QTS opens Mid-Atlantic Network Access Point (NAP) in Virginia

QTS Realty Trust has established a Mid-Atlantic Network Access Point (NAP) within its 1.3 million square foot mega data center in Richmond, Virginia. The facility is the closest Tier 3 designed data center to the MAREA and BRUSA next-generation subsea cables, significantly closer to the subsea cables than other data centers and network exchange points in Ashburn, Va.

QTS' Richmond data center features diverse connectivity for cloud and hybrid colocation including carrier-neutral cloud interconnection (Megaport and PacketFabric), in-building access to 17 on-net carriers, multiple fiber routes, third party neutral internet peering exchanges and direct access to leading cloud ecosystems. QTS' existing facility in Richmond features more than 500,000 square feet of raised floor capacity with a future path to more than one million square feet of raised floor capacity across a 220-acre campus.

QTS said its Mid-Atlantic Network Access Point will offer the highest on-net capacity and lowest latency connectivity for network traffic between the US and Southern Europe and the highest capacity to Latin and South America.

"With the establishment of the Mid-Atlantic NAP of Virginia featuring Telxius, QTS has effectively removed the requirement for customers with international networking needs to colocate in or connect through Ashburn unless they absolutely have to," said Sean Baillie, EVP Marketing, QTS. "By eliminating unnecessary network components, QTS' Richmond data center is now the fastest, lowest latency network distribution center in Virginia to and from three continents."

 MAREA is a Telxius joint project with Facebook and Microsoft. It has reached 200 terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity, connecting Virginia and Sopelana (Spain).

BRUSA is a private cable built by Telxius and offers one of the lowest latency communication links between the U.S., Puerto Rico and Brazil.

"Telxius is highly focused on delivering the lowest latency connectivity solutions to enterprises globally," said Enrique Valdés, VP of Sales, North Region, Telxius. "We are pleased to join the Mid-Atlantic NAP of Virginia as the ideal exchange for any institution looking to colocate in North America and serve international customers with the lowest latency across the BRUSA and MAREA cables."

MAREA redefines the transAtlantic subsea bandwidth equation

Sunday, September 24, 2017  Subsea, TE Subcom  

Construction of the highest-capacity subsea cable to cross the Atlantic is now complete.

The 6,600 km MAREA subsea cable, which was jointly funded by Microsoft and Facebook, links Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain. The cable will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company. The cable features eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps.

The cable takes a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.

• TE SubCom served as the system supply partner for MAREA.
• BRUSA is Telxius’ new submarine cable linking Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza (Brazil) with San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Virginia Beach (USA). The 11,000-km cable consists of 8 fibre pairs, with 135 x 100 Gbps per fibre pair, with 4 direct fiber pairs connecting US-Brazil, and 4 fibre pairs entering Puerto Rico and Fortaleza. Alcatel Submarine Networks is the lead supplier.

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Iridium activates its global L-band broadband service

Iridium Communications inaugurated its "Certus" global broadband service, offering on-the-move internet and high-quality voice access for assets, autonomous vehicles, trains, aircraft and ships at sea. The initial service is targeted at maritime and terrestrial applications, with Iridium Certus aviation solutions expected later in 2019, once certified.

Iridium Certus leverages the company's $3 billion Iridium NEXT satellite replacement program. Iridium is debuting the service, which will feature a variety of speed classes, with the Iridium Certus 350 (352/352 Kbps) offering, which supports capabilities like internet and high-quality voice services to compact terminals built specifically for maritime, aviation and terrestrial/vehicle applications.  Terminals will be upgradable to the next speed class, Iridium Certus 700 (352/704 Kbps), with a firmware update once available. Initial activations of the service occurred in December of 2018 with excellent system performance.

Terminals are being built by Cobham (maritime), Thales (maritime, aviation and land-mobile), Collins Aerospace (aviation), L3 (aviation), Gogo (aviation) and Satcom Direct (aviation).

So far, 35 service providers have been authorized by Iridium to provide the service around the world. The company estimates Iridium Certus will reach an approximately $100 million yearly run rate by year end 2021.

"The debut of Iridium Certus is the start of a new chapter in the Iridium story, one that is set to catapult us and our partners forward.  At its core, Iridium Certus is an innovation engine for the future. It will enable us to provide broadband connections to teams, vehicles and the important IoT "things" that are in the 80-plus percent of the world that lacks cellular coverage," said Iridium CEO Matt Desch. "Adoption of this new service by our partners has already begun, and it has been eagerly anticipated by every target industry. The launch of this service is a huge achievement, and it is already disrupting the status-quo through our smaller, faster, lighter and more cost-effective terminals and service."

Iridium completes its LEO constellation, 75 satellites in orbit

Sunday, January 13, 2019  Iridium  

The final 10 Iridium NEXT satellites were successfully launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

This was the eighth and final launch for Iridium's historic launch campaign with SpaceX, seeing a total of 75 new satellites deployed over less than two years.

The Iridium network is comprised of six polar orbiting planes, each containing 11 operational crosslinked satellites, for a total of 66 satellites in the active constellation. Once all the satellites from the Iridium-7 mission are operational, plane 5 will be the fourth orbital plane to be comprised entirely of Iridium NEXT satellites.  In total, 81 Iridium NEXT satellites are being built, with 66 in the operational constellation, nine serving as on-orbit spares and six serving as ground spares.

Iridium NEXT is the company's $3 billion, next-generation, mobile, global satellite network scheduled for completion in 2018.  Iridium NEXT is replacing the company's first generation global constellation in one of the largest technology upgrades ever completed in space.  It represents the evolution of critical communications infrastructure that governments and organizations worldwide rely on to drive business, enable connectivity, empower disaster relief efforts and more.

Iridium has invested approximately $3 billion to replace its original satellite system with a new, state-of-the-art network, ushering in an era of financial and technological transformation for the company. At the core of this transformation is the dramatic change in cash flows as construction capital expenses end and a decade or longer "capex holiday" allows significant cash generation from existing and new services. These include Iridium CertusSM, which will provide the world's fastest and only truly global specialty L-band broadband connectivity, enabling highly mobile internet access using smaller and more cost-effective terminals, and the AireonSM aircraft surveillance system, extending real-time visibility of aircraft for air traffic controllers and airlines to the entire planet for the first time.

To date, new satellites make up 60 of the 66 satellites in operation, with the final six scheduled for activation in the coming weeks. Iridium NEXT satellites were designed by Thales Alenia Space, which serves as system prime contractor, and are being integrated by Thales' subcontractor, Northrop Grumman.  The production process features an 18-station, state-of-the-art assembly line system for all 81 Iridium NEXT satellites being built.

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NTT Com interconnects its data centers with major Internet Exchanges

NTT Communications will expand the interconnection of its Nexcenter data centers in Tokyo and Osaka to three major internet exchanges (IXs) in Japan: BBIX's IX Connect Service, Japan Internet Exchange's JPIX service, and Internet Multifeed Co.’s JPNAP service. The data centers will include the Tokyo No. 1 to No. 10 data centers, Yokohama No. 1 Data Center and Saitama No. 1 Data Center in the Tokyo area and the Osaka 1 to 3 data centers, Osaka 5 Data Center and the coming Osaka 6 and 7 data centers in the Osaka area. The IXs will offer an expanding range of services that NTT Com clients will access by connecting to specific data centers via the Nexcenter Connect™ service, which is offered for a flat, low-cost fee.

NTT Com said the enhanced connectivity will help clients to pursue digital transformation.

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Photonic memory research at Eindhoven University of Technology

Researchers of the Institute of Photonic Integration of the Eindhoven University of Technology are developing a hybrid memory that combines photonic properties and magnetic hard drives.

The idea is to use femtosecond light pulses to write data directly in a magnetic memory.

"The switching of the magnetization direction using the single-pulse all-optical switching is in the order of picoseconds, which is about a 100 to 1000 times faster than what is possible with today's technology. Moreover, as the optical information is stored in magnetic bits without the need of energy-costly electronics, it holds enormous potential for future use in photonic integrated circuits," states Mark Lalieu, Ph.D. candidate at the Applied Physics Department of TU/e.

https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/10-01-2019-next-generation-photonic-memory-devices-are-light-written-ultrafast-and-energy-efficient/

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Amazon announces centralized AWS Backup

Amazon Web Services introduced a fully-managed, centralized backup service for data across AWS services and on-premise.

AWS Backup gives customers a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources they backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in one place. Initially, AWS Backup is integrated with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and AWS Storage Gateway.

“As the cloud has become the default choice for customers of all sizes, it has attracted two distinct types of builders. Some are tinkerers who want to tweak and fine tune the full range of AWS services into a desired architecture, and other builders are drawn to the same breadth and depth of functionality in AWS, but are willing to trade some of the service granularity to start at a higher abstraction layer, so they can build even faster,” said Bill Vass, VP of Storage, Automation, and Management Services, AWS. “We designed AWS Backup for this second type of builder who has told us that they want one place to go for backups versus having to do it across multiple, individual services. Today, we are proud to make AWS Backup available with support for block storage volumes, databases, and file systems, and over time, we plan to support additional AWS services."

http://aws.amazon.com/backup

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Equinix to open data center in Seoul

Equinix opened a new International Business Exchange data center in Seoul.

The carrier-neutral data center, called SL1, will provide more than 18,000 square feet (approximately 1,680 square meters) of colocation space, offering an initial capacity of 550 cabinets in the first phase, and is scheduled to open in Q3 2019. The facility is located at Sangam, known as Digital Media City, near Seoul's central business district.

Equinix notes that it has invested more than $800 million over the past three years to organically build and expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Equinix now has 200 IBX data centers across 52 markets and 24 countries, providing data center and interconnection services for more than 9,800 businesses. Equinix currently has 40 IBX data centers across 12 markets in Asia-Pacific.

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Molex targets 56 Gbps NRZ and 112 Gbps PAM-4 Signaling

Molex is highlighting its 56 Gbps NRZ and 112 Gbps PAM-4 solutions. The company has a portfolio of five different solutions that are capable of reaching speeds up to 112 Gbps. These product lines include:

• Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) System
• BiPass I/O and Backplane Cable Assemblies
• NearStack High-Speed Connector System and Cable Jumper Assemblies
• Mirror Mezz High-Speed System
• Impulse Backplane Connector and Cabling System

Molex will showcase these product at the upcoming DesignCon 2019 in Santa Clara, California.

“Data centers must evolve to meet the rising demand for faster data rates. Molex delivers highly scalable technologies equipped with advanced features to achieve the speed, signal integrity, EMI containment and thermal efficiencies they need to ramp up to next-generation equipment and networking platforms,” said David Brunker, Molex technical fellow, who serves on the DesignCon 2019 Technical Program Committee.

In addition to the booth demos, Molex will lead a technical session, “Exploring 56/112 Gbps Copper Interconnect Metrics Comparing Classic Methods with COM” on January 30th at 2:00 p.m. in Ballroom C.

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Rambus acquires memory patents of Diablo Technologies

Rambus acquired the assets of Diablo Technologies, a start-up developing flash memory technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Rambus said the acquired patents augment the existing Rambus NVDIMM portfolio and complement its high-bandwidth, low-power memory technologies. Specific terms of the deal are not disclosed.

“Adding these breakthrough innovations from Diablo Technologies will continue to grow Rambus’ leadership in non-volatile and hybrid DRAM and Flash memory technologies with foundational patents,” said Kit Rodgers, SVP of Technology Partnerships and Corporate Development, Rambus. “Diablo Technology’s patented innovations were ahead of their time and nicely complement our offerings for existing and new customers.”

• Diablo Technologies developed a Memory Channel Storage (MCS) technology that provides tens of terabytes of ultra-fast NAND flash storage in a DIMM form factor, and enables it to interface with the CPU via DDR3 at near-DRAM speeds. The company says its Memory Channel Storage allows for extremely large "big data" sets to be placed entirely within the NUMA system architecture, resulting in real-time processing and analytics. MCS significantly minimizes storage latency and provides a level of predictability that cannot be attained with pre-existing flash storage technologies. With the MCS architecture, systems in big data clusters, such as Hadoop, have access to terabytes of deterministic, ultra-low latency persistent memory.

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WSJ: Huawei Targeted in U.S. Criminal Probe

More trouble for Huawei in the United States. The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. federal prosecutors are pursuing a criminal investigation of Huawei Technologies regarding a robotic phone testing technology developed by T-Mobile US. The investigation reportedly stems from a civil lawsuit in which T-Mobile was awarded $4.8 million in damages.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-prosecutors-pursuing-criminal-case-against-huawei-for-alleged-theft-of-trade-secrets-11547670341

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Juniper turns to IBM Services to manage infrastructure, IT, apps

IBM Services announced a $325 million agreement with Juniper Networks in which IBM will assist in managing Juniper's existing infrastructure, applications and IT services to help reduce costs and enhance their journey to the cloud.
As part of the seven-year agreement, IBM will use the IBM Services Platform with Watson to help manage Juniper's support systems including data centers, help desks and data and voice networks.

"A key element of our digital transformation is to manage the complexities of our global operation and to get the most out of our current investments," said Bob Worrall, Chief Information Officer, Juniper Networks. "In working with IBM Services, we will be able to collaborate with them on innovative solutions for our cloud-first business model."

"Our work with thousands of enterprises globally has led us to the firm belief that a 'one-cloud-fits-all' approach doesn't work and companies are choosing multiple cloud environments to best meet their needs," said Martin Jetter, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Technology Services. "Working with Juniper, we are integrating cloud solutions with their existing IT investments via the IBM Service Platform with Watson. This gives them the opportunity to generate more value from existing infrastructure, along with helping them manage strategic services that are critical to their business."

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Veeam Software raises $500M for Intelligent Data Mgt

Veeam Software, which offers backup solutions for "Intelligent Data Management", announced a US$500 million investment from Insight Venture Partners and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).

Veeam is one of the largest privately held software companies in the world, with approximately $1 billion in sales and more than 325,000 customers, adding 50,000 new customers every year.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Jeff Horing and Michael Triplett from Insight Venture Partners, having worked with them since 2002 when Insight invested in our first company, Aelita Software,” said Ratmir Timashev, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President (EVP), Sales and Marketing, at Veeam. “Back then, we relied on Insight to provide strategic counsel and support, and after we sold that company to Quest Software in 2004, we continued our relationship. Over the years, Insight has been a trusted advisor to Bill Largent, Andrei Baronov and me, even acquiring a minority share in Veeam back in 2013. Today, Veeam is leading the data management space, with more than 325,000 customers, 60,000 partners, 82 percent of the Fortune 500 relying on our solutions, and with industry analysts heralding us as Leaders across all sectors; with Insight and CPPIB’s, investment I know we will take this to the next level.”

https://www.veeam.com

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Telco Systems supplies 100GE metro for Kenya Education Network

Telco Systems completed an upgrade of the carrier Ethernet network of Kenya Education Network (KENET), the National Research and Education Network (NREN) of Kenya, from 10GE to 100GE.

KENET provides high-speed Internet access and data center services to member university campuses and research facilities across the country and interconnectivity with other NRENs around the world. KENET also provides shared cloud-based services, including co-location of servers, dedicated virtual servers for e-learning systems and video and web conferencing.

Three years ago, Telco Systems supplied KENET with its IP/MPLS technologies that were used to build KENET's 10GE carrier Ethernet network, which was managed and fully orchestrated by an aggregation and demarcation solution.

For this 100GE network upgrade, Telco Systems delivered its T-Metro 8100 service aggregation platform and cloud gateway. T-Metro 8100 provides carrier Ethernet 2.0, MPLS, IP (Layer 3) and SDN capabilities.

"More and more service providers around the world are upgrading their network capacities to 100GE in order to better serve their customers and grow their businesses and we are proud to be supporting KENET in this important move," said Ariel Efrati, CEO at Telco Systems. "We are experiencing strong traction in the education vertical and our T-Metro 8100 solution is well-positioned to help network operators serving this market space, especially the government E-Rate projects in the United States, to upgrade their networks and improve the performance of their services."

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AvidThink: Huawei’s CloudEngine 16800 switch based on Broadcom

Huawei's newly-announced CloudEngine 16800 data center switch is based on Broadcom’s merchant silicon, according to a published report from AvidThink's Roy Chua.

In terms of capacity, the Huawei CloudEngine 16800 data center switch boasts the industry’s highest density 48-port 400GE line card per slot, yielding an overall 768-port 400GE switching capacity.

AvidThink notes that the current top-of-line Broadcom Tomahawk 3 is capable of 32 400GbE ports for 12.8 Tbps switching capacity, less than the 48 400GbE ports on a single Huawei 16800 line card. The report also reveals that Huawei's 16800 will be available for early field trials in Q2 2019.

In addition, Huawei will incorporate its own AI silicon into the switching platform's design for fine-tuned traffic optimization.

https://avidthink.com/analysis/huawei-cloudengine-16800-ascend-ai/

• AvidThink was formed in the fall of 2018 as an independent research and analysis company focused on technology infrastructure. Prior to that, AvidThink had operated as SDxCentral Research, part of SDxCentral.com, a leading technology media publication.

Huawei's CloudEngine 16800 data center switch boasts 768-port 400GE

Thursday, January 10, 2019  Data Center, Huawei, Switching  

Huawei unveiled its CloudEngine 16800 data center switch built for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) era.

The platform has three defining characteristics making it suitable for the AI era: an embedded AI chip, the capacity for a 48-port 400GE line cards per slot,, and the capability to evolve to the autonomous driving network.

Huawei said its embedded, high-performance AI chip will apply an innovative iLossless algorithm for the auto-sensing and auto-optimization of the traffic model. It promises lower latency and higher throughput based on zero packet loss. The company estimates its optimization will increase the AI computing power from 50 percent to 100 percent compared to traditional Ethernet, while improving the data storage Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) by 30 percent. The CloudEngine 16800’s local intelligence and the centralized network analyzer FabricInsight creates a distributed AI O&M architecture capable of identifing faults -- a key goal of an autonomous driving network.

In terms of capacity, the Huawei CloudEngine 16800 data center switch boasts the industry’s highest density 48-port 400GE line card per slot, yielding an overall 768-port 400GE switching capacity. Huawei says power consumption per bit is reduced by 50% with the massive configuration. The company also claims to have overcome multiple technical challenges such as high-speed signal transmission, heat dissipation, and power supply.

http://e.huawei.com/topic/cloud-engine2019/en/index.html?ic_medium=hwdc&ic_source=ebg_banner_EEBGHQ179Q19W

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SCMP: Huawei's Ren Zhengfei refutes espionage allegations

Speaking to foreign reporters for the first time since 2015, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said the company does not facilitate spying by China's central government nor is it controlled by the Communist party, according to reporting from the South China Morning Post and others. Ren said Huawei has never received a request from Chinese authorities for improper information and that the company always acts in the best interests of its customers. He categorically rejected the assertion that Huawei might be required by Chinese government agents to install backdoors in its equipment to facilitate espionage.

Ren downplayed Huawei's role in current US-China trade tensions. With regards to the arrest of his daughter, Meng Wanzhou, who is also Huawei's CFO, Ren declined to comment directly but expressed gratitude to Canadian justice officials for granting her bail.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/2182173/huaweis-founder-ren-zhengfei-breaks-years-silence-amid-continued-us

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Facebook's new Singapore data center to use StatePoint Liquid Cooling

Construction is now underway on Facebook's first custom-built data center in Asia.  The new data center in Singapore shares some characteristics with other Facebook facilities, such as the use of 100% renewable energy, but features many unique aspects.

First, it will be an 11-story building that will sit on 12 acres of land in Singapore’s Tanjong Kling Data Center Park. Second, it will be the first to incorporate the new StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC) system that Facebook developed with Nortek Air Solutions. The company estimates that SPLC technology can reduce peak water usage by more than 20 percent in Singapore’s hot and humid climate.

Facebook is aiming for an expected annual power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.19 with the Singapore data center.

https://code.fb.com/data-center-engineering/singapore-data-center/

Facebook pioneers StatePoint Liquid Cooling for data centers

Wednesday, June 06, 2018  Data Centers, Facebook  

Facebook is pioneering a StatePoint Liquid Cooling (SPLC) system, developed in partnership with Nortek Air Solutions, that promises to increase the power efficiency of its data centers.

The latest Facebook data centers in certain dry climates currently use a direct evaporative cooling system based on outdoor air rather than water.

Facebook estimates that the new SPLC technique can reduce water usage by more than 20 percent for data centers in hot and humid climates and by almost 90 percent in cooler climates.

The SPLC system is described as an advanced evaporative cooling technology, patented by Nortek, that uses a liquid-to-air energy exchanger, in which water is cooled as it evaporates through a membrane separation layer.

Further details are provided on Facebook's engineering blog.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/1221779261291831/statepoint-liquid-cooling-system-a-new-more-efficient-way-to-cool-a-data-center/

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STACK Infrastructure outlines U.S. data center strategy

STACK Infrastructure, the new data center company that combines facilities from Infomart Data Centers and IPI Partners, unveiled its newly established platform and strategy for rapidly scaling enterprises and hyperscale companies.

STACK, which is underwritten by IPI Partners, combines existing operating data centers in six U.S. markets with significant expansion and development capacity. The company’s offering includes hyperscale campuses and build-to-suit data centers, immediately available wholesale colocation and private data suites, and powered shell options.

The existing STACK operating assets, totaling over 100 megawatts of capacity and approximately 1.5 million square feet in aggregate, include:

Assets previously marketed under the Infomart Data Centers brand:

• Ashburn, Virginia
• Portland, Oregon
• Silicon Valley, California

Other assets already owned by IPI Partners:

• Atlanta, Georgia
• Chicago, Illinois
• Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas (2)

STACK also owns development parcels in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Portland, and Silicon Valley available for additional future development, including data center campuses and build-to-suits. In addition, the Company will continue to expand in existing and new markets in the future to meet the growing demands of clients.

“The launch of STACK represents our collective vision, which is to address and support the full range of our clients’ critical technology infrastructure needs, both today and as they look to the future,” said Brian Cox, Chief Executive Officer. “Everything we do is designed to align our offering with our clients’ growth trajectories, so that we are always evolving to provide the solutions they need in the markets where they want to be.”

https://www.stackinfra.com/

Infomart sells data centers in SJ, Hillsboro and Ashburn

Thursday, March 22, 2018  Data Centers, Infomart, Merger & Acquisitions  

Infomart Data Centers confirmed the sale of three of its data centers and its management company to IPI Data Center Partners Management. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal includes Infomart’s data centers in San Jose, California; Hillsboro, Oregon; and Ashburn, Virginia. Combined, the three data centers total 665,000 square feet with 27.2 megawatts of total in-place capacity and 29.7 megawatts of additional expansion potential.

Equinix to acquire iconic Infomart Dallas colo data center for $800m

Wednesday, February 14, 2018  Equinix  No Comments

Equinix has agreed to acquire the Infomart Dallas data center, including its operations and tenants, from ASB Real Estate Investments for $800 million.

The iconic Infomart building, which is located at 1950 N. Stemmons Freeway in Dallas, is one of the largest interconnection hubs in the U.S. and one of the largest buildings in Texas at 1.6 million square feet (147,094.2 m2) over 7 floors.Infomart is currently home to four of eight Equinix Dallas International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers (DA1, DA2, DA3 and DA6), which combined, support approximately 3,500 built out cabinets.

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Marcatel deploys Fujitsu's 1FINITY T310 blades in Open Line System

Marcatel, an international carrier based in Mexico, has deployed Fujitsu Network Communications' 1FINITY T310 transport blades in their commercial, long-haul optical transport network.

Marcatel operates a large optical fiber network that interconnects Mexico, the United States, Canada, South America, Europe and Asia, providing high-capacity trunking services to enterprises and international carriers.

After conducting multiple field trials across Mexico using both the 1FINITY T300 and T310 transport blades, the carrier has initially deployed the 1FINITY T310 solution in a bookended configuration over their existing 100G DWDM optical system. The result is a trans-American, Open Line System (OLS) communications network that stretches from Monterrey, Mexico, to McAllen, Texas.

Marcatel plans to expand the deployment and upgrade their DWDM system to 200G in early 2019.

“Having demonstrated interoperability and performance of the 1FINITY transport solution in a live network, Marcatel can now confidently increase the level of openness throughout their optical fiber network,” said Rod Naphan, chief technology officer for Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. “With this transition to disaggregated architecture, Marcatel eliminates the constraints of having a single-source vendor, enabling greater cost-effectiveness and faster access to the latest technologies for shorter time to market with profitable new services.”

“At Marcatel, we pride ourselves on delivering excellent quality service and high availability to national and international carriers as well as large enterprises,” said Sergio R. López, Marcatel engineering manager. “Deployment of the Fujitsu 1FINITY blade solution allows us to maintain our reputation for reliability and quality while reducing both capital expenditures and operational costs for a more competitive market position.”

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Macquarie Infrastructure Partners to acquire Bluebird Network

Macquarie Infrastructure Partners has agreed to acquire Bluebird Network, a Midwest telecommunications company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Bluebird focuses on connecting rural and urban areas throughout the Midwest. The company provides a wide variety of network services to enterprise and carrier customers, including secure and reliable bandwidth, Metro Ethernet, Wide Area Network Ethernet, Dedicated Internet Access, E-Line Services, Ethernet Virtual Private LAN Service (E-LAN) and Mobile Backhaul Transport services. Bluebird’s fiber optic infrastructure also connects to the Bluebird Underground Data Center, an underground colocation facility located in Springfield, Missouri.

MIP has partnered with Uniti Group Inc. (NASDAQ: UNIT) (“Uniti”) to finance the transaction. Uniti will acquire Bluebird’s fiber network and then lease it back to Bluebird under a long-term lease. As part of the transaction, Bluebird will also acquire Uniti’s Midwestern fiber business and receive a long-term lease over Uniti’s Midwestern fiber network, which consists of approximately 2,500 miles of network predominantly in Illinois. Upon completion of the transactions the two adjacent networks will be combined and operated as one company under the Bluebird name. The Company will be operated by the existing Bluebird management team and employee-base headquartered in Columbia, MO, led by Chief Executive Officer, Michael Morey.

“We are very pleased to partner with Bluebird’s experienced management team as MIP expands its portfolio of investments in communications infrastructure,” said Karl Kuchel, CEO of MIP. “As bandwidth needs continue to increase, fiber has become the essential backbone for high-performance connectivity networks. We look forward to working with the Bluebird team to growing the platform in the years ahead”

http://www.bluebirdnetwork.com

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Nokia to eliminate 350 jobs in Finland

Nokia announced plans to eliminate 350 positions in Finland. The company, which is based in Espoo, Finland, currently employs about 6,000 people in its home country.

Nokia announces cost-cutting, job losses and corporate realignment

Thursday, October 25, 2018  Nokia  

Nokia announced a corporate realignment and cost-cutting program aimed at refocusing its efforts on high-performance, end-to-end networks, expansion into new enterprise segments, building a standalone software business, and generating significant licensing revenues.

Specifically, Nokia aims to reduce of its annualized operating expenses and production overheads by EUR 700m by the end of 2020 compared to the end of 2018, of which EUR 500m is expected from operating expenses.

Cost savings will come from automation; process and tool simplification; significant reductions in central support functions; prioritization of R&D programs; a sharp reduction of R&D in legacy products; efficiency from further application of a common software foundation and innovative software development techniques; the consolidation of selected cross-company activities; and further reductions in real estate and other overhead costs.

Nokia said the cost-cutting will entail a net reduction of employees globally but did not disclose the size of the expected cuts.

"Nokia has made considerable progress in executing on its strategy, with excellent momentum in providing high-performance end-to-end networks, targeting new enterprise segments and creating a standalone software business," said Rajeev Suri, President and CEO. "Our early progress in 5G is extremely strong, we continue to increase our investment in this critical technology, and our win rate for new deals suggests that we are in a very good competitive position."

"With the successful Alcatel-Lucent integration and cost-saving program soon to be behind us, we are taking steps to accelerate the execution of our strategy and sharpen our customer focus. We will also redouble our efforts to ensure that Nokia's disciplined operating model remains a source of competitive advantage for us, and that we maintain our position as the industry leader in cost management, productivity and efficiency. We noted earlier this year that we would need to take further cost actions in order to deliver on our 2020 guidance. Today, we are quantifying those actions and raising the certainty that we can meet those commitments," Suri said.

Highlights of the plan include:

• Creating a new Enterprise Business Group that consolidates a range of existing, fast-growing activities into one focused organization reporting directly to the President and CEO.  
• Accelerating Nokia's strong momentum in 5G by sharpening the focus of the Mobile Networks Business Group to be on mobile radio products.
• Strengthening Nokia's capability to deliver industry-leading, fully-integrated and tested Cloud Core solutions by aligning both resources and accountability to the Nokia Software Business Group.
• Kathrin Buvac, who is currently Chief Strategy Officer for Nokia, has been nominated as President of Enterprise. 

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Rubrik adds $261 million in funding for cloud data management

Rubrik, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, closed $261 million in new venture funding for its Cloud Data Management platform, which delivers data protection, search and analytics, archiving and compliance, and copy data management capabilities for hybrid cloud enterprises. This gives the company total venture backing of over $553 million and a valuation of $3.3 billion. The new funding came from new investor Bain Capital Ventures, and with strong participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, and IVP.

Rubrik now has over 1,400 employees and is delivering global 24×365 support with three locations in the US, plus locations in Ireland, the Netherlands, India, and Tokyo.

Rubrik's value proposition is to deliver data management functions in a single software fabric spanning with

• Instant Access – Rubrik delivers instant application recovery and predictive global search by unifying data locked within disparate application silos into one globally indexed namespace while leveraging zero-data cloning technology to enable on-demand copy data workflows.        
• Automated Orchestration – Rubrik nearly eliminates daily operational management by enabling a single policy engine to orchestrate service level agreements across the entire data lifecycle. The Rubrik programmatic interface automates how data services are created, consumed, and retired across clouds.
• Security and Compliance – Rubrik secures data whether in-flight or at-rest throughout its lifecycle, regardless of location. The Rubrik platform delivers granular user provisioning and data permissions across all cloud data management workflows while providing automated compliance reporting to successfully complete various industry and internal audits.

“Our previous fundraising in 2017 was focused on global expansion and increasing our reach into the enterprise market. Now, with thousands of customers around the world, industry-leading customer satisfaction ratings, and numerous analyst and industry awards, we have customers asking us to solve new challenges,” said Bipul Sinha, Co-founder and CEO at Rubrik. “This new capital will speed the introduction of exciting new products in 2019 that will solve those customer challenges and significantly expand our strategic footprint in the enterprise.”

• In 2018, Rubrik welcomed Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson and Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of Cisco John Chambers as a board member and a board advisor, respectively. The company also expanded its executive team with several high profile hires from leading technology companies, including: Chief Financial Officer Murray Demo (Atlassian), CIO Avon Puri (VMware), Chief Legal Officer Peter McGoff (Box), Chief People Officer Jeff Vijungco (Adobe), SVP of Product & Strategy Shay Mowlem (Splunk), and SVP of Finance & Strategy Kiran Choudary (Atlassian).

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