the development of 400G in the data center.

https://youtu.be/wYcGJ9ReSno

Cisco launches 400G data center switches

Wednesday, October 31, 2018  400G, Cisco  

Cisco launched its portfolio of Nexus 400 Gigabit Ethernet (400G) switches for large cloud data centers. Field testing is expected in December and general availabity is targeted for the first half of 2019. Beyond bringing just a new level of speed to the network, Cisco said its Nexus 400G platforms deliver: Superfast policy, segmentation and whitelisting; Real-time visibility into packets, flows and events – beyond just data sampling and system...

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OSA announces $20K prize for early career photonic researchers

The Optical Society Foundation (OSAF) and Coherent, Inc. announced the establishment of an annual Bernard J. Couillaud Prize, a merit-based award to support early-career OSA members who are engaged in ultrafast photonics research and application development.

Each Bernard J. Couillaud award will total $20,500 with up to an additional $5,000 in travel expenses to attend an OSA scientific conference. Deadline for application for the first prize is 08 March, 2019. The inaugural winner will be announced at CLEO: Laser Science to Photonic Applications, San Jose, CA USA, 5-10 May 2019.

The prize honors the extraordinary contributions of laser physics pioneer, Bernard J. Couillaud, who was a former President and CEO of Coherent (1996-2002) and later served as Chairman of the company’s Board of Directors (2002-07). He had joined the firm in 1983 after a three-year visiting fellowship at Stanford University, where he contributed to the development of the Hänsch-Couillaud technique of laser frequency stabilization. At Coherent, he was instrumental in the development of numerous dye, DPSS and Ti:S lasers. A native of France, Couillaud received his Ph.D in laser physics in 1978 at the University of Bordeaux where he helped pioneer continuous wave and pulsed dye lasers. He passed away in 2017.

“To support early-career laser scientists and engineers who are pursuing innovative and impactful work is fundamental to the mission of The Optical Society Foundation,” said Executive Director, Chad Stark. “We all look forward to the naming of the first recipient of this distinguished prize.”

Coherent CEO John Ambroseo said Couillaud “had the rare ability to combine a passion for physics, lasers and photonics with business. He consistently nurtured and encouraged younger people to innovate and develop their own ideas. We believe this prize will honor that legacy."

https://www.osa.org/en-us/foundation/programs/bernard_j_couillaud_prize

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Pure Storage intros Cloud Data Services on AWS

Pure Storage announced a new set of Cloud Data Services running its software on AWS:

Cloud Block Store for AWS - designed to enable mission-critical applications to run seamlessly in the cloud, Cloud Block Store enables hybrid mobility and adds new storage services to webscale applications.

CloudSnap for AWS - cloud-based data protection, built right into Pure FlashArray. CloudSnap allows FlashArray snapshots to be easily sent to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which enables cost-effective protection in the cloud along with flexible recovery both on-premises or in the cloud.

StorReduce - cloud-native deduplication technology, designed to enable fast, simple, cost-effective cloud backup to AWS S3 storage, in conjunction with on-premises flash for fast recovery. 

"Today, there exists a cloud divide - the cloud is not purpose-built for enterprise applications, and enterprise infrastructure isn't as user-friendly as the cloud," said Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure Storage. "Customers should be able to make infrastructure choices based on what's best for their environment, not constrained by what the technology can do or where it lives. Today's announcement extends Pure's data centric architecture to the cloud, allowing our customers to build hybrid applications that provide true mobility and freedom."

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Pure Storage posts Q3 revenue of $372.8 million, up 34% yoy

Pure Storage reported revenue of $372.8 million for its third quarter ended October 31, 2018, up 34% yoy, and exceeding the high end of the company's guidance.

Gross margin was a record 66.8% (GAAP) and 68.1% (non-GAAP).

"Pure delivered another excellent quarter, and today we're announcing the extension of Pure's data centric architecture to the cloud," said Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure Storage. "With the launch of our new Pure Storage Cloud Data Services, we're bringing our storage software directly to the public cloud in partnership with AWS."

"Q3 was a strong quarter for Pure with revenue and margins exceeding our expectations," said Tim Riitters, CFO, Pure Storage. "As we finish the fiscal year we are excited about the opportunities ahead, and have raised FY19 guidance to reflect the momentum we are seeing in our business."

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Metaswitch files antitrust suit against Ribbon Communications

Metaswitch Networks has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ribbon Communications alleging that the company is illegally using its dominant market position to hurt competition.

Metaswitch notes that it is Ribbon’s only significant remaining competitor in the U.S. and Canada that competes to transform and modernize rural land-line telephone networks for the use of VoIP. The lawsuit alleges that Ribbon has aggressively consolidated the industry through serial acquisitions and is illegally using exclusionary and deceptive tactics to eliminate its last major competitor in the market.

Specifically, the complaint alleges that after Metaswitch refused to be acquired by Ribbon in 2013, Ribbon launched an anticompetitive campaign to “kill Metaswitch”, including by asserting certain intellectual property rights in bad faith and in contravention of royalty-free licensing obligations, systematically maligning Metaswitch to customers with false and misleading information, and coercing customers to choose Ribbon instead of Metaswitch with anticompetitive pricing practices, among other things.

Martin Lund, Metaswitch Chief Executive Officer stated, “This litigation seeks to ensure Americans’ access to desperately needed land-line network upgrades, particularly in rural areas where cellular service can be less reliable. If left unchecked, Ribbon will be free to raise prices for more than 700 local network operators who will have no choice but to either slow down much-needed upgrades or to pass on the impact of increased costs to consumers.”

Lund added, “Blatant efforts to dominate a captive market and price gouge are exactly what the antitrust laws are designed to stop. We are pursuing this case not just to protect Metaswitch, but because we believe Ribbon’s conduct is hindering customers’ ability to make fixed-line upgrades that could enhance the day-to-day lives of millions.”

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Silver Peak bolsters its SD-WAN partner program

Silver Peak announced enhancements to its global Partner Edge program aimed at driving business opportunity and growth in a hyper-growth market that industry analyst firm IDC projects will exceed $8B USD in 2021.

New programs include:

New Partner Tier Criteria: proving all partners with a clear path to understanding what is required at the Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers, including up-front revenue and training objectives. With a more predictable model, partners can tightly align their SD-WAN investments directly to a set of partner rewards, enabling them to see the direct correlation between their investments and revenue growth, margins and profitability.

Partner Accelerators: This new program, available to Gold and Platinum partners, creates a set of Silver Peak incentives with the sole purpose of rewarding partners that focus on growth initiatives in selling the Unity EdgeConnect™ SD-WAN edge platform. Incentives will be introduced every 6 months and offered for a period of 6-to-12 months, enabling partners to plan ahead while opening new routes to expanded revenues. The program spans several reward levels and includes partner level, sales and technical team rewards. Partners realize the direct margin benefit to their company when they shift customers away from shrinking hardware margins toward higher-margin software-defined offerings.

Silver Peak: A new programmatic approach now available to Gold and Platinum partners, enables Silver Peak inside and field sales teams to pass active leads directly to partners in a highly collaborative manner. Engaging partners from the start provides a more focused and measured approach to teaming in front of customers and makes the sales process more predictable, expediting time to revenue for partners.

Silver Peak is introducing two new incentives that will be available to Gold and Platinum tier partners immediately.

New Customer Incentive: An incremental margin incentive of up to 10 percent paid to the partner at the close of a new EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform opportunity. This incentive not only includes the first order, but extends to all follow-on business from that customer for 12-months following the initial sale.

Fast Start Incentive: An additional two percent incentive will be paid against all new EdgeConnect customer sales. This incentive is accretive to the 10 percent new customer capture incentive and provides partners with the opportunity to earn up to a 12 percent margin incentive for new customer deployments.

http://www.silver-peak.com

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SK Telecom signs Keysight for 5G design

SK Telecom signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Keysight Technologies to collaborate on 5G network design development and testing technology.

The MoU covers development of 5G device performance validation technology, test cases and processes to help verify that new products perform as intended on the mobile operator’s network. The two companies will also collaborate on Massive MIMO and beamforming to achieve higher data speeds and lower latencies, which many future 5G applications will require.

"We are excited to extend our collaboration with SK Telecom to support their early deployments of 5G on mmWave frequencies,” stated Kailash Narayanan, vice president and general manager of Wireless Devices and Operators at Keysight Technologies. “Keysight’s early engagements with market leaders, contributions to the 3GPP standardization development and scalable 5G test and measurement solutions is enabling a connected mobile ecosystem to accelerate 5G deployment.”

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Dell'Oro: Mobile infrastructure market growing at fastest clip since '14

Following three consecutive years of contracting worldwide Radio Access Networks (RAN) revenues, the overall Mobile Infrastructure market improved at a high single-digit rate in the third quarter—recording the strongest growth rate since 2014, according to Dell'Oro Group.

ZTE’s RAN business gained five points share and recovered rapidly in the quarter. The vendor was able to reclaim its number four position during 3Q 2018.

“The results in the quarter support the thesis we have communicated for some time that market conditions are improving,” said Stefan Pongratz, Senior Director with Dell’Oro Group. “In addition to resurging investments in the North America region propelled by operators investing in LTE and 5G ready networks, the Asia Pacific region rebounded after multiple quarters of steep declines, reflecting improved momentum in China,” continued Pongratz.

The report also shows that while the vendor rankings for the top three vendors remained unchanged with Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia leading the market, the gap between Huawei and Ericsson narrowed sequentially. ZTE was able to reclaim its number four position after Samsung briefly surpassed ZTE during 2Q 2018.

http://www.delloro.com/

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Google plans next data center near Las Vegas

The Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development has approved a plan from Google to develop a hyperscale data center on a 64-acre site in Henderson, Nevada. The state reportedly will provide tax exemptions for the project.

The initial investment is estimated at $600 million. The ready-for-service date is expected to be in 2020.

https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/

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Fujikura releases 6,912 fiber count optical cable

Fujikura announced the world's highest fiber density cable -- a 6,912F Wrapping Tube Cable (WTC).

To achieve this density, the cable leverages 200 μm diameter fiber along with the company's Spider Web Ribbon (SWR) technology, which is a 12 core optical fiber ribbon.

In addition, Fujikura says the existing mass fusion splicer, jacket stripper and cleaver can be used for splicing with 200 μm SWR and 250 μm SWR.

http://www.fujikura.co.jp/eng/newsrelease/products/2058047_11777.html

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Wave2Wave expands its line of robotic patch panels

Wave2Wave Solution introduced two new products in its ROME family of robotic fiber switches, the ROME 64Q and 128Q - providing direct MPO patch panel interfaces and incorporating eight fiber any to any connections. Robotic fiber switches at the optical layer automate the process of configuring and reconfiguring physical optical connections.

The ROME 64Q has 64 MPO ports with each port connecting 8 fibers (a total of 512 fiber connections) and the ROME 128Q has 128 MPO ports (a total of 1024 fiber connections) in an Any-to-Any configuration.

The company says multiple-Fiber Push-On/Pull-off (MPO) connectivity is playing an important role in data centers as a means to deploy higher speed interfaces cost effectively. Because each MPO port simultaneously connects 8 fibers this approach delivers an effective way to easily connect QSFP+ transceivers that are delivering these high speed connections.

“We are seeing increased use of high-density cabling in data centers,” said David Wang, President and CEO, Wave2Wave Solution. “Space in data centers is already tight and MPO cabling provides a cost-effective way to deliver higher speed connectivity. The ROME 64Q and 128Q have been designed to support this need and bring the benefits of physical layer automation to MPO configured data center networks.”

 http://www.wave-2-wave.com/

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Ayar raises $24m for TeraPHY chips, appoints CEO

Ayar Labs, a start-up based in Emeryville, California, raised $24 million in Series A funding for its work in silicon photonics for high-speed connectivity.

Ayar Labs said it is pursuing a unique silicon photonics approach that uses fiber optic technology to move data between chips, rather than traditional copper pins and wires. It delivers improvements of 10x more bandwidth and 10x lower power compared to electrical interconnections.

The funding round was led by Playground Global and included Founders Fund, GlobalFoundries, and Intel Capital.

“The Series A investment is a big step towards enabling optical I/O for next-generation computing architectures, and prepares the company to reach scale production” says Ayar Labs co-founder and President Mark Wade.

“As we enter this next phase in our company’s growth, we are thrilled to be adding such strong investors with deep roots and expertise in the semiconductor and microelectronics industry,” says Ayar Labs co-founder Alex Wright-Gladstein.

The company also announced that Charlie Wuischpard, former vice president and general manager at Intel, has joined Ayar Labs as chief executive officer (CEO) and a member of the board of directors (Board). Wuischpard succeeds co-founder Alexandra Wright-Gladstein, who will assist with the transition and remain a senior member of the management team.

https://ayarlabs.com

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LeoSat promises fast optical connections via low-earth-orbit

LeoSat Enterprises has been granted authority by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to provide NGSO (non-geostationary satellite orbit) services in the United States.

The start-up plans to deploy a unique new data network comprised of a constellation of up to 108 low-earth-orbit communications satellites to serve sectors such as enterprise-to-enterprise communications, telecommunications, oil & gas operations and maritime services with global premise-to-premise connectivity.

The LeoSat constellation will be distinguished by optical inter-satellite links, on-board processing, and polar orbits at an altitude five times closer to the Earth than medium earth orbit satellites and 25 times closer than geostationary orbit (“GSO”) satellites. LeoSat says its will be able to provide enterprise-grade, highly secure data transmissions with up to 1.2 Gbps of full-duplex connectivity per link (and 5.2 Gbps where needed), along with low latency of less than 20 ms. The high-throughput satellites will form a mesh network interconnected through inter-satellite laser links. The company projects that its optical backbone will be is approximately 1.5 times faster than terrestrial fiber networks.

LeoSat’s CEO, Mark Rigolle said, “Getting approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission – among the world’s most sophisticated radio frequency regulators – is an important milestone for LeoSat and recognizes that we have a unique solution for high-speed and ultra-secure enterprise connectivity. I am delighted by this significant step forward for LeoSat as we continue to make excellent progress on our journey to deliver the world’s first business backbone in space, opening-up new markets for data networking, telecoms, enterprise and government communications across the globe”.

LeoSat attracts a strategic investor in its upcoming LEO constallation

Tuesday, July 10, 2018  LEO, Satellites  

Hispasat, the Spanish national satellite operator, has agreed to invest in LeoSat, which is preparing to launch a constellation of low-earth-orbit communications satellites. Financial terms were not disclosed.

With this agreement, Hispasat joins Asia’s largest satellite operator, SKY Perfect JSAT, as investors in LeoSat.

Washington, D.C.-based LeoSat is working with Thales Alenia Space to develop a constellation of up to 108 low-earth-orbit, Ka-band communications satellites. Launch of the constellation is expected in 2019. LeoSat is targetting high-speed, low-latency and highly secure communications and bandwidth for telecom backhaul, energy, maritime, government and international business markets.

http://leosat.com/

• LeoSat Enterprises was established in 2013 by Cliff Anders (Chairman) and Phil Marlar (Chief Operating Officer), two former Schlumberger executives.

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BlackBerry to acquire Cylance for AI-power cybersecurity

BlackBerry Limited agreed to acquire Cylance, a privately-held develop of cybersecurity solution, for US $1.4 billion in cash, plus the assumption of unvested employee incentive awards.

“Cylance’s leadership in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity will immediately complement our entire portfolio, UEM and QNX in particular. We are very excited to onboard their team and leverage our newly combined expertise,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. “We believe adding Cylance’s capabilities to our trusted advantages in privacy, secure mobility, and embedded systems will make BlackBerry Spark indispensable to realizing the Enterprise of Things.”

Cylance's cybersecurity software leverages artificial intelligence, algorithmic science, and machine learning. The approach has proven highly effective at predicting and preventing known and unknown threats to fixed endpoints. The company generates recurring revenue from over 3,500 active enterprise customers, including more than 20% of the Fortune 500.

“Our highly skilled cybersecurity workforce and market leadership in next-generation endpoint solutions will be a perfect fit within BlackBerry where our customers, teams and technologies will gain immediate benefits from BlackBerry’s global reach,” said Stuart McClure, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Cylance. “We are eager to leverage BlackBerry’s mobility and security strengths to adapt our advanced AI technology to deliver a single platform.”

BlackBerry is developing Spark as a next-generation secure chip-to-edge communications platform for the EoT. The company says its platform is designed for ultra-security and industry-specific safety-certifications, such as ISO 26262 in automobiles. BlackBerry Spark will leverage the company’s deep portfolio of technology that includes FIPS-validated, app-level, AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data is always protected.

https://www.blackberry.com

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Video -- Cylance CEO on AI and Cybersecurity

Stuart McClure, CEO and founder of Cylance, discusses the intersection of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Cylance began selling its AI-based solution in 2014. Filmed at Net Events' Global Press & Analyst Summit in September 2016.

https://youtu.be/27yUlW0lskg

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Xtera completes final splice on DISA’s Guantanamo – Puerto Rico cable

Xtera announced that the final splice on the Guantanamo – Puerto Rico submarine cable system has been completed. 

The new, 1,400 km cable is being deployed for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).  The marine installation for the project was successfully performed by International Telecom’s cable ship the IT Intrepid.

The new system will be fully commissioned as scheduled in December and placed into service in early 2019 after being fully integrated into the global DISN network.  The cable uses Xtera’s second generation low noise repeater.

Keith Henderson, Chief Executive Officer of Xtera comments, “The success of this project is a credit to the professionalism of our expert team and their ability to work seamlessly with our industry-leading partners.  Excellent collaboration between Xtera and the DISA project team has enabled the on-schedule delivery of the system despite regional weather challenges. Once again Xtera has demonstrated that it is the Supplier of choice for those seeking a high-quality innovative optical solution.”

This is the second submarine cable system that Xtera has deployed for DISA, the first has been in the water and fully operational since 2015.

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Verizon acquires PrecisionAccess from Vidder

Verizon has acquired the PrecisionAccess solution and other Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) related assets from privately held Vidder.
Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vidder’s advanced technology is already integrated into Verizon’s SDP service, which helps organizations protect application infrastructure against cyber threats by blocking connectivity from unknown devices and making them invisible to anyone without approved access.

Verizon’s SDP provides pre-authenticated, context-aware, secure access to enterprise applications, helping to reduce the security risks associated with the multiple endpoints of an increasingly digital, mobile and virtual business world.

“Vidder’s technology is best-in-class in the trusted access space,” said Victoria Lonker, Verizon’s vice president of network and security product management. “This acquisition enables us to further build out our software-defined suite of services, creating a unified networking and security solution which we believe is best-in-class when it comes to protecting organizations against cyberattacks.”

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