Avago Intros 255mW 100BASE-FX SFP Module

Avago Technologies introduced an ultra-low power Fast Ethernet small form-factor pluggable (SFP) fiber optic transceiver module device designed for industrial automation, controls and networking applications.

The device features a redesigned chip set for LED control, diagnostic monitoring interface (DMI) and signal processing, which significantly reduces the module power dissipation. Compared with the previous generation device, the AFBR-57E6APZ consumes 42% less in power while delivering superior electrical and optical performance.

Some highlights:

• Low power consumption: 255 mW (typ), 405 mW (max)
• Industrial operating temperature: -40 °C to +85 °C
• Link distances up to 2 km using 50/125um or 62.5/125um multimode fiber
• Compatible with SFF-8074i and SFF-8472 MSA specifications
• Compatible with 100BASE-FX version of IEEE 802.3u

“Fast Ethernet is widely used in industrial automation, controls and networking. As more fiber optic nodes are added to the network, cumulative heat dissipation becomes an industrial concern prompting the need for low power fiber optic transceiver solutions,” said Martin Weigert, vice president and general manager of the Industrial Fiber Product Division (IFPD) at Avago. “Our new ultra-low power 100BASE-FX SFP module is an ideal solution that addresses the power issue that affects many of our industrial customers, enabling them to simplify the network rack design and avoid having to use expensive cooling fans and ventilation in their systems.”

http://www.avagotech.com/products/industrial-fiber-optics/industrial-fiber-optic-transceivers/sfp/afbr-57E6apz

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Oclaro Samples 100G QSFP28 Client-Side Transceiver for Data Centers

Oclaro has begun sampling a 100G QSFP28 client-side transceiver that meets both the CWDM4 MSA and CLR4 Alliance optical interface specifications, as well as the IEEE 802.3bm CAUI-4 electrical interface specification.

The new transceiver boasts a low power consumption of 3.5 Watts and high transmission performance quality through the use of Oclaro's internal uncooled 1310nm 28Gbps DML technology.  It is suited for 100G interconnections between data center switches in addition to interfaces in high-end routers and packet-optical transport systems.

"The key to our success in the 100G pluggable transceiver market has been our proprietary indium phosphide laser technology," said Yves LeMaitre, President of Oclaro's Optical Connectivity Business. "With our new QSFP28 100G transceiver, mega-scale data center operators will be able to transition from 40G to 100G on their existing single mode fiber infrastructure without significantly expanding footprint, cost or power consumption."

http://www.oclaro.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Acquires Mformation for Mobile Device Management

Alcatel-Lucent has acquired privately-held Mformation, a provider of mobile device management solutions for mobile operators, service providers and enterprises. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Alcatel-Lucent said Mformation’s software products will extend and enhance the capabilities of its Motive Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution to provide service providers with an end-to-end, integrated and cost-efficient device management solution across home, mobile and enterprise networks.

Mformation, headquartered in Woodbridge, NJ, will be incorporated into Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Platforms organization, providing service providers and enterprises with a secure, scalable, application-independent IoT security and control platform for use across multiple industries including automotive, healthcare, utilities, manufacturing and the digital home.

Mformation was founded in 1999.  The company claims more than 20 service provider customers around the world, managing more than 500 million devices.

https://www.alcatel-lucent.com

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Gulf Bridge Upgrades with Ciena

Gulf Bridge International (GBI) has selected Ciena's Converged Packet-Optical Networking solutions to upgrade its networks in the Middle East. The deployment of upgrades of 100G and 200G wavelengths on GBI’s submarine segments, is believed to be the first deployment of such technology in the region.

Ciena said its 6500 Packet-Optical platform, equipped with the new WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipset, combined with GeoMesh submarine solutions and E-Suite integrated packet switching, will add more intelligence to the GBI network, as well as improved ease of operations, maintenance and future capacity expansions, including an option to perform future upgrades.

Ed McCormack,  Vice President and General Manager of Submarine Systems at Ciena, comments, “With Ciena’s solutions underpinning GBI’s submarine and terrestrial cables, GBI will have a fully optimized end-to-end network. This massive capacity enhancement also means that GBI is well positioned to accommodate growth and help its customers facilitate the demand for high-bandwidth applications, such as those needed for video and cloud services.”

http://www.ciena.com

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Comcast Business Forms Enterprise Services Team for Fortune 1000 Accounts

Comcast Business has formed a new Enterprise Services unit that will target Fortune 1000 companies and other large enterprises that have multiple locations nationwide.

The new Comcast Enterprise Services team will offer a portfolio of managed enterprise solutions that includes Broadband, Ethernet, Voice, Router, Security, Business Continuity and Wi-Fi. The team will design, build, implement and manage customized communications networks for large enterprise customers.  The new product portfolio will be branded "Managed Enterprise Solutions."

Comcast also announced the acquisition of Contingent Network Services, a national technology deployment and managed services company that helps enterprise customers outsource their day-to-day network operations. Financial terms were not disclosed. Contingent provides deployment and managed services to a number of well-known national brands. The company will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Comcast Business and will continue to operate under the Contingent brand name.

"We’re committed to expanding and enhancing our offerings for businesses of all sizes, and having the expertise, tools and portfolio in place to deliver customized service packages to nationwide enterprises is a key part of our growth strategy," said Bill Stemper, president of Comcast Business. "Large companies need a provider who can help them manage complex networks, develop business continuity plans and integrate cloud-based applications. Our entry into this segment of the market will introduce new innovation and choice."

http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/news-feed/comcast-business-announces-new-unit-targeting-fortune-1000-enterprises

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Telstra Launches 600 Mbps-capable Category 11 Device

Telstra announced the world’s first 4G LTE Advanced Category 11 (Cat 11) 600 Mbps capable deployment on a commercial network. The announcement was made in partnership with NETGEAR, Ericsson and Qualcomm.

Specifically,the Telstra Mobile Network will now support a new WiFi 4GX Advanced III Mobile Broadband Hotspot featuring 3 band Carrier Aggregation technology.  The new Telstra Wi-Fi 4GX Advanced III mobile hotspot supports up to 15 WiFi-enabled devices simultaneously.

The early Cat 11 enabled footprint is concentrated on the CBD’s of Eastern Seaboard capital cities; initially Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, and in selected popular holiday locations. The network reach supporting these Cat 11 speeds will also continue to expand in line with growing mobile data demand.

The announcement comes one month after the launch of the first Cat 9 (450 Mbps) devices on the Telstra Mobile Network.

“When you combine the power of Qualcomm Technologies’ Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 LTE modem with Qualcomm VIVE 11ac, Ericsson’s LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation technology on Telstra’s network, and the NETGEAR AirCard® 810S, it really is an unbeatable technology that we are pleased to offer our customers before anyone else in the world.”

http://www.telstra.com

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Microsoft Integrates Office Apps into Salesforce

Microsoft and Salesforce are extending their strategic partnership to connect the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to Microsoft Office productivity apps and services, including Skype for Business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10.

This builds on two new integrations announced in October 2014: Salesforce App for Outlook, which works with Outlook 2013 and Office 365, and Salesforce1 Mobile App for Microsoft Office.

"Customer success is at the heart of everything we do at Salesforce, including our partnership with Microsoft," said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. "Our collaboration has been so successful, now we're doubling down and delivering even more innovation that will help our mutual customers be more productive and connect with their customers in a whole new way."

http://www.salesforce.com
http://www.microsoft.com

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Mobile Malware Report Finds Plenty of Risks

About 80 percent of malware infections detected on mobile networks have been traced to Windows-based computers and laptops, according to a newly published Motive Security Labs H1 2015 Malware Report from Alcatel-Lucent.

Alcatel-Lucent said hardcore professional cybercriminals have invested heavily in the Windows malware ecosystem, making it the favorite platform for launching attacks on the mobile ecosystem. The Motive report also found that cybercriminals are quickly taking advantage of unique opportunities in the mobile ecosystem to spread spyware. In fact, 10 of the 25 most prolific threats on smartphones are in the mobile spyware category and are often delivered bundled with games and free software.

In examining the top 25 threats to mobile devices, the Motive report concluded that the main threats are currently:

• Spyphone apps that track calls, text messages, location, e-mail and browsing; 
• ‘Scareware’ apps that try to extort money by claiming to have encrypted the phone’s data;
• Identity theft apps that steal personal information from the device;
• Banking ‘Trojans’ that attempt to steal banking credentials and credit card numbers;   
• SMS Trojans that make a living by sending text messages to ‘premium’ numbers;
• Malicious adware that uses personal information, without consent, to deliver annoying targeted ads.
• A proxy app allowing hackers to anonymously browse the web through an infected phone - at the owner’s expense.

https://www.alcatel-lucent.com/

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Dimension Data and EMC Eye Hybrid Cloud Opportunities

Dimension Data and EMC announced a strategic alliance to speed the adoption of hybrid cloud as a platform for the mid-size enterprise. The companies are collaborating on solutions that span private cloud on or off premises, public and hybrid cloud including advanced managed services for storage. The alliance features flexible consumption based pricing models on storage, cloud and managed services. To ensure client success, a dedicated team of sales, technical and marketing specialists from Dimension Data and EMC will align client workloads and applications to the best solutions.

http://www.emc.com

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Rob Lloyd Joins Hyperloop as CEO

Rob Lloyd, the former president of Sales and Development at Cisco, has joined Hyperloop Technologies as CEO.

Hyperloop Tech is a visionary start-up working on a new mode of transportation involving levitating cars traveling at high-speed through air-evacuated tubes. The company, which was inspired by Elon Musk as an alternative to high-speed rail in California, currently has about 50 employees and offices in Los Angeles.

In a blog posting, Lloyd says Hyperloop Tech. plans to embrace a design/build/transfer and operate business model.

http://hyperlooptech.com/

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Agora Raises $20 Million for its WebRTC Platform

Agora, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, raised $20 million in Series B funding for its communications as a service (CaaS) for enterprises.

Agora enables premium, Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) for any application through a simple SDK. It goes beyond current WebRTC services by providing consistent quality of experience (QoE) on a global scale as an easy-to-use and cost-effective cloud service. Agora uses a globally distributed cloud infrastructure and advanced algorithms to preserve premium communications quality across mobile and other devices and varying network conditions. Agora's 65 global data centers and HD audio codecs minimize latency for real-time communications, managing background noise and up to 70% packet loss, while supporting as many as 2,000 users in a single session.

"We are pleased that our original investors continue to support Agora with a substantial Series B round of venture capital funding," says Tony Zhao, CEO and founder of Agora. "Agora meets the needs of tomorrow's applications to deliver richer communications between people around the world from their mobile devices," Zhao adds.

Agora is backed by venture capital firms Morningside, SIG, GGV Capital, ShunWei, and IDG.

http://www.agora.io

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Salesforce Brings Big Data Analytics to IoT Cloud

Salesforce unveiled its IoT Cloud aimed at connecting billions of events with its leading enterprise platform as a service.  Salesforce IoT Cloud features a massively scalable, real-time event processing engine for unlocking insights from the connected things, customer interactions, sensors, and digital streams.

IoT Cloud's capabilities include:

• Listen to the World at IoT Scale: IoT Cloud connects everything to Salesforce. In addition to the Internet of Things, connecting to phones, wearables, windmills and industrial turbines and other devices, IoT Cloud connects data from websites, social interactions and more to Salesforce. By connecting the billions of real-time events and digital content with Salesforce, the IoT Cloud brings customer context to transactional data.
• Trigger Actions with Real-time Rules: With IoT Cloud, business users can use intuitive, point- and-click tools to define, modify and set rules and logic for events that can trigger actions across Salesforce. A global fleet management company, for example, can enforce passenger safety standards by setting filters for "hard brakes" or "hard accelerations" and defining rules that trigger in-car sensors to log service cases reporting possible instances of erratic driving. Or, a national retailer holding a holiday sale can set rules based on loyalty program status, inventory or sales performance, triggering retail beacons to send discount offers to in-store shoppers in real-time.
• 1:1 Proactive Engagement through Salesforce: IoT Cloud seamlessly works across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to surface insights and trigger real-time 1:1, personalized actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process. For example, a thermostat provider can parse through billions of events gathered from weather forecasts, sensors and temperature settings to proactively alert customers on how to manage their HVAC usage within their predefined budget. Or, a vehicle assistance service partnering with an auto brand can send personalized offers on behalf of local dealers based on sensor data that tracks fluid levels and mileage.

IoT Cloud launch partners include ARM, Etherios, Informatica, PTC ThingWorx and Xively LogMeln.  The service will be in pilot the first half of 2016 with generally availability later in the year.

"Salesforce is turning the Internet of Things into the Internet of Customers," said Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce."The IoT Cloud will allow businesses to create real-time 1:1, proactive actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process, delivering a new kind of customer success."

http://www.salesforce.com/iot-cloud

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Brocade Releases New OpenDaylight-based SDN Controller

Brocade introduced its SDN Controller 2.0, a commercial distribution of the OpenDaylight (ODL) controller based on the Lithium ODL release.

Some highlights:

• Enhancements to the Open vSwitch Database (OVSDB) interface and the OpenStack Modular Layer 2 plug-in (certified in Red Hat's Juno distribution) enabling cloud providers to completely use an open software stack to manage their data center infrastructure
• OpenDaylight clustering for improved scalability and stability
• A new user interface for applications to provide a consistent and intuitive view of the network under control

Brocade said its SDN Controller is continuously built from OpenDaylight code, free of proprietary extensions. The company provides multi-vendor compatibility testing and single-source support for Brocade SDN Controller environments.

The company also announced two SDN applications:

• Brocade Topology Manager: a free SDN application that displays discovered network topology, allowing administrators to create a list of nodes and conduct simple searches for nodes. 
• Brocade Flow Manager: extends the capabilities of the Brocade Topology Manager by enabling users to view and interact with the network topology using near-real-time information to perform traffic engineering and network segmentation based on end-to-end flow views. 

"Brocade's strategy is driven by the very close collaboration we have with our leading service provider and enterprise customers to deliver unique networking products and solutions that speed their transition to the New IP, and software is increasingly central to that pursuit," said Kelly Herrell, senior vice president and general manager, Software Networking, Brocade. "Delivering open solutions like the Brocade SDN Controller 2.0 and related applications, packaged with a full complement of education and services, will facilitate the smooth journey to SDN for customers worldwide."

http://www.brocade.com/

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise Targets $50 Billion Annual Revenue, Faster Growth, Smaller Workforce

Hewlett Packard hosted an all-day Securities Analyst Meeting ahead of its pending split into two independent company.  Here are some highlights of the executive presentations for Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The new Hewlett Packard Enterprise will have more than $50 billion in annual revenue and will trade under the ticker symbol "HPE".

Hewlett Packard Enterprise expects 25,000 to 30,000 people to leave the company, primarily associated with the ES transformation.  This will result in a GAAP-only charge of approximately $2.7 billion, beginning in the fourth quarter fiscal 2015. The cash impact will be approximately $2.6 billion over the next three years, beginning in fiscal 2016.

"Hewlett Packard Enterprise will be smaller and more focused than HP is today, and we will have a broad and deep portfolio of businesses that will help enterprises transition to the new style of business," said Meg Whitman. "As a separate company, we are better positioned than ever to meet the evolving needs of our customers around the world."

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it is uniquely positioned to guide customers on a journey to a Hybrid Infrastructure, whether that includes public cloud (HP Helion, AWS, Azure or others), Virtual Private Cloud, Managed Private Cloud or Traditional Data Center. While it sees opportunities in cloud, the company believes traditional IT and private cloud will continue to dominate the market. Nearly 90% of IT spend over the next three years will be in traditional IT and private cloud.

Cloud revenue is expected to be about $3 billion in FY15 and monetized across the entire portfolio. The company expects cloud revenue in fiscal 2015 to be approximately $3 billion, growing over 20% annually for the next several years. This estimate includes revenue from the enterprise group, software and enterprise services segments which support customers' cloud build and consume.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Inc. will consist of four main groups:

Enterprise Group - includes networking, all-flash storage, HP Apollo servers, converged systems, Aruba and TS Consulting

Annual Revenue of $27.8 billion, operating profit of $4.0 billion, operating margin of 14.
Approximately 50% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's revenue will come from EG, spread across servers, storage, networking, and technology services.

Enterprise Services - includes cloud services
Annual Revenue of $20.3 billion, operating profit of $1.0 billion, operating margin of 4.9%
The Enterprise Services group is undertaking further cost reduction measures, office consolidations, data center consolidations and headcount reduction.

Software - includes ADM, Big Data and Security
Annual Revenue of $3.8 billion, operating profit of $0.8 billion, operating margin of 22.3

Financial Services - includes pre-provisioning, asset recovery and cloud migration
Annual revenue of $3.3 billion, operating profit of $0.4 billion, operating margin of 11.2%

Archived webcast materials are online.
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/news-and-events/hp-investor-events/upcoming-events/09-15-2015.aspx

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Deutsche Telekom Extends Cloud Service to China with Huawei

Deutsche Telekom is extending its public cloud offering to the Chinese market in partnership with Huawei.  Huawei provides the hardware for the Deutsche Telekom cloud services while Deutsche Telekom ensures reliable operation in a German data center.

“Customers will receive both cost-effective resources as well as quality and reliability from German data centers with our product,” says Dr. Ferri Abolhassan, Managing Director of T-Systems and responsible for the IT Division. “We're unveiling this here in Shanghai in order to help Chinese businesses expand their operations into Europe. In a second step we are also planning to do the reverse with European businesses moving into China. Thus we will be one of the first companies in Germany to integrate actively into the ‘Digital Silk Road’.” Both companies have also joined forces to work on research and development for new cloud solutions. Experts forecast 30 percent annual growth of the cloud market in China through 2018.

http://www.telekom.com/media/company/287814

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Hibernia Express Transatlantic Subsea Cable Ready for Service

The Hibernia Express transatlantic cable is now ready for service.

The new 4,600km ultra low latency submarine cable connects Halifax, Nova Scotia to Slough, England and Cork, Ireland. It carries optical transport services up to 100Gbps speeds and is capable of 200Gbps service on select segments. The 6-fiber-pair cable is optimized for lowest latency performance, offering an unmatched roundtrip delay of sub-60 milliseconds on the New York to London route. It is engineered to potentially scale up to 400Gbps per circuit and up.

“The Hibernia Networks team has demonstrated an unwavering commitment towards completing the first transatlantic subsea cable in over a decade and we are thrilled to announce its official launch,” states Bjarni Thorvardarson, CEO of Hibernia Networks. “We are proud to have accomplished this transformational milestone, and more importantly, we are proud to deliver the lowest latency, highest performance capacity required to facilitate real-time access to information and content by the ever growing global communications community.”

http://www.hibernianetworks.com/hibernia_express

• Hibernia Express utilizes a 6-fiber-pair submarine cable, with a portion of the fibers optimized for lowest latency and a portion optimized for 100X100 Gpbs design capacity. The total cross-sectional design capacity of the cable will be over 53 Tbps. Hibernia Express will initially launch with 100 Gbps transmission capacity using TE SubCom’s C100 SLTE platform.

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Qualcomm Acquires Capsule Technologie for Telehealth

Qualcomm announced its acquisition of Capsule Technologie, a leading global provider of medical device integration and clinical data management solutions with more than 1,930 hospital clients in 38 countries.

Capsule's medical device integration and clinical data management platform enables data collection, EMR and health IT system integration and monitoring in one of the largest ecosystems of connected devices inside the hospital. The acquisition extends Qualcomm Life's connected health offerings into the hospital, ultimately creating a more seamless care continuum from hospital to home and all points in between.

Capsule will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Life.

"Qualcomm is focused on strengthening its position in specific Internet of Everything verticals, like healthcare," said Derek Aberle, president, Qualcomm Incorporated. "The acquisition of Capsule expands the breadth of our healthcare platform, enabling us to provide connectivity solutions for the entire care continuum and create one of the world's largest connected health ecosystems. This will be an important step in advancing the Internet of Medical Things."

http://www.capsuletech.com/
http://www.qualcomm.com

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FireEye Calls Out SYNful Knock - A Cisco router implant

FireEye published a technical overview of SYNful Knock, a stealthy modification of a Cisco router's firmware image that can be used to maintain persistence within a victim's network. The backdoor malware reportedly has been confirmed in a number of router implants spread across four different countries:  Ukraine, Philippines, Mexico, and India.

FireEye warned that this attack vector is potentially severe.

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/09/synful_knock_-_acis.html

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Plexxi Raises $35 Million for SDN

Plexxi, a start-up pioneering next-generation converged networking solutions, raised a $35 million round of financing .

Plexxi’s products – Plexxi Control and the Plexxi Switch – and market solutions create an optimized network that dynamically helps applications perform better.

The round was led by a new investor with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. This brings Plexxi’s total funding to $83 million.

“We are experiencing a generational shift to a new era of IT in which applications and data are rapidly increasing demand for a new agile and scale-out networking architecture,” said Rich Napolitano, CEO of Plexxi. “Plexxi represents a transformative converged networking and application-centric approach to traditional legacy networking. 2015 has been a record-breaking year for Plexxi as we gain a foothold in federal, financial services, education and service providers markets here in the United States and around the world.”

http://www.plexxi.com/

• Plexxi is based in Nashua, New Hampshire.

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Broadcom Adds Wi-Fi/Bluetooth to Automotive Silicon Portfolio

Broadcom introduced two new connectivity chips in its automotive portfolio for providing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for in-car infotainment and telematics systems.

The new solutions include a 5G WiFi/Bluetooth Smart 2X2 MIMO combo chip with Real Simultaneous Dual Band (RSDB) support as well as a stand-alone tri-mode Bluetooth Smart (version 4.2) system-on-a-chip (SoC).

"Broadcom's new automotive-grade chips enable car makers and tier one suppliers to keep pace with the rapidly evolving mobile and IoT ecosystem by providing immediate access to the latest in wireless connectivity technologies," said Richard Barrett, Broadcom Director of Automotive Wireless Connectivity. "By tailoring our products to meet the stringent quality and environmental demands of the automotive industry, we can significantly expand our footprint and stay ahead of the competition in this fast-growing market."

http://www.broadcom.com

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