There’s a lot of discussion around the digital acceleration and transformation to new work environments. In this video, Rupesh Chokshi, Vice President of AT&T Cybersecurity, discusses how SASE as a framework helps customers with their transformation to the work-from-anywhere and hybrid work environments.
Ciena will acquire AT&T's Vyatta virtual routing and switching technology. In addition, Ciena has agreed to support the Vyatta routing platform in AT&T’s wireless network across multiple 5G use cases, enterprise business services and virtual networks with cloud scalability. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Ciena said the acquisition reflects its continued investment in its Routing and Switching roadmap to address the growing market opportunity to transform the edge, including 5G networks and cloud environments. Ciena plans to integrate the team of engineering specialists into its Routing and Switching research and development (R&D) organization.
“The addition of the Vyatta talent and assets to our Routing and Switching business will extend Ciena’s success in helping customers create virtualized networks and deploy new features faster and cost effectively across 5G, enterprise and cloud use cases,” said Scott McFeely, Senior Vice President, Global Products and Services at Ciena.
“This agreement is a sign of the maturity of the ecosystem and encompasses years of innovation, collaboration and expertise,” said Andre Fuetsch, Chief Technology Officer of Network Services at AT&T. “Our acquisition of the Vyatta assets in 2017 helped us virtualize 75% of our network and led to the development of the first telco grade open-source network operating system. We’re looking forward to the continued use of Vyatta and the development of new use cases as a result of this transaction.”
AT&T agreed to acquire Vyatta network operating system and associated assets of Brocade Communications Systems. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is contingent on the completion of Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade.
The Vyatta network operating system, including its virtual network functions (VNFs) and distributed services platform, software under development as part of its unreleased roadmap, existing software licenses, and related patents and patent applications. AT&T plans to hire certain Brocade employees associated with that business, who are located mainly in California and the UK.
AT&T said the Vyatta software bolstera its ability to deliver cloud or premises-based VNFs, starting with its previously announced SD-WAN cloud service with VeloCloud.
“Our network transformation effort lets us add new features quicker than ever before at a much lower cost,” said Andre Fuetsch, chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs. “Being able to design and build the tools we need to enable that transformation is a win for us and for our customers.”
Vyatta could also boost AT&T’s white box platform capabilities. In late March, AT&T completed a trial with a handful of companies and industry groups to design and build its own white box switches to manage data traffic more efficiently across our network.
http://www.att.com
http://www.broadcom.com
Singtel confirmed that its 5G network now covers over two-thirds of Singapore. New 5G sites have been added in densely populated areas like Choa Chu Kang, Punggol, Sembawang and Tampines. In addition, it has expanded its 5G indoor coverage to more major shopping malls island-wide such as Funan, West Mall, Tampines Mall, Northpoint City and Waterway Point.
Singtel highlighted new entertainment experiences powered by its 5G SA network:
In addition, Singtel signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Ericsson and global industry partners to collaborate on the development and deployment of advanced 5G enterprise solutions in Singapore.
Mr Yuen Kuan Moon, Group CEO of Singtel said, “With the maturing of 5G technology, we’re excited to unlock the benefits of a 5G-enabled reality for consumers and enterprises. Its potential to transform business models and deliver enhanced products and services on a scale like never before, will spur Singapore’s digital economy as the country moves into post-COVID recovery. As part of our strategic reset to focus on 5G, we are accelerating our roll-out and the creation of new services. We’re proud to be leading the 5G charge and forging the next chapter of this digital era.”
Ciena reported revenue of $988.1 million for its fiscal third quarter ended July 31, 2021, up 1.2% compared to same period last year. Ciena's GAAP net income for the fiscal third quarter 2021 was $238.2 million, or $1.52 per diluted common share, which compares to a GAAP net income of $142.3 million, or $0.91 per diluted common share, for the fiscal third quarter 2020. Ciena's GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2021 benefited from the recording of a $124.2 million tax benefit related to an internal transfer of non-U.S. intangible assets.
“We delivered outstanding fiscal third quarter results that reflect continued momentum in our business as well as our differentiated position in the market,” said Gary Smith, president and CEO of Ciena. “These results combined with a robust demand environment give us confidence that we will deliver our expected strong second half performance.”
Some highlights for the quarter:
https://investor.ciena.com/events-and-presentations/default.aspx
Citing demand from hyperscale data centers and telecom operators, Broadcom reported quarterly revenue of $6.778 billion, up 16% from $5.821 billion for the same period last year.
"Broadcom delivered record revenues in the third quarter reflecting our product and technology leadership across multiple secular growth markets in cloud, 5G infrastructure, broadband, and wireless," said Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom Inc. "We are projecting the momentum to continue in the fourth quarter."
"Our business model continues to perform. Consolidated revenue grew 16% year-over-year to $6.8 billion and operating profit increased 24% with adjusted EBITDA margin a record 61%," said Kirsten Spears, CFO of Broadcom Inc. "We generated $3.4 billion in free cash flow or 51% of revenue in the quarter, and we expect free cash flow to remain strong in the fourth quarter."
GTT Communications has entered into a Restructuring Support Agreement with key stakeholders, including holders of a majority of its secured and unsecured debt and I Squared Capital, to implement a comprehensive restructuring of the company’s remaining balance sheet following completion of the pending sale of its infrastructure division.
GTT said it expects to expeditiously close the previously announced sale of its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital in the coming weeks, allowing the company to repay a significant portion of its secured debt.
Following the close of the sale of the infrastructure division, GTT and certain of its direct and indirect subsidiaries intend to commence prepackaged chapter 11 cases in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to effectuate a deleveraging of GTT’s post-sale capital structure. GTT’s foreign businesses and operations outside of the U.S. are not included in the contemplated filing and will be unaffected by the chapter 11 cases. The company expects to emerge from this process after obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals for the restructuring.
GTT is operating and serving its customers in the U.S. and globally without interruption.
Ernie Ortega, Chief Executive Officer of GTT, stated, “This global agreement among each of our creditor constituencies resulted from extensive negotiations and reflects the ongoing commitment of our debtholders to the business. Our performance has been strong year-to-date, and we have a very competitive product portfolio in growing segments of the market, such as SD-WAN. To continue this momentum, we are working together with our debtholders to improve GTT’s financial health and this is a major milestone to accomplish this goal.”
https://www.gtt.net/us-en
GTT Communications will sell its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital, an independent global infrastructure investment firm, for $2.15 billion.
Gautam Bhandari, managing partner at I Squared Capital stated, “Now more than ever, digital infrastructure is an essential asset class as societies across the globe rely heavily on high-speed digital bandwidth. This acquisition builds upon I Squared Capital’s overarching global digital infrastructure strategy and experience with complex carve-outs to expand the reach of our platforms across Asia, Europe and North America.”
indie Semiconductor agreed to acquire TeraXion, a supplier of photonic components, including low noise lasers, Bragg gratings and integrated photonic elements to address high-performance applications, for approximately US$159 million, comprised of US$80 million in cash plus a fixed number of eight million indie Class A common shares, based on share prices on 30-Aug-2021.
TeraXion is an optical sensing reference design partner of indie, supporting next-generation Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) systems for automotive light detection and ranging (LiDAR).
“Given the critical role LiDAR plays in achieving maximum levels of safety for assisted and self-driving cars, we are excited to welcome TeraXion’s world class design team and integrate their differentiated IP and product portfolio,” said Donald McClymont, indie’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Specifically, TeraXion has developed leadership laser technologies that, when optimized together with our SoC solutions, enable order of magnitude improvements in both system performance and cost. Accordingly, this highly synergistic combination built on a shared vision and strong cultural fit, positions indie to accelerate mass market deployments of LiDAR platforms.”
“TeraXion is thrilled to be joining forces with indie to take our business to the next level,” said Ghislain Lafrance, TeraXion’s president and chief executive officer. “By combining indie’s mixed-signal, DSP, software and power management experience with our laser and sensing technologies, together we intend to enable truly unparalleled solutions for ADAS and autonomous driving as well as adjacent high reliability applications.” Mr. Lafrance plans to join indie’s senior management team and continue to lead TeraXion’s operations in Quebec.
Asiacell Telecom, Iraq’s leading telecommunications services provider, selected Nokia to build its next-generation microwave network.
For this project, Nokia will replace legacy microwave equipment by either modernizing or deploying approximately 3,000 network links across multiple locations in Iraq over the next five years. The network will use Nokia's Wavence microwave packet radio portfolio.
STL, an industry-leading integrator of digital networks, has appointed Paul Atkinson as the Chief Executive Officer for its Optical Networking Business, replacing Ankit Agarwal, who has played a crucial role in STL's global expansion in the Optical business. Agarwal widened the portfolio with the acquisition of Optotec & Metallurgica Bresciana and increased STL's scale and presence in Italy, UK, US, Brazil and China. Agarwal will now focus on driving the strategy and growth across STL.
Before STL, Atkinson was the Managing Director and Group CEO at IXOM, Australia. Prior to IXOM, Paul was associated with the Prysmian Global for over 20 years as the CEO of affiliates and regions across the world.
Commenting on this development, Dr. Anand Agarwal, Group CEO, STL, said: "Optical connectivity and networks have always been our core and with Ankit at the helm, we have passionately put this business on the global map. I look forward to partnering with Ankit in the strategic growth of the company. I welcome Paul and wish him the best. I am confident that with his exceptional global experience, he will take the Optical Networking business to the next level."
Juniper Networks is collaborating with Intel to accelerate advancement in the Open RAN (ORAN) ecosystem. The collaboration includes:
Earlier this year, Juniper announced an exclusive global licensing agreement with Netsia, a subsidiary of Türk Telekom Group company Argela in the USA. Netsia transferred its Radio Intelligent Controller (RIC) technology to Juniper, including related source code and patents plus exclusive rights to develop and sell products and solutions that integrate with RIC. The deal included the transfer of technical domain experts from Netsia to Juniper in support of RIC’s integration into Juniper’s product portfolio.
Juniper is an active member of the O-RAN Alliance, contributing to six working groups and serving as chair and co-chair of the slicing and use-case task groups, respectively. Juniper is also an editor of RIC specifications within the alliance.
Juniper said the joint initiative represents another milestone in its continuing efforts to bring openness and innovation to a traditionally closed-off part of the network, providing a faster route-to-market for service providers and enterprises to deliver 5G, edge computing and AI.
“Juniper has always been committed to open infrastructures, which is why we are excited to support the work that Intel has undertaken with their FlexRAN ecosystem. By collaborating with Intel, we are able to deliver cloud-native routing, automation, intelligence and assurance solutions and services that are optimized for our customers’ needs, speeding time-to-market and enabling them to monetize faster," stated Constantine Polychronopoulos, VP of 5G and Telco Cloud at Juniper Networks.
“The virtualization of the RAN continues to gain momentum across the industry as operators take advantage of cloud economics and the delivery of new services. This collaboration with Juniper and the validation of FlexRAN and RIC solutions will assist service providers to overcome integration challenges and accelerate time-to-market for future deployments," stated Caroline Chan, VP Intel Corporation, GM of Network Business Incubator Division.
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) awarded a 10-year, $2 billion contract to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for high-performance computing (HPC) technology as a service through the HPE GreenLake platform.
The HPE GreenLake platform provides fully managed, secure cloud services on-premises.
HPE said its service includes a combination of HPE Apollo systems and HPE ProLiant servers, which ingest and process high volumes of data, and support deep learning and artificial intelligence capabilities. As part of the HPE GreenLake service, HPE will build and manage the complete solution that will be hosted at a QTS data center, a hosting facility that delivers secure, compliant data center infrastructure and robust connectivity to support scaling of operations.
The new service will go into use starting in 2022.
“Implementing artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics capabilities on massive sets of data increasingly requires High Performance Computing (HPC) systems” said Justin Hotard, senior vice president and general manager, HPC and Mission Critical Solutions (MCS) at HPE. “Customers are demanding HPC capabilities on their most data-intensive projects combined with easy, simple, and agile management. By using the HPE GreenLake platform, which delivers secure on-premises solutions as a service, the National Security Agency (NSA) is gaining industry-leading HPC solutions to tackle a range of complex data needs, but with a flexible, as a service experience.”
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/greenlake.html
Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top ten global operators, inaugurated its Metamorfosis II data center in Athens, Greece.
The new facility, which is located in the industrial area of Metamorfosis and just next to the other proprietary facility Metamorfosis I, encompasses an area of about 6,000 sq.m., with a maximum capacity of 700 racks and 7.7 MW of total power. The facility was built following the most stringent anti-seismic criteria and designed to guarantee the maximum levels of reliability and security. In addition, Metamorfosis II adopts the latest energy-efficient power and cooling systems available in the market resulting in a carbon footprint reduction of around 28,000 tons per year. The quality and energy excellence of the new data center is confirmed by the Uptime Institute Tier III, the LEED Gold and the ISO 14001 certifications.
Sparkle now operates four open data centers in Greece: three in Athens - where the proprietary metropolitan fiber optic network is originated, running through the city business district and directly interconnecting corporate customers and institutional entities - and one in Chania, with a total area of 14,000 sq. m. and 13.7 MW of power.
All data centers are fully integrated with Nibble, Sparkle’s pan-Mediterranean optical network, and with Sparkle's Tier-1 global backbone Seabone, to deliver high speed connectivity services as well as access to major cloud providers. Moreover, thanks to their open and resilient configuration, Sparkle data centers offer a rich ecosystem of interconnected players for domestic and international connectivity.
"We have created an exemplary open hub to offer an advanced experience to the most sophisticated customers, also guaranteeing a strong commitment on environmental sustainability," says Elisabetta Romano, CEO of Sparkle. “With this new opening, Sparkle enriches its infrastructural offer for national and international enterprises while confirming the attention for the Greek market in which we have been active for twenty years with an increasing presence.”
Equinix completed its acquisition of two data centers on a fiber-connected campus in Mumbai from GPX Global Systems for US$161 million in cash.
Equinix also announced the appointment of Manoh Paul as Managing Director of Equinix India. Prior to Equinix, he led the India operation of GPX India, helping it to emerge as India's most prominent carrier-neutral and cloud-dense data center. Before joining GPX India, Paul spent 11 years with Bharti Airtel Ltd, where his last role was Chief Operating Officer (Enterprises) for the Western region.
The two new data centers in Mumbai, dubbed Equinix MB1 and MB2, form a network-dense data center campus with more than 350 international brands and local companies, including the world's leading cloud service providers (CSPs), global networks, content delivery network (CDN) providers, all local carriers, 170 internet service providers (ISPs) and five internet exchanges. The two data centers in Mumbai provide an initial 1,350 cabinets, with an additional 500 cabinets to buildout. The facilities will add more than 90,000 square feet of colocation space to Platform Equinix when fully built.
Equinix's Mumbai campus offers a cloud-dense environment and direct access to major cloud services, including AWS Direct Connect, Google Cloud Dedicated Interconnect and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect. It also hosts key internet exchanges such as AMS-IX India, Extreme IX, Mumbai IX-DECIX, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Bharat IX, allowing ISPs, carriers, CDNs and large enterprises to exchange internet traffic.
Equinix plans to introduce a full range of interconnection and digital infrastructure services, including Equinix Connect, Equinix Internet Exchange, Metro Connect, Equinix Fabric and Network Edge, in the new data centers upon the completion of the business integration.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) completed its previously-announced acquisition of Zerto, an industry leader in cloud data management and protection, for $374 million.
HPE said the acquisition immediately positions the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform in the high-growth data protection market with a proven solution and further propels HPE’s storage business into a cloud-native, software-defined data services business.
“Data is the most critical asset and is essential to operate in this new digital economy,” said Tom Black, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Storage. “Our customers continue to face complexity in managing and protecting their data. Zerto’s best-in-class talent and technology expands HPE’s data management and disaster recovery capabilities, giving customers the ability to protect their data and recover in minutes from ransomware attacks. We are thrilled to welcome Zerto to the HPE family. Together, we will accelerate innovation and scale these offerings to help our customers manage and protect their data from edge to cloud.”
HPE also noted that Zerto’s cloud data management and protection software will remain available as a standalone service and will be available as a service through the HPE GreenLake platform and the Data Services Cloud Console. Its journal-based continuous data protection technology includes disaster recovery, backup, and data mobility in a single, simple cloud data management and protection software solution that spans on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
Nutanix reported revenue of $390.7 million for its fourth quarter ended July 31, 2021, up 19% from the same period last year. GAAP gross margin was 79.9% compared to 79.6% a year earlier.
“Our fourth quarter was a strong end to an excellent fiscal year, which was marked by consistent execution and solid progress across both financial and strategic objectives,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix. “We have entered our fiscal 2022 with good momentum and a solid plan for growth, executing on the model we laid out at Investor Day and delivering on our vision of making clouds invisible.”
“We achieved records across a number of key metrics in the fourth quarter, including ACV billings and revenue, which grew 26 and 19 percent year over year, respectively,” said Duston Williams, CFO of Nutanix. “In fiscal 2022, we expect our growing base of low-cost renewals will drive further improvements in top and bottom line performance.”
China Mobile, Huawei and over 10 other partners have established a 5G VoNR+ (New Calling) Working Group for the 5G Deterministic Networking Alliance (5GDNA).
The Working Group aims to facilitate 5G new calling industry collaboration and aims to promote VoNR+ new calling standards and technologies, boost its industry, and build an industry ecosystem.
Huawei says that as 5G integrates with AR and VR technologies, new services such as visual menus, video RBT, and remote collaboration become available and give users more interactive experience. Not only this, these services unlock new opportunities for the emerging 5G market, and the 5G VoNR+ (New Calling) Working Group is anticipated to pilot the development of the 5G new calling market.
VoNR+ new calling will bring new communication experience to users and showcase the unique value of 5G. A typical application of VoNR+ new calling is remote collaboration. Remote collaboration allows guidance to be remotely provided through videos in real time. This valuable application is widely used in daily life, such as in elderly care, equipment repair, object searching, and child tutoring, and even may create a new industry. On top of this, users can use new calling services without needing to download any app.
The 5G VoNR+ (New Calling) Working Group will use 5GDNA to provide a global platform for industry collaboration, channeling more industry partners to drive the widespread use of 5G new calling and bring 5G to more people.
https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2021/9/china-mobile-huawei-5g-vonr-new-calling
Verizon is now offering an on-premises, private edge compute solution in collaboration with Microsoft Azure.
Verizon 5G Edge with Microsoft Azure Stack Edge is a cloud computing platform that brings compute and storage services to the edge of the network at the customer premises providing enterprises with increased efficiencies, higher levels of security, and the low lag and high bandwidth needed for applications involving computer vision, augmented and virtual reality, and machine learning.
“Our partnership with Microsoft brings 5G Edge to enterprises, dropping latency at the edge, helping critical, performance-impacting applications respond more quickly and efficiently,” said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, Chief Revenue Officer of Verizon Business. “5G is ushering in next-generation business applications, from core connectivity to real-time edge compute and new applications and solutions that take advantage of AI transforming nearly every industry.”
“Business innovation demands powerful technology solutions and central to this is the intersection between the network and edge” said Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president Azure for Operators at Microsoft. “Through our partnership with Verizon, we are providing customers with powerful compute and storage service capabilities at the edge of customers’ networks, enabling robust application experiences with increased security.”
https://www.verizon.com/business/solutions/5g/edge-computing/
Verizon Business and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be expanding their 5G collaboration to deliver private mobile edge computing (MEC) to enterprise customers in the U.S.
The solution will fully integrate Verizon’s Private 5G networks and Private Edge platform with AWS Outposts, a fully managed service that offers the same AWS infrastructure, services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for a truly consistent hybrid experience. The platform supports unified connectivity, compute and storage, without having the need for the customer to own extensive networking and IT infrastructure. The new, fully managed private MEC solution will support a wide range of industrial manufacturing applications, such as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), predictive maintenance, quality assurance, and near real-time monitoring and hazard alerts. Verizon’s Private 5G Edge platform will give customers a reliable, secure, high bandwidth, low latency connection to AWS services, APIs, and tools running on AWS Outposts. Additionally, two smaller AWS Outposts — 1U and 2U form factors — will give customers options to deploy AWS on-premises in space-constrained locations.
The companies said their solution will enable real-time enterprise applications like intelligent logistics, predictive maintenance, robotics, factory automation, etc. Corning will be the first company to leverage this private MEC solution.
“Verizon’s 5G is the platform for 21st century innovation and customers are looking to rapidly innovate, improve performance, and create new revenue streams,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “Developers are already creating new latency-dependent solutions that run on the Verizon/AWS public MEC service launched last year. Our private MEC offering will unlock that same potential for enterprise customers who need to maintain a secure, closed environment in factories, warehouses and other facilities.”
Semtech’s newest Tri-Edge clock and data recovery (CDR) chipset, which targets data center interconnectivity over multi-mode fiber, has entered into full production status.
The Semtech GN2538 is a dual-channel 50G PAM4 CDR with integrated VCSEL drivers and the GN2539 is a dual-channel 50G PAM4 CDR with integrated linear transimpedence amplifiers (TIAs). This chipset is the latest addition to the proven Tri-Edge CDR platform, and the low power and ease of implementation of the GN2538 and GN2539 will allow major data centers to upgrade their intra-data center interconnects and enhance overall performance.
The laser driver integrated in the GN2538 includes proprietary VCSEL compensation to enable a wide range of VCSEL options with fully adaptive input equalization and easy startup to streamline system bring up. The integrated linear TIA in the GN2559 provides superior receiver performance with reliable adaptation and includes configurable output de-emphasis enabling robust and compliant electrical interfaces.
“Our customers have fully tested the solutions confirming interoperability with 100G ports of commercial Ethernet switches used in major data centers. The integration offered by the analog PAM4 GN2538 and GN2539 chipset enables reduced cost, and delivers the highly desired low power and low latency performance that meets the needs of high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and Cloud data center networks. This chipset is also fully compliant to the 50G per lane multi-mode fiber Open Eye MSA specification,” said Julius Yam, market manager, Data Center Products in Semtech’s Signal Integrity Products Group.
AT&T has set a target of helping businesses to eliminate 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
AT&T said it will work with Microsoft, Equinix, Duke Energy, research universities, and a range of other organizations to deliver broadband-enabled climate solutions at global scale.
The company says smart IoT and edge-computing technologies for the manufacturing, agriculture and commercial sectors can contribute to emission reductions.
“As businesses embrace climate change as a priority, our connectivity solutions can help them make progress to reach their goals,” said Anne Chow, CEO, AT&T Business. “AT&T has a track record of delivering sustainability results within our own large-scale operations and for our business customers across industries. The time is now to expand our impact by developing and deploying more capabilities and solutions that enable companies to reduce their environmental footprint. This is a collective imperative across all business that also benefits the planet and society as a whole.”
https://www.business.att.com/products/business-sustainability.html
Ericsson expanded its portfolio of 5G radios with three new offerings geared toward urban environments:
Ericsson Street Solutions also include transport solutions for any 5G street site, with wired and wireless backhaul and fronthaul solutions.
https://www.ericsson.com/en/small-cells/outdoor-coverage/street-solutions
