Infonetics: Optical Hardware Sales Dipped 5% in Q3 2014

The global optical network hardware market (SONET/SDH, WDM) totaled $3 billion in 3Q14, down 10% sequentially, and down 5% year-over-year, according to a new report released by Infonetics Research.

Some highlights of the report:

• Though WDM equipment revenue is up 4% in 3Q14 from a year ago, strong WDM spending trends waned in North America, and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) continued to decline
• North America stopped pulling the optical train in 3Q14 as strong results from Ciena were offset by other vendors’ weaker performance
• Europe, meanwhile, remains in an optical slump compounded by a weak macro economy, and Asia Pacific was down by double digits on a sequential basis
• Market gains are accumulating to fewer vendors, but Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Cyan, Infinera, and NEC all notched positive results in 3Q14.

“A spending divergence is opening in the optical market, with some service providers, primarily competitive carriers and internet content providers, growing spend, while traditional carriers proceed with caution. Companies less dependent on EMEA and incumbent carriers are faring better—this effect explains the varying sentiment in the industry,” notes Andrew Schmitt, principal analyst for carrier transport networking at Infonetics Research.

http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2014/3Q14-Optical-Network-Hardware-Market-Highlights.asp

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Crehan: A Surge in 40 Gigabit Data Center Networking Adoption

The adoption of 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) in data centers is significantly accelerating, according to recent and upcoming reports from Crehan Research.

Crehan’s latest server-class adapter and LAN-on-motherboard report shows that 40GbE speeds on these products is already approaching a quarter-million port annual run-rate in 3Q14, and on track to increase four-fold, reaching a million port annual run-rate by 4Q14.

The reports show that Mellanox currently accounts for the majority of 40GbE server adapter shipments, while Cisco is the share leader in 40GbE data center switch port shipments.

“We were very bullish in our outlook for 40GbE data center networking growth in 2014, but results in certain segments of this market are already exceeding our forecast," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. "Data center networking traffic demands are so strong in some market verticals that these customers cannot wait to evaluate the upcoming 25GbE and 50GbE options. They need to go ahead and deploy speeds greater than 10GbE right now," he said. "Furthermore, 40GbE is currently benefiting from a window of opportunity where it is a viable server connection as well as a viable data center aggregation and core networking option."

With its prior data center switch report (2Q14), Crehan Research noted that low-priced switches had driven strong data center Ethernet growth. These lower prices are especially pronounced in 40GbE and are helping to drive the much stronger adoption of this technology.

http://www.CrehanResearch.com

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100G InfiniBand Connects Supercomputers across Continents

Obsidian Strategics and Singapore's A*STAR Computational Resource Centre are pioneering long-distance, 100G InfiniBand as a means of interconnecting geographically distributed supercomputers. A demonstration planned for this week's SC14 conference in New Orleans aims to demonstrate the feasibility of using the technology for global supercomputer collaboration. The key is to transmit RDMA over transcontinental distances.

The demo will show real time analysis and control of a plasma physics experiment at the Tokyo Institute of Technology involving distributed data processing concurrently occurring in Singapore, Georgia Tech and equipment on the SC14 exhibition floor.  Tata Communications is providing the long-haul cable.

Obsidian Strategics is a privately-held company based in Canada that offers InfiniBand products featuring range extension, routing and encryption.  Obsidian's Longbow technology allows an InfiniBand fabric -- normally a short-range network (up to 17m) used in supercomputers and data centers -- to be securely extended via optical fiber over global distances. Obsidian also provides its Crossbow technology that enables very high performance routing of InfiniBand traffic between many separate subnets.

 “Supercomputers have played crucial roles in military, higher-education, R&D labs and industry for decades. Today, at the rate data usage is increasing, the uses for high performance computing have also increased. Most supercomputers today are built around a very capable open-standard LAN technology called InfiniBand, but this is limited to very short reach connections. Our work on mission critical global communication requirements from the U.S. government has allowed us to pioneer the technology capable of transparently extending InfiniBand over arbitrary distances. The result is a highly deployable communications fabric suitable for demanding applications in not only scientific computing, but also storage, data center, cloud and enterprise environments. We couldn’t be more pleased to be a part of this groundbreaking collaboration,” stated. Dr. David Southwell, co-founder and chief visionary officer, Obsidian Strategics.

The InfiniCortex demostration is at SC14 booth #548 booth #2520.

http://www.obsidianstrategics.com
http://www.a-star.edu.sg/

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Facebook's New Data Center Architecture

Facebook's Alexey Andreyev outlined a new data center switching architecture deployed at the company's new facility in Altoona, Iowa.

In a blog posting, Andreyev writes that while its previous data centers have been built with a hierarchically oversubscribed system of clusters, Facebook set out to make its newest data center into a single, high-performance network for the whole building.

The new design is characterized by small, identical "server pods" that only require basic mid-size switches to aggregate the Top-of-rack (TOR) switches.  Each pod has 48 server racks, each with a 10G connection. This form factor is always the same for all pods.

Each pod is served by a set of four fabric switches.  Each TOR currently has 4 x 40G uplinks, providing 160G total bandwidth capacity for a rack of 10G-connected servers.  The smaller port density of the fabric switches makes their internal architecture very simple, modular, and robust.  The switches are available from multiple sources. Symmetrical bandwidth is provisioned to/from each pod. To implement building-wide connectivity, Facebook created four independent “planes” of spine switches, each scalable up to 48 independent devices within a plane.  The network is all Layer 3 – from TOR uplinks to the edge.  Standard BGP4 is the only routing protocol. Facebook is using its own centralized BGP controller that is able to override any routing paths on the fabric by pure software decisions.

The full posting is here:

https://code.facebook.com/posts/360346274145943/introducing-data-center-fabric-the-next-generation-facebook-data-center-network/

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Ericsson Forecasts 3-5% Growth, Announces Cost Cutting

Ericsson is projecting the total addressable market it serves to grow at a CAGR of 3-5% from 2013-2017, with its own target at or above these levels. Ericsson's growth will be supported by a CAGR of approximately 10% in 2013-2017 in targeted areas.

At its Capital Markets Day last week in Stockholm, Ericsson said it aims to reduce its operating costs by SEK 9 billion, with full effect during 2017, with a restructuring cost of SEK 3-4 billion.  To cut costs, Ericsson is concentrating on five key areas: portfolio streamlining and ways of working in R&D; structural enhancements in IS/IT; accelerated Service Delivery transformation; supply chain efficiencies; as well as structural efficiency gains in G&A. Savings will include both headcount reductions as well as savings in external costs.

"We are taking the next step in our transformation to become a leading ICT player. The telecom, IT and media industries are converging and we are confident in our choice of strategy to play a key role in this new world. We will continue to build on our combined strength of technology and services leadership to stay relevant to our customers in a transforming industry," stated Hans Vestberg, President and CEO.

Some highlights:

• Ericsson believes we are at the inflection point toward to a Network Society.  By 2020, the company is forecasting 9.5 billion mobile subscriptions and 8 billion mobile broadband subscriptions. This will drive an 8X increase in data traffic.
• Ericsson estimates that the total network equipment market during the years 2013-2017 will show a CAGR of 2-4%; the telecom services market is estimated to show a CAGR of 4-6%; and the market for support solutions is forecasted to show a CAGR of 7-9% in the same period.
• The dismantling of previous joint ventures is now complete (ST-Ericsson and Sony Ericsson)
• North America has been the company's fastest growing region from 2010-2013 and constituted 28% of sales for 2013. Overall EMEA sales were 39% of total sales for 2013.
• Mobile broadband growth continues to be offset by declines in CDMA and circuit switched voice.
• Network rollout (NRO) has been a low-margin to negative operating margin business for the past few years
• Ericsson is seeing significant revenue from its IPR licensing deal with Samsung last years.
• Ericsson now has 115,900 active employees.
• Ericsson support networks that connect more than 2.5 billion subscribers. 

Presentation materials are on the Investor Relations section of the Ericsson website.
http://www.ericsson.com

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Mellanox Delivers EDR 100Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet Adapter

Mellanox Technologies introduced its ConnectX-4 single/dual-port 100Gb/s Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) adapter.

Mellanox’s ConnectX-4 VPI adapter delivers 10, 20, 25, 40, 50, 56 and 100Gb/s throughput supporting both the InfiniBand and the Ethernet standard protocols.  It can connect any CPU architecture – x86, GPU, POWER, ARM, FPGA, etc, Performance is listed at 150 million messages per second with latency of 0.7usec. The new adapter supports the new RoCE v2 (RDMA) specification, the full variety of  overlay networks technologies - NVGRE (Network Virtualization using GRE), VXLAN  (Virtual Extensible LAN), GENEVE (Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation), and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching), and storage offloads such as T10-DIF and RAID offload, etc.  Sampling is expected in Q1 2015.

“Large-scale clusters have incredibly high demands and require extremely low latency and high bandwidth,” said Jorge Vinals, director at Minnesota Supercomputing Institute of the University of Minnesota. “Mellanox’s ConnectX-4 will provide us with the node-to-node communication and real-time data retrieval capabilities we needed to make our EDR InfiniBand cluster the first of its kind in the U.S. With 100Gb/s capabilities, the EDR InfiniBand large-scale cluster will become a critical contribution to research at the University of Minnesota.”

“Cloud infrastructures are becoming a more mainstream way of building compute and storage networks.  More corporations and applications target the vast technological and financial improvements that utilization of the cloud offers,” said Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox.

http://www.mellanox.com

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Wilcon Deploys Ciena Packet/Optical in SoCal

Wilcon, a provider of fiber optic network infrastructure in Southern California, is using Ciena’s converged packet-optical and packet networking platforms to offer scalable Ethernet and wavelength services.  Wilcon targets industry professionals and production houses from San Diego to Los Angeles. It fiber network connects major data centers, colocation facilities, enterprise locations and wireless communications sites across the region. The network is made up of 3,000 miles of fiber and 1,000 on-net locations.

The network uses Ciena’s E-Suite family, including the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with eMOTR and WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors. Wilcon is also offering a range of Ethernet services leveraging Ciena’s 5142 and 5160 Service Aggregation Switches and 3930 and 3931 Service Delivery Switches – with subtending G.8032 Ethernet rings off the 6500 – which enable increased network scalability and protection of services.

LightRiver, an network integrator,  provided turnkey implementation, while Ciena provided project consulting via its Specialist Services portfolio.  The new network will be live throughout the region in the first quarter of 2015.

http://wilcon.com
http://www.ciena.com

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Xilinx Announces 25G Ethernet IP for FPGAs

Xilinx announced low latency 25G Ethernet IP for FPGAs aimed at data center switching.

The low latency 25G Ethernet MAC and PCS LogiCORE IP solution supports the new 25G Ethernet Consortium specification and will be aligned with the industry's continuing advancements in next-generation processors, which are doubling their performance for tomorrow's data center servers.

Xilinx is demonstrating the 25G Ethernet MAC and PCS LogiCORE IP solution at this week's Supercomputing in New Orleans. The live demonstration utilizes two Virtex UltraScale VCU107 boards communicating over four channels of 25G Ethernet through 5 meters of direct attached copper cable and two QSFP+ modules.

http://www.xilinx.com/esp/datacenter/data_center_ip.htm
http://www.xilinx.com

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CityFibre Signs EE and Three UK

CityFibre has signed a long-term national framework agreement to provide dark fiber to mobile network operators EE and Three UK, along with their infrastructure joint venture, Mobile Broadband Network Limited (MBNL).

The deal will see CityFibre deploy dark fiber backhaul connections to mobile masts across both operators’ networks.

CityFibre operates fiber networks in 57 UK towns and cities.  The company has begun four Gigabit City projects in York, Peterborough, Coventry and Aberdeen .

http://www.three.co.uk

http://www.cityfibre.com/

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NEC Debuts Cloud Service for Car Dealerships

NEC introduced a cloud service aimed at car manufacturers and dealerships expanding throughout emerging markets.

The idea is to help car manufacturers implement management systems in dealerships quickly and at low cost for sales and maintenance functions. The service is able to collect and analyze dealership management data and provide it in a report format for the companies that oversee dealerships.

 "This innovative new service utilizes the cloud to offer a wide variety of functions in support of car dealership services, including the management of quotations, sales, inventory and order placement for new cars and parts, as well as the management of repair bookings, working-hours and history. Rather than a customer building their own system, NEC's solution can be introduced in about one-third of the time and for approximately one-half of the cost," explained Mitsuhiko Nozue, general manager, 2nd Manufacturing and Automotive Industries Solutions Division of NEC.

 http://www.nec.com/enterprise/automotive

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News Roundup from AWS re:Invent

Amazon Web Services remains on a fast growth track and now has over one million active customers. Traffic, as measured in petabytes, on the Amazon S3 cloud storage service is up 137% over last year. The number of "instance hours" on the Amazon EC2 cloud compute service is likewise up 99% y/y.

Here's a roundup of cloud news from this week's AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

New Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) -- makes its possible to run any number of Docker containers across a managed cluster of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances using APIs and other tools. Amazon eliminates the need to install cluster management software, purchase and maintain the cluster hardware, or match hardware inventory to software needs. ECS sets up and manages clusters made up of Docker containers. It launches and terminates the containers and maintains complete information about the state of your cluster. Amazon said ECS can scale to clusters that encompass tens of thousands of containers across multiple Availability Zones.

New Amazon Aurora - a MySQL-compatible database engine. Aurora is a fully-managed, MySQL-compatible, relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Storage is automatically replicated across three AWS Availability Zones (AZs) for durability and high availability, with two copies of the data in each Availability Zone.

Bigger Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes - General Purpose (SSD) can now be scaled up to 16 TB and provide up to 10,000 baseline IOPS (up from 1 TB and 3,000 baseline IOPS). Provisioned IOPS (SSD) can now store up to 16 TB and provide up to 20,000 Provisioned IOPS (up from 1 TB and 4,000 Provisioned IOPS).

New compute-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances based on the Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (code name Haswell) processor, which was custom designed specifically for EC2. It runs at a base speed of 2.9 GHz, and can achieve clock speeds as high as 3.5 GHz with Turbo boost.

New event notifications for Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) --  brings a new level of programmability to cloud storage. Notifications can be issued to Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) or Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) when a new object is added to the bucket or an existing object is overwritten.

New AWS Lambda -- a new way to build and run applications in the cloud that lets you take advantage of your existing programming skills and your knowledge of AWS. Lambda is a zero-administration compute platform. You don't have to configure, launch, or monitor EC2 instances. You don't have to install any operating systems or language environments. Lambda is currently in preview status.

New AWS Service Catalog -- a tool that will allow any IT department to deliver AWS-powered services to internal users while maintaining consistency and control. This could help large IT shops reduce support costs and encourage organizations to realize the benefits of cloud computing.

New AWS Config -- a new service that captures the initial state of a client's AWS resources (EC2 instances and related items to start, with others planned) and the relationships between them, and then tracks creations, deletions, and property changes for analysis, visualization, and archiving.

New AWS Key Management Service (KMS) -- provides the client with centralized control over encryption keys. It makes it easier to implement encryption key management at enterprise scale.

New AWS Tools for Code Management and Deployment -- these are designed to help individual developers, teams of developers, and system administrators store, integrate, and deploy their code on the cloud. For instance, one tool efficiently deploys newly released code to a "fleet" of EC2 instances while taking care to leave as much of the fleet online as possible. It can accommodate fleets that range in size from one instance all the way up to tens of thousands of instances.

Netflix has 10+ PB on AWS S3, with 1.2 PB of reads daily and 100 TB written daily.

https://reinvent.awsevents.com/

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Nokia Demos Small Cell LTE-A Carrier Aggregation of over 200 Mbps

Nokia Networks demonstrated LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) carrier aggregation in small cells delivering a peak data rate of more than 200 Mbps.

The demo, which was conducted at a Nokia lab in Arlington Heights, Illinois, showed small cell LTE-A intra-site carrier aggregation.  The test aggregated 2 x 20 MHz of TD-LTE using a TD-LTE capable Category 6 device resulting in a throughput approaching 220 Mbps.

Nokia said this testing demonstrated that the performance of its Flexi Zone small cells can be doubled using a single micro or pico base station.

Nokia Flexi Zone small cells support up to 600 active users or devices to enable operators to meet future growth in demand. Commercial Flexi Zone small cell deployments are already supporting heavy traffic loads of more than 150 active users per cell – a figure exceeding typical specifications for other small cell products on the market. The installations have also achieved 100% availability, even under high traffic load, while offloading 80% of traffic from the operator’s macro network.

“The market success reflects the ongoing development of our Flexi Zone small cells solution. When we first announced Flexi Zone micro and pico base stations, we did what many pundits thought was impossible by packing a macro sector’s worth of capacity into the industry’s smallest outdoor small cell and bringing full macro software parity,” said Marc Rouanne, executive vice president, mobile broadband, Nokia Networks. “We also promised to show that it would be possible to software upgrade a small cell to LTE-A. Now we’ve done that too.”

http://networks.nokia.com

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Equinix Partners with Datapipe on Hybrid IT for AWS

Equinix announced a partnership with Datapipe to provide managed Hybrid IT Solutions for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The solution leverages Equinix’s global footprint of more than 100 International Business Exchange (IBX®) data centers and combines Equinix’s Cloud Exchange™ interconnection solution with Datapipe’s managed services and the AWS platform.

The companies said their joint solution provides improved security and performance, better control, and higher throughput versus connecting to AWS via the public Internet. It provides direct bandwidth for access to AWS services and the seamless integration with dedicated IT environments, such as complex databases, to support highly available, data-intensive applications. The result is improved user Quality of Experience (QoE) and more effective migration to and adoption of the AWS cloud.

http://www.datapipe.com/
http://www.equinix.com

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Where are SDN and NFV today? @Pica8 Responds

What's been missing in the equation so far have been customers willing to move beyond the study phase, says Steve Garrison, VP of Marketing at Pica8. The focus at Pica8 is how to integrate SDN into an existing Layer 2 Switching / Layer 3 Routing environment.


See 90 second video:
http://youtu.be/UzfK154F3Do

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SK Telecom Carries 2G/3G over LTE

SK Telecom has developed and commercialized "2G/3G over LTE" technology -- a world first.

"2G/3G over LTE" enhances the stability of 2G/3G mobile networks by utilizing LTE network as backhaul instead of fixed-line 2G/3G infrastructure. SK Telecom said the wireless backhaul network could prove to be more resilient than fixed-line 2G/3G infrastructure in the event of man-made or natural disasters.  In Korea, mobile networks typically have structural redundancy.  The LTE network can replace one of the two fiber-optic transmission networks in the redundancy network structure, thus enhancing the operator’s network building and operating efficiency.

SK Telecom plans to apply the technology to 600 base stations by 2016.

Choi Seung-won, Senior Vice President and Head of Network Engineering Office said, “With 2G/3G over LTE, SK Telecom’s 2G and 3G customers will be able to experience a more stable and seamless service. Our efforts will continue to keep improving customer satisfaction through new and innovative technologies that enhance the quality of service for all our customers.”

http://www.sktelecom.com/en/press/detail.do?idx=1092


SK Telecom demonstrated live LTE-Advanced Tri-Band Carrier aggregation in its commercial network, achieving downlink speeds of up to 300 Mbps. The demonstration, which was conducted in partnership with Ericsson, combined three separate bands of 10 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz bandwidth.  SK Telecom believes the demonstration will serve as yet another opportunity for the company to solidify its position as a leader in LTE-Advanced.

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ZTE's Optical Transmission Record: 16 Tbps over 3,500km

ZTE announced an optical transport milestone:  24-hour, error-free transmission at 16 Tbps over 3,500 km.

The test used ZTE's WDM/OTN platforms with anced Nyquist WDM spectral compression optical modulation and optical impairments mitigation coherent reception techniques in the C band.  Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA)  were deployed with 100 km span separations. The test achieved a spectral efficiency of 4bit/Hz/s.

"The successful test will enable ZTE to help operators increase network capacity several times over longer distances,” said Chen Yufei, Vice General Manager of Bearer Network Products at ZTE. “The strength of ZTE’s T-bit transmission technology helps our customers achieve sustainable growth in network bandwidth and reduce total cost of ownership.”

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201411/t20141112_428988.html

• In September 2013, ZTE became the first equipment manufacturer to implement single-channel directly-detected 50Gb/s optical 64QAM-OFDM signal transmission and receiving and realize realtime fiber transmission of the signal, breaking the world record of single-channel transmission rate of 10Gb/s optical OFDM signal.
  
• In October 2013, ZTE worked with Beijing Institute, China Telecom to complete 1T ultra long-distance optical transmission realtime system experiment and make the world record of realtime transmission over 3200km. In March 2014, ZTE became the first in the world to implement realtime transmission of dual carrier 100Gb/s directly detecting 16QAM-OFDM signal.

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Nokia Networks and HP Advance their NFV Partnership

Nokia Networks and HP are moving ahead with their partnership to offer a telco cloud solution compliant with ETSI NFV principles and designed to provide operators with an open source-based cloud.

The companies said they will provide telco operators with an integrated solution enabling Nokia Networks virtualized network functions (VNFs) to run on a cloud infrastructure layer that integrates HP data center hardware, hypervisor and virtual infrastructure manager, based on HP Helion OpenStack technology.

Telco cloud virtualized network function management will be performed by Nokia’s Cloud Application Manager.  The cooperation extends beyond hardware and software to encompass the technical, services and commercial capabilities needed to deliver, maintain and operate a telco cloud.

Nokia Networks is already delivering the first commercial NFV solution which brings cloud technology to life with services such as Voice over LTE (VoLTE). It expects its virtualized network functions and cloud management solutions based on HP Helion OpenStack with carrier grade technologies to be available by mid-2015.

“Services are fundamental to enable the transformation that the cloud promises to operators for telco and IT applications. Working together, Nokia Networks and HP can deliver the expertise and technological leadership that mobile operators need to gain the full benefits of a complete telco and IT cloud solution – and all under one contract for simplicity,” said Igor Leprince, executive vice president Global Services, Nokia Networks.

“Operators want the same advantages enterprises have experienced with open source-based cloud solutions. HP Helion OpenStack with carrier grade technologies provides them with a clear path to get there,” said Saar Gillai, senior vice president/COO, HP Cloud and general manager, NFV, HP. “Together, Nokia Networks and HP plan to deliver a pre-integrated solution leveraging our cloud platform and their VNFs to provide customers with a simplified and faster means to deploy NFV services.”

http://networks.nokia.com
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1837792#.VGVjh_m-1WA

• In February 2014, Nokia and HP first announced a Telco Cloud partnership.

• Why OPNFV? Prodip Sen, CTO for Network Functions Virtualization at HP and Reino Tammela, Head of Nokia's Technology Center in Espoo, discuss the reasons for a new industry initiative outside of ETSI's ISG for NFV.  The new project aims to accelerate deployments. The jump-start does not aim to replace on-going standards development but to take a pragmatic approach to market demands.

http://youtu.be/XoOPhcSr4Z0

At the end of September, The Linux Foundation launched the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV) with the goal of accelerating the commercial introduction of NFV products and services.

OPNFV will establish a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform that industry peers will build together to advance the evolution of NFV and ensure consistency, performance and interoperability among multiple open source components. Because multiple open source NFV building blocks already exist, OPNFV will work with upstream projects to coordinate continuous integration and testing while filling development gaps.

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Microsoft Acquires Aorato for Enterprise Cloud Security

Microsoft has acquired Aorato, a developer of enterprise security solutions.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

Aorato, which is based in Israel, uses machine learning to detect suspicious activity on a company’s network. Key to Aorato’s approach is the Organizational Security Graph, a living, continuously-updated view of all of the people and machines accessing an organization’s Windows Server Active Directory (AD).

Microsoft said the acquisition will give customers a new level of protection against threats through better visibility into their identity infrastructure.

http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/13/microsoft-acquires-aorato-give-enterprise-customers-better-defense-digital-intruders-hybrid-cloud-world/

http://www.aorato.com/

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Mavenir Acquires Stoke for LTE Security Gateways

Mavenir Systems agreed to acquire Stoke, a developer of mobile gateways, for $2.9 million in cash plus the assumption of approximately $1.9 million of indebtedness..

Stoke, which is based in Santa Clara, California, supplies LTE Security Gateways. Its customers include NTT Docomo and Softbank. Stoke also has relationships with integrators including Net One Systems and Macnica Networks in Japan and Samsung in South Korea.

Mavenir said the acquisition will help expand its global reach, especially in Japan and South Korea.  The LTE Security Gateway adds to its product portfolio.

"The transition to all-IP requires robust, high-performance security solutions at the access and interconnect points to 4G LTE networks. Combined with our Session Border Controller (SBC) and evolved Packet Data Gateway (ePDG), Stoke's LTE Security Gateway (SEG) enables Mavenir to deliver a complete, secure, end to end solution to our customers globally," stated Pardeep Kohli, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mavenir Systems.

http://mavenir.com/

• In 2010, Stoke announced that DOCOMO was deploying its SSX-3000 gateway to aggregate LTE eNodeB radio transmission base stations.  Functional verification of the Stoke SSX-3000 as well as its proposal and sale to DOCOMO was handled by Net One Systems, Stoke's distributor in Japan. 

• In January 2011, Stoke raised $17 million in Series E funding for its mobile broadband gateways. This funding round was led by new investor Focus Ventures, participation from existing investors included DAG Ventures, Integral Capital Partners, Pilot House Ventures, Net One Systems Co., DoCoMo Capital Ltd, Mobile Internet Capital, Inc, Sequoia Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. This brought Stoke's total funding to approximately $92 million. 

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Nokia Networks Confirms 3G Contract with Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel has awarded a 3G contract to Nokia Networks to upgrade its 3G network in the Mumbai, West Bengal and Bihar telecom circles.

The upgrade, which will use Nokia’s latest Single RAN Advanced platform, will be an India-first dual band, dual carrier 3G network implementation of refarmed 900 MHz spectrum paired with Mumbai’s existing 3G network on 2100 MHz. This will enable higher throughput and thus improved 3G services for Bharti Airtel’s customers.

Under the contract, Nokia Networks will supply its Single RAN Advanced platform, based on its energy-efficient Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station**. This multi-standard radio platform is optimal because it will also support Bharti Airtel in its TD-LTE rollout and pave the way to FDD-LTE in the near future. In addition, Nokia Networks will deploy its Flexi Lite Base Station, a small all-in-one base station optimized for indoor and outdoor micro-cell deployments to provide the best coverage in densely crowded areas. Nokia will also supply its extremely compact, highly scalable and flexible multi-technology, all-IP multicontroller RNC (mcRNC).

“This deal bolsters our long-term partnership with Bharti Airtel, and we are committed to helping the operator provide further improved mobile broadband experience for its customers,” said Sandeep Girotra, Vice President and Head of India region, Nokia Networks. “While Nokia’s Single RAN Advanced platform will ensure a reliable 3G mobile broadband connectivity, our comprehensive services will ensure smooth deployment.”

http://networks.nokia.com/

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