T-Mobile US to Launch NB-IoT, Plans Nationwide 5G in 2020

T-Mobile US announced plans to light up Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) nationwide in 2018. The company conducted North America’s first-ever NB-IoT field tests earlier this year in conjunction with Qualcomm and Ericsson. T-Mobile now expects to launch the first commercial NB-IoT network in Las Vegas, paving the way for nationwide NB-IoT in mid-2018. T-Mobile also announced the first NB-IoT modules from Sierra Wireless, Telit and u-blox are already being tested in its labs, with expected availability in early 2018.

Several other big announcements this week from the company:

• T-Mobile confirmed that will also support Cat-M – another IoT standard for solutions requiring voice support – in 2018.
• T-Mobile plans to use a portion of its 600 MHz spectrum to deliver a 5G network from coast to coast by 2020. This will be augmented with its millimeter wave spectrum and push for mid-band 5G spectrum.
• T-Mobile also expanded its SyncUP product family, unveiling T-Mobile SyncUP FLEET, a new fleet management solution for businesses. SyncUP FLEET includes connected hardware and a cloud-based platform with management tools. Customers simply plug the SyncUP FLEET device into each vehicle’s standard on-board diagnostics (OBDII) port and create their online account to get started.

“The Un-carrier team is unstoppable. Not only have we built America’s best unlimited network, but this magenta army is also moving at a breakneck pace to support the future of connected devices in a 5G world,” said Neville Ray, Chief Technology Officer of T-Mobile. “Our IoT customers can rest well knowing their tech is future proof with the Un-carrier.”

“The Duopoly’s networks are already congested -- just look no further than Verizon’s recent changes to its unlimited plans!” said Ray. “And here’s my prediction: as we move toward 5G, they won’t have enough low-band spectrum to power smartphones AND the massive world of IoT – leaving their customers in the lurch. We have different plans for T-Mobile customers.”

http://www.tmobile.com

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SK Telecom Expands LTE-A Pro Coverage to 75 Cities

SK Telecom has expanded the coverage of its LTE-A Pro services – providing up to 700Mbps to 900Mbps speeds – to 75 cities and 31 counties in Korea. The carrier first activated five-band carrier aggregation LTE-A Pro service in June 2017 and has been expanding aggressively since then.

SK Telecom said subscribers can experience up to 900Mbps data throughput in major commercial districts throughout Korea, including Gangnam, Hongdae, Sinsa (Garosu-gil), Yeouido, Jamsil, Myeondong, Jongno in Seoul; Seomyeon in Busan; Dongseongno in Daegu; Chungjangno in Gwangju; Samsan-dong in Ulsan; Daejeon City Hall; Gochang and Wanju in North Jeolla Province; and Gwangyang, Naju, Boseung, Yeosu, Yeongam and Haenam in South Jeolla Province.

Users will need a premium smartphones embedded with the Exynos 9 mobile chipset, such as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8.

http://www.globalskt.com/home/info/2138

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Amdocs launches NFV powered by ONAP

Amdocs introduced its Network Function Virtualization (NFV) powered by Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) – a portfolio featuring modular capabilities that accelerate service design, virtualization and operating capabilities on demand.

Amdocs said its goal here was to develop network virtualization software that is capacity aware and that wass created using open source technology from ONAP. Amdocs NFV powered by ONAP is the first and most comprehensive software and services offering that leverages open source networking technology, and can be deployed either locally or in the public cloud using modern DevOps adoption techniques.

Amdocs is a founding creator of a number of significant modules of ONAP, including Amdocs Service Design and Create to automate service design, and Amdocs Active Inventory for a unified live view of services powered by ONAP.

Amdocs is currently working with many early adopter operators in areas such as service design and creation, on-boarding of virtualized service functions, monitoring of active inventory in hybrid networks and the continuous, elastic maintenance of the network itself. This addresses the needs of operators seeking adaptable, scalable, software-driven networks based on cloud and microservices technologies.

“Amdocs brings unique expertise derived from working with ONAP’s early adopters, including North American carriers that include Bell, and European carriers such as Orange, to help service providers drive value from virtualization and this offering lays the framework for additional carrier-grade enhancements as the ONAP code matures. Open source brings unparalleled agility and innovation to the market. In such a dynamic environment, it is important that the industry is able to package open source contributions into a mature capability set for live network operations.  This is what we have achieved with the Amdocs NFV powered by ONAP professional portfolio”, said Gary Miles, general manager at Amdocs.  “It represents a brand new frontier for the communications and media industry and addresses the many time to market challenges facing carriers who want to rapidly launch new virtual services, and gain the future proof advantages of ONAP open source technology today.”

 “Amdocs’ open network partner ecosystem of industry leading vendors has created more than 80 Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), delivering innovative NFV use-cases that speed up complex multi-vendor service deployments. This is complemented by a portfolio of professional services to fast-track NFV strategic planning, implementation and operations/assurance, as well as integration to existing operational and business support systems, essential to commercializing virtual network services for our customers now and in the future.”

http://www.amdocs.com

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KDDI and Samsung prove 5G mmWave works at 190 kmh

KDDI and Samsung Electronics completed a series of 5G tests which demonstrate the viability and performance of 5G millimeter wave mobility solutions while traveling at speeds over 190km per hour.

The demonstration, which took place at 'Everland SPEEDWAY' in Korea, involved a battery of individual tests to examine the performance of Samsung's end-to-end 5G mmWave technology. Specifically, as a vehicle accelerated from 0 to 205km per hour on the race track between multiple 5G base stations, the test measured and evaluated a variety of metrics, including handover interruption time, uplink and downlink throughput stability, and latency stability (or "jitter").

In addition, KDDI and Samsung also demonstrated a successful handover scenario, with Samsung's 5G device attaching to the 5G base station as it approached the service area, and successfully being handed over to the target cell at a speed of 192km per hour (GPS speed).

Woojune Kim, Senior Vice President and Head of Next Generation Strategy in Network Business at Samsung Electronics, said, "It is becoming increasingly important that we accelerate our focus on 5G's ability to meet a growing number of performance metrics. Until now, peak bandwidth has been the common refrain, and certainly a big component of the future of 5G. However, the test we conducted with KDDI will help us build a more diverse portfolio of future 5G use cases."

"The trial successfully showcased stable performance under high-speed mobility conditions which will dramatically increase the service experience of users in vehicles," said Akira Matsunaga, Senior Director, Mobile Network Technical Development at KDDI. "We will continue our joint efforts with Samsung to test next generation technology to unprecedented levels and discover new service cases."

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/networks/insights/news/kddi-and-samsung-break-track-record-in-high-speed-5g-mobility-test

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SK Telecom and Bharti Airtel form Strategic Partnership

SK Telecom, Korea’s largest telecommunications company, and Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecommunications services provider, announced a strategic partnership under which Airtel will leverage SK Telecom’s expertise to build the most advanced telecom network in India.

Areas of collaboration include bespoke software to dramatically improve network experience, leveraging advanced digital tools including machine learning, big data and building customized tools to improve network planning based on every customer’s device experience. The two companies will also collaborate to evolve standards for 5G, NFV, SDN and IoT. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN) and Internet of Things (IoT), and jointly work towards building an enabling ecosystem for the introduction of these technologies in the Indian context.

“SK Telecom is delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Bharti Airtel, a global leading mobile operator,” said Park Jung-ho, the President and CEO of SK Telecom. “SK Telecom will work closely with Bharti to achieve new network innovations so as to deliver a greater value to Bharti’s customers.”

“We are extremely delighted to announce this partnership with the world’s leading operator when it comes to technology understanding and expertise. This partnership will bring a dramatically improved experience to Airtel customers in India by leveraging the expertise of a company that has built one of the best mobile broadband networks in the world,” Said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel.

http://www.globalskt.com

http://www.airtel.in/

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Charter tests 5G with Samsung

Charter Communications is conducting 5G and 4G LTE wireless networks lab and field trials at various locations in the U.S. in partnership with Samsung Electronics America. The trials, which began this summer, will run through the end of the year.

The 5G trial is evaluating fixed use cases using Samsung's pre-commercial 28 GHz (mmWave) system and devices. The 4G trials are performed at 3.5 GHz (CBRS), utilizing Samsung's combined 4G LTE small cell technology in an outdoor environment to evaluate mobile use cases.

"We are pleased to collaborate with Samsung on these trials, which provide Charter better insight into how our advanced, powered, high speed network-which currently passes 49 million homes and businesses-can be used to enable 5G services," said Craig Cowden, Senior VP, Wireless Technology at Charter Communications. "In addition, as we move closer to the launch of a Spectrum wireless service in 2018, our work with Samsung on trials of 4G small cell technology will support our overall wireless strategy."

"As a pioneer in small cell networks technologies, Samsung is excited to partner with Charter as they evaluate their next-generation 5G and 4G wireless network technologies," said Mark Louison, SVP and General Manager, Networks, Samsung Electronics America. "These projects, with communications leaders such as Charter, will continue to lay the foundation for future business models and customer applications that tap the full potential of both 4G LTE and 5G."

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/networks/insights/news/samsung-and-charter-to-collaborate-on-5g-trials-in-the-us

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VMware looks to the clouds – part 2

The first part of this article covered the launch of VMware Cloud on AWS, which as a reminder, is the new on-demand service being launched by VMware that runs of bare-metal AWS infrastructure, initially in the AWS US West (Oregon) region.  The service will be expanding worldwide next year, providing what perhaps could eventually become a default migration path for moving virtual machines (VMs) into public clouds. VMware certainly holds a strong position in enterprise data centers and Amazon Data Services continues to run ahead of its competitors in public clouds.

VMware Cloud on AWS is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, which is the unified software-defined data center (SDDC) platform that integrates vSphere, VMware vSAN and VMware NSX virtualization technologies.

We've been tracking the rise of AWS for some time. As AWS gets bigger, it is almost as if the force of gravity is pulling in more data and applications into its data centers. Although VMware has designated AWS as its primary public cloud infrastructure partner, it is officially pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, where the presumption is that enterprises will continue to operate their own data centers for the foreseeable future while moving selected workloads, applications and data stores to multiple public clouds, one of which would be VMware Cloud on AWS.

Raghu Raghuram, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware, states: "Customers are accelerating digital transformation by deploying applications across clouds, with upwards of two-thirds of enterprises deploying applications on three or more clouds today," said Raghu Raghuram, chief operating officer, Products and Cloud Services, VMware. "VMware Cloud brings a consistent operating model, enterprise control, and investment protection for IT resources and skillsets to a multi-cloud world."

VMware's big picture slide shows vision

Many partners are stepping forward at this week's VMworld show in Las Vegas to join this vision. We profiled some of them in the first part of this article. But could it be that all this activity really benefits just one player in the end? Will this new workload mobility benefit AWS above all?
VMware’s auxiliary offerings

While the AWS provides the bare-metal infrastructure (and integration with its broad cloud services), the VMware Cloud Foundation has many other hooks to keep the customers on platform even once their workloads are in an AWS data center.  These include:

• VMware AppDefense: a data center endpoint security solution that protects applications by embedding application control, and threat detection and response capabilities into the VMware vSphere-based environments on which applications and data live. By leveraging vSphere, AppDefense gains a deep understanding of the intended state and behavior of the applications running on virtual machines and can detect and respond to unauthorized changes
• VMware Cost Insight: a cost monitoring and optimization service for public and private clouds that helps IT analyze cloud spend, find savings opportunities, and communicate the cost of services to the business.
• VMware Discovery: an automated inventory service that improves cloud visibility and tames shadow IT by bringing together inventory information and cloud accounts from multiple clouds, making it easy for IT to search for and identify workloads deployed from their enterprise. Using native cloud tags and properties that have been identified, customers can group cloud resources even if they span across multiple clouds. 
• VMware Network Insight: a network and security analysis service offering purpose-built for public clouds and software-defined data centers. Network Insight provides comprehensive network visibility and granular understanding of traffic flows to enable cloud security planning and network troubleshooting.
• VMware NSX Cloud: a service that provides consistent networking and security for applications running in multiple private and public clouds, via a single management console and common API. Micro-segmentation security policy is defined once and applied to application workloads running anywhere -- in cloud virtual networks, regions, availability zones -- and across multiple clouds.  Overlay networking enables more precise control over topologies, traffic flows, IP addressing, and protocols used in public clouds. 
• Wavefront by VMware: a metrics monitoring and analytics platform that handles the high-scale requirements of modern cloud-native applications. Wavefront by VMware's speed, scale, and flexibility empowers DevOps, and developer teams with instant insight into the performance of highly-distributed cloud-native services. Wavefront by VMware's analytics, query-driven alerts, interactive visualizations, open API, and integrations, all powered by a scalable time-series database, deliver "first pane of glass" visibility to help DevOps teams detect performance anomalies while enabling high availability of key cloud services. 

Rackspace seeks an edge 

Rackspace is jumping into the VMware Cloud on AWS game too, announcing plans to participate in VMware's Managed Service Provider (MSP) program early next year. This is a tricky game for Rackspace. At first blush, we wonder what strategic advantage Rackspace would have in helping customers move workloads into somebody else's data center, especially those of Amazon Web Services. Rackspace already runs one of the largest vSphere footprints in the world.

Some might say that once a workload has been moved out of your house and into the arms of AWS it may never come back. Maybe that's a risk that Rackspace, and all others announcing support for VMware Cloud on AWS, will have to take. However, Rackspace is a Premier Consulting Partner for AWS, so maybe this strategic choice was made some time ago.

Rackspace said it can bring its own spirit of "fanatical support" to mutual customers seeking a multi-cloud choice. Their idea is to let customers run their VMware workloads out of the data center and in the best-fit location, whether in Rackspace datacenters or VMware Cloud on AWS. What can it offer? Rackspace's value-add be in providing architecture, provisioning and management guidance. In the long term, even with fanatical support, will it be enough to retain the customers?

Peter FitzGibbon, vice president and general manager of VMware at Rackspace states "Operating across multiple cloud deployments is relatively new to many organizations, however, and some mutual customers will want support to operate VMware Cloud on AWS effectively. As a leading VMware Cloud Provider Partner and a Premier Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network, Rackspace is uniquely positioned to provide multi-cloud expertise and identify customer needs."

CoreSite provides a performance on-ramp

CoreSite is working with Faction, an enterprise-class private cloud and backup infrastructure provider, to deliver expanded multi-cloud service offerings
in both the Northern Virginia and Silicon Valley markets. Specifically, Faction will leverage connectivity to the CoreSite Open Cloud Exchange to deliver high-performance VMware based clouds with Administrator-level access to VMware vCenter that offers unprecedented control, flexibility, and integration capabilities for hybrid & multi-cloud deployments. Faction is launching a multi-cloud NetApp storage solution and Managed VMware on AWS offering. CoseSite's data centers enable the low-latency cloud on-ramps.

In the northern Virginia market, CoreSite operates three highly scalable data centers - one in Washington, D.C. and two on its Reston, VA campus (VA1 and VA2). CoreSite recently announced the expansion of both its Reston and Washington, D.C. campuses, all of which will now total over 1,097,000 square feet of colocation data center space upon full build out.

In Silicon Valley, CoreSite operates seven operational data centers, providing colocation solutions to one of the largest concentrations of Internet and technology companies in the world. These data centers connect more than 185 international and national carriers, social media companies, cloud computing providers, media and entertainment firms, and enterprise customers.

CloudVelox helps speed the migration to VMware Cloud on AWS

CloudVelox, which develops cloud automation and orchestration software for clouds and data centers, introduced its new One Hybrid Cloud software for "workload portability" for customers of VMware Cloud on AWS.

The CloudVelox mission is to provide the flexibility to shift workloads in and out of data centers and clouds without fear of being locked into a single destination environment (cloud or data center). The CloudVelox software can automate the mapping of compute, storage, network and security characteristics of a workload from a source environment to matching infrastructure services in the destination cloud or datacenter. It can be used to migrate workloads from any source to data center environments including between data centers (DC to DC), rack to rack (intra-datacenter) as well as migrate or repatriate workloads from the cloud to the data center (Cloud to DC). This allows users to migrate physical, virtual, or cloud workloads into a VMware virtualized data center, AWS Cloud, AWS GovCloud, or VMware Cloud on AWS.

"VMware Cloud on AWS provides customers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud offering that gives customers the SDDC experience from the leader in private cloud, running on the leading public cloud provider, AWS," said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president, products, Cloud Platforms Business Unit, VMware. "Solutions such as One Hybrid Cloud™ enable IT teams to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and create operational consistency across cloud environments. We're excited to work with partners such as CloudVelox to enhance native VMware Cloud on AWS capabilities and empower customers with flexibility and choice in solutions that can drive business value."

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U.S. Army awards $135M cloud service contract to IBM

The U.S. Army’s Logistics Support Activity (LOGSA) awarded IBM a 33-month contract valued at $135 million to continue providing cloud services, software development and cognitive computing. This constitutesthe technical infrastructure for one of the U.S. federal government’s biggest logistics systems.

IBM has been working with LOGSA since 2012 under a managed services agreement whereby the Army pays only for cloud services that it actually consumes. The new contract will allow the Army to avoid about $15 million per year in operational costs.

As part of this new contract, the Army will also benefit from the IBM Watson IoT for Manufacturing and Industrial Products product suite, which includes IBM Predictive Maintenance and Quality System, an integrated solution that monitors, analyzes, and reports on information gathered from devices and equipment and recommends maintenance procedures. IBM said this will help the Army predict vehicle maintenance failures from more than 5 billion data points of on-board sensors that will be stored within this environment. In addition, the Army is adopting Watson IoT services and a new Watson IoT Equipment Advisor solution that analyzes unstructured, structured and sensor data directly from military assets.

“LOGSA and the Army can now take advantage of the technological innovation that cloud offers – especially cognitive computing and analytics – so that the Army can continue to reap cost savings, further streamline its operations and deliver services to its clients,” said Lisa Mascolo, managing director, U.S. Public Service, IBM’s Global Business Services.  “We're pleased to continue our work with the Army to demonstrate the viability of cloud for mission applications and the promised benefits of efficiency and taxpayer savings."

"Over the past four and a half years, LOGSA has benefitted from the business and technical advantages of the cloud,” said LOGSA Commander Col. John D. Kuenzli. “Now, we’re moving beyond infrastructure as-a-service and embracing both platform and software as-a service, adopting commercial cloud capabilities to further enhance Army readiness.”
“When Gen. Perna took command of the Army Materiel Command, he said we cannot conduct tomorrow's operations using yesterday's processes and procedures,” Kuenzli added. “He has since emphasized understanding the leading indicators to readiness, and getting in front of the Army's logistics challenges. The services we have received from IBM and the potential of IBM Watson IoT truly enable LOGSA to deliver cutting-edge business intelligence and tools to give the Army unprecedented logistics support at efficient and affordable means.”

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/53088.wss

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Sequans gains AT&T certification for LTE Cat 1 module

Sequans Communications' LTE Cat 1 module has been certified to operate on AT&T’s 4G LTE network.

The all-in-one LTE for IoT module is based on Sequans’ Calliope LTE Cat 1 Platform and includes memory, power management and a complete RF front-end for AT&T’s LTE bands, all in a single, affordable, compact, surface-mount package.

http://www.sequans.com

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Huawei picks Xilinx FPGAs for Accelerated Cloud Server

Huawei has selected Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGAs to power their first FP1 instance as part of a new accelerated cloud service. The Huawei FPGA Accelerated Cloud Server (FACS) is a platform that enables users to develop, deploy and publish new FPGA-based services and applications on Huawei Public Cloud.

Xilinx said its FPGAs can provide a 10-50x speed-up for compute intensive cloud applications such as machine learning, data analytics, and video processing.  Xilinx FPGAs can be reconfigured in less than a second to a different design that is hardware optimized for its next workload.

"The Huawei FACS is a fully integrated hardware and software platform offering developer-to-deployment support with best-in-class industry tool chains and access to Huawei's significant FPGA engineering expertise," said Steve Langridge, Director, Central Hardware Institute, Huawei Canada Research Center.

The FPGA Accelerated Cloud Server now available on the Huawei Public Cloud.

http://www.hwclouds.com/product/fcs.html
http://www.huaweicloud.com

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Ericsson appoints Heuveldop as Head of Market Area North America

Ericsson has appointed Niklas Heuveldop to be Head of Market Area North America.

In addition to his current role as Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Technology & Emerging Business, he has also been Acting Head of Market Area North America since May 2017. He will now, on a permanent basis, lead the organization of approximately 11,500 employees in serving Ericsson’s customers in the United States and Canada.

Ericsson in North America is currently headquartered in Plano, Texas and has 31 office sites in the US and Canada, including major research hubs in Montreal. In Q2 2017, sales in North America were SEK 12.5 b.

http://www.ericsson.com

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Sprint Names Ivo Rook Senior VP of IoT

Sprint appointed Ivo Rook to the newly created position of senior vice president of IoT, where he will lead and build Sprint’s IoT business. He will also serve as a strategic advisor to Sprint and Softbank.

Rook has spent his last seven years at Vodafone, most recently chief executive officer for Vodafone’s IoT Business, which has $1B in revenue, 50m connections and 1,400 employees spanning 30 countries. In that role, he led Vodafone’s IoT strategy, driving its growth, products, operations and profit and loss globally. He also held positions at Vodafone Global Enterprise as director of Northern Europe and director of Germany and Central Europe.

http://www.sprint.com

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AT&T Tests Single Wavelength 400G Ethernet

AT&T completed testing a single-wavelength 400 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) circuit across its production network.

The multi-step trial used open-sourced white boxes to act as network equipment. AT&T said this aligns with its move toward an open, software-centric network.

“Introducing 400 GbE is a natural next step. Customer demands have shifted to faster speeds, more video-centric content and cloud integration,” said Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business.

“This industry-first also aligns with our shift toward an open and software-centric network. Utilizing open-source controller technology, the end-to-end service transported across the AT&T OpenROADM metro network – using optical gear from Ciena, a developer of next-generation coherent optical solutions – provides further flexibility and cost-effective services for customers. Prior to this successful trial, all other field demonstrations have required multiple wavelengths to create a 400 GbE connection."

http://www.att.com

In October 2016, AT&T announced plans to conduct 400 Gigabit Ethernet testing in 3 phases:

• Phase 1: Will use optical gear from Coriant to carry a true 400GbE service across a long-distance span of AT&T global backbone from New York to Washington, demonstrating that AT&T’s nationwide software-centric network is 400G-ready.
• Phase 2: Will trial a 400GbE on a single 400G wavelength across AT&T’s OpenROADM metro network. We’ll use optical gear from Ciena, a developer of next-generation coherent optical solutions, to show the network is ready to transport 400GbE to serve our customers in a metro area.
• Phase 3: Will test the first instance of a 400GbE open router platform. The “disaggregated router” platform uses merchant silicon and open source software – another industry first.

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FCC: Cell Site Outages Continue in Florida and Puerto Rico

As of September 11, 2017 at 11:00 AM EDT, 27.4% of the cell sites in the disaster area in Florida are out of service. According to the FCC's latest status report, 50% or more of cell sites are out of service in the following Florida counties: Collier, Hendry, Highlands, Lee, Miami-Dade, and Monroe.

In Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands, 21.5% of cell sites are offline (an improvement from from 26.9% on Sunday).

In addition, there are at least 7,597,945 cable system or wireline subscribers in Florida out of serviceThere are a total of 390 non-mobile switching centers out in Florida.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0911/DOC-346655A1.pdf

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Nokia expands private wireless portfolio for licensed/unlicensed

Nokia announced the expansion of its private wireless portfolio to support multiple access technologies using licensed and unlicensed spectrum. The expansion includes new small cells, Wi-Fi connectivity, multi-access edge computing and cloud packet core capabilities.

Small cells: new features on the industry-first Nokia Flexi Zone Citizen Band Radio Service (CBRS) small cells will allow companies in the United States to leverage 3.5 GHz CBRS shared spectrum as it becomes available. These features offer compatibility with Spectrum Access Servers, which monitor and assign usage of available CBRS shared spectrum to ensure enterprises are using available spectrum in compliance with FCC regulations.

Vrtualized Multi-access Edge Computing: a new solution makes it possible for enterprises to run MEC over commercial off-the-shelf IT servers, easing integration with existing IT infrastructure in the process. MEC processes data closer to where it is generated, ensuring the network delivers the guaranteed low latency required by business-critical enterprise applications and for an interactive user experience in busy venues. By processing data locally, MEC applications can also significantly reduce data transfer costs. Virtualized MEC will allow operators to deliver private LTE networks to enterprises over their 4G network. Alternatively, the virtualized MEC is complemented by a range of Nokia virtual core solutions, providing greater flexibility for enterprises in the way they manage their own networks.

Wi-Fi:  will continue to support non-critical office applications and Nokia is also offering companies greater flexibility in Wi-Fi performance and coverage with a new, compact, cost-efficient outdoor AirScale Wi-Fi Access Point .

Enhanced multi-access Cloud Packet Core with a Hybrid Access Gateway capability: this enables private enterprises, such as mining, oil and gas and other industries that operate private wireless networks, to seamlessly integrate multiple access technologies including licensed and unlicensed wireless, fixed and satellite, to deliver increased capacity and resilience and to extend mission-critical and collaborative services and applications to the required locations.

"We want to support the evolution toward the fourth industrial revolution by giving companies the ability to leverage private wireless networks for their critical communications needs and rapidly ramp-up business applications that improve efficiency. We continue to evolve our end-to-end solutions and services to allow enterprises to transition towards digitalization in a smooth and cost-efficient way in preparation for 5G automation in the future," Thorsten Robrecht, Head of Advanced Mobile Networks Solutions at Nokia.

http://www.nokia.com

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Nokia launches cloud-based portal of its AirGile core products

Nokia is launching a new cloud-based portal to enable the development of compelling digital applications using Nokia AirGile cloud-native core products.

Nokia AirGile cloud-native core is the new name for the company's expanding portfolio of products that allow operators to implement the agility, scalabilty, programmability and reliability of the cloud into their networks. The AirGile cloud-native core portfolio comprises:

• Nokia Shared Data Layer
• Nokia Cloud Packet Core
• Nokia VoLTE core, including the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS ) and Telecom Application Server (TAS)
• Nokia Session Border Controller (SBC) and Dynamic Diameter Engine (DDE)
• Nokia Revenue Management , including Policy and Charging capabilities
• Nokia CloudBand

The Developer Portal will be made available at the end of September.

Nokia is also making the Shared Data Layer available on the Developer Portal. Using APIs, developers will be able to securely use information such as policy, charging and subscription data, in line with country regulations and customer permission, to develop and test location-based, big data analytics and network diagnostic applications.

Michael Clever, Head of the Cloud Core business at Nokia, said: "By applying the capabilities of our AirGile cloud-native core portfolio to the Developer Portal and Open Ecosystem Network, we can bring a host of market players together to dynamically develop compelling applications that the market has a real need for. Ultimately the communities will develop and grow a suite of tools and services that will enable the next generation of communications."

http://www.nokia.com

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Radisys Shows Multi-Access CORD and Extensible RAN

Radisys will be showcasing the first Multi-Access Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter (Multi-Access CORD) proof-of-concept and an Extensible RAN (xRAN) PoC at this week's MWC Americas in San Francisco.

CORD is an open architecture platform that leverages data center efficiencies for the delivery of mobile, residential and enterprise services. The initiative was initially developed by ON.Lab as a use case for the ONOS open source SDN operating system, and is now managed as an independent open source project under The Linux Foundation.

Radisys said its two new use cases, both running on its DCEngine open hardware, enable Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to optimize resources in a CORD environment, allowing for rapid roll-out of new services with a better return on investment. Radisys’ Multi-Access CORD use case demonstration proves that since the flexible CORD architecture is agnostic to the access technologies, CSPs can leverage the same CORD data center for both wireline and wireless access. CSPs can thereby deliver a higher quality experience to their subscribers with one open architecture, while reducing network complexity and costs. Radisys’ xRAN use case demonstration allows CSPs to optimize scarce over-the-air resources leveraging real-time data analytics of network conditions. This software-based approach to RAN reduces complexity, OpEx and CapEx, while allowing CSPs to respond real-time to user needs and rapidly roll-out new services.

“The CORD reference architecture meets CSP requirements for next-gen service delivery, while at the same time freeing them from vendor-locked solutions,” said Bryan Sadowski, vice president, FlowEngine and DCEngine, Radisys. “Radisys, in collaboration with the ONF, is making the CORD architecture accessible to CSPs for deployment with these innovative proof-of-concepts as the first step toward Central Office transformation.”

http://www.radisys.com

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Video: MEF – Reinventing Network Transformation

Michael Strople, Chairman, MEF and Zayo, President Enterprise Networks highlights MEF’s role in driving industry transformation as a key motivation for being part of the MEF community.

See video: https://youtu.be/jXAF_WPoCmw

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Liberty Global deploys Juniper's NFV

Liberty Global, the world's largest international TV and broadband company, has deployed Juniper Networks vMX as a virtual route reflector in its network footprint.

Juniper's vMX is a carrier-grade virtualized MX Series Universal Edge Router that runs as licensed software on x86-based servers, providing an NFV-based approach to building cloud-grade networks.

Juniper said implementing the vMX as a virtual route reflector provides efficient cost-effective control plane scale and performance and easily addresses future growth by simply spinning up new virtual reflectors on-demand. Virtual route reflection provides efficient scale in large border gateway protocol (BGP) networks, helping Liberty Global streamline operations and reduce total cost of ownership.

Liberty Global is an existing Juniper Networks customer and deploys Juniper's high-performance routing, switching and security solutions at various locations in their network.

"Virtualization solutions streamline our infrastructure, our operations environment and our global business outcomes. While our first NFV deployment is for virtual route reflection, we are also evaluating the vMX to rapidly add network capacity and new customers. The ability to leverage a broad set of virtual routing capabilities is very important to Liberty Global as it will enable agile service innovation and increased operational efficiency," stated Andy Grotzke, vice president, core network strategy & engineering at Liberty Global.

http://www.juniper.net

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VMware looks to the clouds - part 1

VMware is reshaping its entire corporate strategy around the cloud and this year's VMworld conference is the embodiment of its full ambitions.  This statement could have been made at any of the past five years of VMworld shows. Each year there has been a new iteration as the company has evolved from a go-it-alone and own-the-cloud strategy to now being culturally attuned to a multicloud future.

The extent of VMware's cloud ambitions is nicely summarized in the following slide, which was shown by VMware's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, in the opening keynote of this week's VMworld show being hosted in Las Vegas.

The first big announcement from this year's event is that VMware Cloud on AWS is now commercially available in AWS U.S. West (Oregon) region. Other AWS data centers worldwide will follow in 2018. The strategic alliance between VMware and Amazon Web Services was first announced nearly one year ago. Under this partnership, AWS is designated as VMware’s primary public cloud infrastructure partner; and VMware will be AWS’s primary private cloud partner. The joint service will be sold by VMware. It runs on the latest, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure.
The big idea with hosting VMware Cloud on AWS is that enterprises will want to move virtual machine workloads and applications across VMware vSphere-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments, all with optimized access to AWS services, which could include S3 storage, cloud-based authentication, compliance and security monitoring, and real-time analytics. In short, VMware customers can use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics, etc.

As corporate IT moves applications and data to AWS, VMware has a strategic interest in ensuring that its virtual machine paradigm carrier through to the public cloud. It makes sense for VMware to do anything necessary to ensure that IT teams continue to manage their AWS-based resources with familiar (and profitable) VMware tools. If VMware had failed to make this deal, their very extensive base of Fortune 1000 customers who have begun to erode with every corporate application moved into AWS.

For AWS, VMware is great catch too. At this early stage of the public cloud market, the game is all about moving fast to build data centers, establish sticky services, and bring as many customers onboard before other competitors get to them. VMware is deeply entrenched in enterprise data centers. This could provide a very big on-ramp for moving corporate workloads into the AWS cloud.
Naturally, both companies are making a big deal out of this arrangement.

"VMware and AWS are empowering enterprise IT and operations teams to add value to their businesses through the combination of VMware enterprise capabilities and the breadth and depth of capabilities and scale of the AWS Cloud, providing them a platform for any application," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "VMware Cloud on AWS gives customers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud that delivers the same architecture, capabilities, and operational experience across both their vSphere-based on-premises environment and AWS."

"With the availability of VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time customers can operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment that combines the VMware software they love with the unmatched functionality, security, and operational expertise of the AWS Cloud," said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer, AWS. "The majority of the world's enterprises have virtualized their data centers with VMware, and now these customers can easily move applications between their on-premises environments and AWS without having to purchase any new hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operations."

The VMware / AWS alliance is hoping to build an ecosystem of third-party tools and services to fill in the gaps, many of which are significant barriers preventing applications from leaving the corporate data center. The companies said that more than 30 solutions are ready for VMware Cloud on AWS launch, including DevOps tools, application migration tools, data protection software, cloud analytics, security, etc.  Here are a few of the partners.

Chef

Chef, which specializes in automation tools, is introducing a solution for VMware Cloud on AWS.  Chef’s automation tools help data center teams to apply a consistent workflow across their infrastructure. The new capabilities bring together VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software and elastic, bare-metal infrastructure from AWS. Chef tools can be used to move workloads into production using consistent workflows, which helps in decreasing deployment risk and ensuring procedural compliance. The bottom line is this should be good for VMware and for AWS.

CloudCheckr

Another start-up called CloudCheckr, also introduced tools for helping enterprises migrate VMware workloads to the VMware Cloud on AWS.  The CloudCheckr solution, which is initially being launched in the AWS US West (Oregon) region, gives organizations consistent operating model foe application mobility. IT staff might use the tools to calculate the optimal configurations for running VMware vSphere in the public cloud. The tool converts data center specifications into comparable clusters running the same workload on specialized instances within AWS. This output can be used to understand expected utilization levels for CPU, storage and memory, which shows the anticipated monthly AWS spend of any given configuration.

Datapipe

Datapipe, which specializes in managed services for public cloud platforms, will launch a new service to help manage customers’ AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS footprints. Datapipe sees an opportunity to assist enterprises with planning, building, and running their approach for AWS with its full-service offering. Specifically, Datapipe will provide a unified management framework with a single monitoring platform, network connectivity options, and best practices based security and governance.

Mellanox

Mellanox sees a play to make the movement of VMs running is software-defined data centres more efficient. Their ideas to it combine Mellanox iSER (iSCSI Extensions for Remote Direct Memory Access [RDMA]) networking solutions with VMware vSphere. iSER uses an Ethernet Storage Fabric as a unified connectivity solution for compute and storage. Mellanox says this eliminates the need for Fibre Channel while providing improved performance at a lower cost. Its preliminary benchmark results show that iSER accelerates storage throughput by more than 3x and IOPs by more than 2x when compared to ordinary iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface). Mellanox also claims 2x better efficiency versus Fibre Channel storage connectivity.

Trend Micro

Trend Micro is bringing its server security product to VMware Cloud on AWS, promising seamless visibility and security for virtualized workloads across the SDDC, whether on-premises or in the new VMware Cloud on AWS.

McAfee

McAfee is also jumping aboard VMware Cloud on AWS with its Management for Optimized Virtual Environments (MOVE) AntiVirus, which is a threat protection solution optimized for virtual environments. This eliminates the need to install an agent on every VM. McAfee MOVE AntiVirus offloads all on-access scanning to a dedicated VM that runs McAfee VirusScan Enterprise.

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