Google Lists Carrier Interconnect Partners and Pricing

Equinix, IX Reach, Level 3, TATA Communications, Telx, Verizon, and Zayo are the initial service providers supporting the newly launched Google Cloud Interconnect service.

Google Cloud Interconnect provides dedicated connections into edge locations of Google's global network via the service provider partners. Google also offers direct peering at 70 points of presence across 30 countries.

Interconnect egress is priced at up to a 50% discount compared to regular Internet egress, with no additional port fees. Ingress is free.

Google lists the following Interconnect Egress prices per GB:

• North America - $0.04
• Europe - $0.05
• Asia-Pacific - $0.06

In addition, Google announced boosted TCP throughput and connections per second limits for its Andromeda network virtualization stack. Andromeda enables Cloud Platform networking services such as firewalls, routing and forwarding rules using Google's internal APIs and infrastructure. Andromeda's TCP throughput for a single stream has now been boosted from 2 Gbps to over 3 Gbps.  For 200 streams, Andromeda now delivers 5 Gbps of TCP throughput.

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/11/cloud-networking-more-connectivity-choices-better-performance-and-lower-prices.html

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Equinix Cloud Exchange Delivers Direct Access to Google Cloud

Equinix is launching direct access to Google Cloud Platform in 15 markets worldwide via its Equinix Cloud Exchange.

Specifically, Equinix will offer up to a 10Gb connection to Google cloud services with full bursting capabilities, enabling applications running in a private cloud to “burst” into the public cloud for computing capacity when demand surges.

Equinix will manage multiple IP addressing methods for enterprise customers including customer-provided addresses, local LAN addressing and Google-provided IP addressing providing maximum flexibility in how they access Google Cloud Platform.

Equinix said its connections will be enterprise-grade, with guaranteed bandwidth to Google’s network edge. Access to Google Cloud Platform will be available through the Equinix Cloud Exchange in 15 markets spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

“Offering flexible, low-latency connections to the cloud is the primary goal of the Equinix Cloud Exchange, and adding Google to our impressive portfolio of cloud providers will be well received by our customers. By offering direct access to cloud services such as Google’s Cloud Platform, enterprises will now have multiple high-performance connectivity options to enable their hybrid cloud strategies,” stated Ihab Tarazi, chief technology officer, Equinix.

http://www.equinix.com

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Cisco Forecasts 2018 Global Data Center Traffic Trends

By 2018, global data center traffic will reach 8.6 zettabytes per year with 76% of all data center traffic originating in the cloud, according to the newly published Cisco Global Cloud Index (GCI). Globally, cloud data center traffic will grow 3.9-fold by 2018, at a CAGR of 32% from 2013 to 2018.

The Cisco report assesses regional and country-level cloud-readiness by comparing average network speeds and latencies (fixed and mobile).

"When people discuss cloud, they often focus on public cloud services or public cloud storage services. However, a very significant majority of today's cloud workloads are actually processed in private cloud environments. Even with public cloud workloads having significant growth, by 2018, almost 70% of cloud workloads will still be private cloud-related, requiring the ability of workloads to bridge across a hybrid private/public cloud environment," said Kelly Ahuja, Cisco, Senior Vice President, Service Provider Business, Products, and Solutions.

Some highlights of the Cisco Global Cloud Index:

• By 2018, 53% of all residential Internet users globally will use personal cloud storage, and the average consumer cloud storage traffic per user will be 811 megabytes per month by 2018, compared to 186 megabytes per month in 2013.
• By 2018, 69% (113.5 million) of the cloud workloads will be in private cloud data centers, down from 78% (44.2 million) in 2013, and 31% (52 million) of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 22% (12.7 million) in 2013.
• By 2018, traffic between data centers and end users will reach 1.5 ZB annually (17% of total data center tra ffic). 0.7 ZB (8%) will come from traffic between data centers, such as replication and interdatabase links. But the vast majority of data center traffic, 6.4 ZB (75%), will still be coming from within the data center, such as storage, production, development, and authentication traffic.
• The countries with the leading fixed network performance in 2014 are (in alphabetical order) Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.
• The countries with the leading mobile network performance in 2014 are (in alphabetical order) Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, Korea, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Oman, Qatar and Uruguay.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/service-provider/global-cloud-index-gci/index.html

• In October 2013, Cisco predicted global data center traffic will triple from 2.6 zettabytes in 2012 to 7.7 zettabytes annually in 2017, representing a 25 percent CAGR. The Cisco GCI forecast global data center traffic to grow threefold (a 25 percent CAGR) from 2012 to 2017, while global cloud traffic will grow 4.5-fold (a 35 percent CAGR) over the same period. Cisco estimated that cloud traffic globally will grow from grow from 46 percent of total data center traffic (98 exabytes per month or 1.2 zettabytes annually) of total data center traffic in 2012 to 69 percent of total data center traffic (443 exabytes per month or 5.3 zettabytes annually) of total data center traffic by 2017. http://www.convergedigest.com/2013/10/cisco-global-cloud-traffic-growing-at.html
• Coverage of 2012 Cisco Global Cloud Index: http://www.convergedigest.com/2012/10/cisco-global-data-center-traffic.html
  
  Coverage of 2011 Cisco Global Cloud Index: http://www.convergedigest.com/2011/11/cisco-forecasts-cloud-computing-traffic.html

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Equinix: Study Finds Widespread Deployment of Multi-Clouds in 2015

The vast majority of IT decision makers plan to implement multi-cloud architectures in the coming year, according to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by  +Equinix.  The survey looked at key drivers for implementing a multi-cloud enterprise strategy, including reasons to consider an interconnected colocation data center.

Survey respondents indicate they plan to deploy multiple, geographically dispersed clouds in 2015, and 74 percent are budgeting for a multi-cloud migration strategy. Over the next 12 months, a significant number of business applications such as storage/backup, disaster recovery and business intelligence, among others, will be deployed to the cloud, and many of those workloads with third-party colocation providers.

“What surprised us about this survey is how quickly multi-cloud strategies are becoming the norm worldwide. Businesses have discovered that collocation provides a meaningful ROI for WAN optimization and it is clear that multi cloud deployment will improve the ROI even more,” stated Ihab Tarazi, chief technology officer, Equinix.

The survey comprised IT executives (44 percent), IT managers (54 percent), and IT service providers (2 percent).  Here are some highlights:

• 77 percent plan to deploy to multiple clouds in the next 12 months- 91 percent of new cloud-based offerings will be deployed in their organization over the next 12 months
• 91 percent of new cloud-based offerings will be deployed in their organization over the next 12 months
• 45 percent of new cloud-based apps will be deployed at a third-party colocation provider
• 87 percent indicate that interconnection is required to meet cloud performance objectives
• 85 percent indicate that direct connections to cloud providers are highly valued; security being the top attribute associated with direct connections
• 74 percent expect a larger budget in 2015 for cloud services

http://www.equinix.com/resources/analyst-reports/cloud-adoption-study/

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China Telecom Tests Huawei's Transport SDN Controller

China Telecom Fujian (Fujian Telecom) and China Telecom Beijing Research Institute have tested Huawei's Transport SDN controller for implementing an intelligent private line Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) app for VIP customers.

The idea is to let VIP customers apply for private line services online, which would then be provisioned immediately over the optical transport network. In addition, tenants can adjust the service bandwidth of private lines in real-time based on traffic volume, making full use of bandwidth resources.   '

Zha Jun, President of Huawei Fixed Network Product Line, said, "Huawei cooperated with China Telecom to deploy the innovative BoD private line app based on the transport SDN. The deployment is a key milestone that effectively pushes progress of the transport SDN industry. Huawei will continue to cooperate with China Telecom in developing cutting-edge 400G, 1T, 2T, and SDN technologies, and building a flexible, synergetic, intelligent, and open next-generation transport network."

http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-391065-sdn.htm#.VFrcTVPF_Tg

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CenturyLink Sees Growth with High-Bandwidth Services

CenturyLink reported operating revenues for third quarter 2014 of $4.514 billion compared to $4.515 billion in third quarter 2013. Core revenues were $4.08 billion, a 0.6% year-over-year decline, compared with a 1.0 % year-over-year decline in third quarter 2013. Revenue from high-bandwidth data services grew approximately 17% year-over-year across business and wholesale customers.  GAAP net income for third quarter 2014 was $188 million compared to a net loss of $1.05 billion for third quarter 2013, and diluted earnings per share for third quarter 2014 was $0.33 compared to a net loss per share of $1.76 for third quarter 2013.

"CenturyLink's third quarter results reflect our continued success in meeting the demand from business customers for high-bandwidth data services, colocation, managed hosting, cloud and IT services," said Glen F. Post III, chief executive officer and president. "In our Business segment, high-bandwidth data services revenue, including MPLS, Ethernet and Wavelength, grew nearly 12% year-over-year and we achieved year-over-year revenue growth in this segment for the fifth consecutive quarter. We expect the expansion of our symmetrical 1 gigabit service to 16 cities that we announced in August to create additional opportunities to drive strategic revenue growth from businesses and consumers in the months ahead."

Some highlights by customer segment

Consumer

• Revenue growth driven by increased high-speed Internet and CenturyLink Prism TV customers.
• Strategic revenues were $712 million in the quarter, a 6.4% increase over third quarter 2013.
• Generated $1.49 billion in total revenues, a decrease of 0.8% from third quarter 2013, reflecting the continued decline in legacy services offsetting the growth in strategic services.
• Added approximately 14,000 CenturyLink Prism TV customers during third quarter 2014, increasing penetration of the more than 2.2 million addressable homes to approximately 10.3%.

Business

• Revenue growth driven by continued demand for high-bandwidth data services and solid sales momentum.
• Strategic revenues were $677 million in the quarter, a 6.1% increase over third quarter 2013, driven by strength in high-bandwidth offerings such as MPLS, Ethernet and Wavelength services.
• Generated $1.57 billion in total revenues, an increase of 1.6% from third quarter 2013, as growth in high-bandwidth offerings and data integration revenues offset lower legacy services revenues. Data integration revenues were $22 million higher in third quarter 2014 compared to third quarter 2013.
• Continued strong sales momentum in third quarter with solid sales funnel entering fourth quarter and continued success in sales of Managed Office and Managed Enterprise solutions.

Wholesale

• The Wholesale segment ended the quarter with approximately 21,000 fiber-connected towers, an increase of 17% from third quarter 2013.
• Strategic revenues were $560 million in the quarter, down slightly from third quarter 2013, as increases in wireless carrier bandwidth demand and Ethernet sales were offset by declines in low-speed data revenues.
• Generated $843 million in total revenues, a decrease of 4.0% from third quarter 2013, reflecting the continued decline in low-speed data revenues and in legacy revenues, primarily driven by lower long distance and switched access minutes of use, along with access rate reductions from implementation of the CAF Order.
• Completed approximately 1,200 fiber builds in third quarter 2014 and remain on track to complete approximately 2,500 for full-year 2014.

Hosting

• The Hosting segment grew managed hosting (including cloud) and colocation revenues as cross-selling initiatives and product enhancements continue to strengthen sales opportunities.
• Operating revenues were $361 million in the quarter, a 5.6% increase from third quarter 2013.
• Managed hosting revenues were $147 million, representing a 14% increase from third quarter 2013, and colocation revenues were $163 million, a 4.5% increase over the same period a year ago.
• Launched new private cloud service available on the same industry-recognized platform as CenturyLink's public cloud service, enabling new hybrid IT capabilities.

http://www.centurylink.com

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Qualcomm Posts Revenue of $6.69 billion, up 3% YoY

Qualcomm reported revenue of $6.69 billion for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2014, up 3 percent year-over-year (y-o-y) and down 2 percent sequentially. Operating income was $1.99 billion, up 25 percent y-o-y and down 4 percent sequentially. Net income came in at $1.89 billion, up 26 percent y-o-y and down 15 percent sequentially.

d. "We are forecasting continued growth of global 3G/4G device shipments in calendar year 2015, particularly in emerging regions. Our fiscal 2015 outlook reflects continued LTE leadership in our semiconductor business and is tempered by the issues we are facing inChina related to our licensing business. Through this time, we remain focused on building our technology leadership in smartphones, while pursuing opportunities to extend our solutions into adjacent areas," stated said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm.

In its quarterly report, Qualcomm said calendar year 2014 and 2015 global 3G/4G device shipments are expected to be approximately 1.3 billion and 1.5 billion, respectively.

However, its estimate of calendar year 2014 3G/4G device shipments that it currently expects to be reported by its licensees is approximately 1.04 billion to 1.13 billion. The shortfall reflects units that Qualcomm believes may not be reported by customers, are in dispute or are currently unlicensed.

https://www.qualcomm.com/info/investor-relations

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MRV Sees Gains in Network Integration & Optical Transport

MRV Communications reported Q3 2014 revenue of $43.2 million, up 12% from $38.4 million a year earlier. Total net loss was $1.0 million or $0.14 per diluted share.

“During the third quarter of 2014, we grew total revenue 12% due to the continued strong performance of our Network Integration business, which was partially offset by a modest slowdown in our Network Equipment business,” said David Stehlin, MRV’s chief executive officer. “The soft telecommunications capital spending environment in the Americas and EMEA impacted our revenues during the quarter while, at the same time, we continue to transition from older, legacy products to a new, market-leading, packet and optical product portfolio. These new products have distinct market and technical advantages, already recognized by the market.

“OptiDriver, our new optical transport platform, continues to perform well. In the third quarter, we increased our total customer count to more than 30 by adding 15 customers, 9 of whom are new users of MRV optical transport solutions. Notably, we won our first multi-million dollar contract from a large regional North American communications service provider in the quarter."

Network Equipment revenue was $22.0 million, down 4%, primarily reflecting the current capital spending environment in the telecommunications market.  Network Integration revenue was $21.2 million, up 36% primarily due to growth in project related product sales.

http://www.mrv.com

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Palo Alto Networks Uncovers WireLurker iOS and OS X Malware

Palo Alto Networks announced discovery of a new "WireLurker" malware attacking Apple OS X and iOS platforms. In a technical alert bulletin, the company said WireLurker marks a new era in malware across Apple's desktop and mobile platforms.

Among its defining characteristics, WireLurker represents:

• The first known malware family that can infect installed iOS applications similar to how a traditional virus would
• The first in-the-wild malware family that can install third-party applications on non-jailbroken iOS devices through enterprise provisioning
• Only the second known malware family that attacks iOS devices through OS X via USB
• The first malware family to automate generation of malicious iOS applications through binary file replacement.

Palo Alto Networks has released signatures to detect all WireLurker Command & Control communication traffic.

"WireLurker is unlike anything we've ever seen in terms of Apple iOS and OS X malware. The techniques in use suggest that bad actors are getting more sophisticated when it comes to exploiting some of the world's best-known desktop and mobile platforms. As such we have provided full protection to Palo Alto Networks customers and published a detailed report so others can assess the risk and take appropriate measures to protect themselves," stated Ryan Olson, Intelligence Director, Unit 42, Palo Alto Networks.

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/company/press/2014/palo-alto-networks-reveals-discovery-of-unprecedented-ios-and-os-x-malware.html

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Dell Debuts Data Center Platforms

Dell introduced 3 key products aimed at software-defined data center transformation:

Dell PowerEdge FX converged architecture which targets optimal modularity and scalability. A 2U rack-based converged chassis offers shared cooling, power, networking, management and PCIe expansion slots. The FX2’s multi-fabric design allows FX servers to efficiently handle all types of storage traffic — SAN, DAS and NAS — with IO that is optimized for the DAS/vSAN storage environments

Dell Storage SC4020 Entry-Level All-Flash configuration, an all-flash storage array for $25,000. It  ships with six 480GB enterprise-class read-intensive SSDs, providing over 2.8TB raw flash capacity. The system can be expanded to 24 SSD drives in the 2U chassis.

Dell Storage PS4210 Series  -- 10GbE iSCSI array for small and mid-size deployments;

Dell XC Series of Web-scale Converged Appliances for integrated compute and enterprise storage -- a single chassis for compute/storage and powered by Nutanix software for scale-out applications. With the Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) running on each appliance, HDDs and SSDs can be aggregated across all nodes, with automatic compression and deduplication to increase effective storage capacity.

http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/secure/2014-11-05-dell-future-ready-it-transform-data-center

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Project Latte Streaming TV Coming to Canadian Viewers

“Project Latte”, a new streaming TV service developed by Bell Media, announced distribution deals with TELUS, Bell Canada, and Bell Aliant.

The new video streaming service will now be carried by TELUS Optik TV, Bell Fibe TV, Bell Aliant FibreOP TV, and Bell Satellite TV subscribers at launch.

“With the first of Canada’s major television providers signed on, representing approximately 3.5 million customers across the country, we are well on our way to delivering on our objective of serving every TV subscriber in Canada with Project Latte,” said Kevin Crull, President Bell Media. “We look forward to announcing even more partners as we move closer to the launch of what is to become Canada’s premium streaming service.”

http://www.bellmediapr.ca/Network/Bell-Media/Project-Latte

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Google Advances its Cloud Platform

Google is accelerating its push into enterprise cloud services.

At an event in San Francisco, Google announced important updates to its Cloud Platform. Here are some highlights.

Google Container Engine -- provides the ability to run Docker containers in Google compute clusters, powered by Kubernetes. Docker containers bring workload mobility, making it easier to move applications between development machines, on-premise systems, and the public cloud.

Google Cloud Interconnect via three new connectivity options:

• Direct Peering - a fast network pipe directly to Google in over 70 points of presence in 33 countries around the world.
• Carrier Interconnect - connect to Google through 7 new carrier partners including Verizon, Equinix, IX Reach, Level 3, TATA Communications, Telx, and Zayo. 
• VPN Connectivity - Google is planning to introduce VPN-based connectivity for customers to create a secure line directly to Google over the public Internet.
  (more networking news expected on Wednesday)

Firebase Mobile Solution -- Richer Realtime Queries is generally available. Mobile Developers can now sort and filter their Firebase data by arbitrary fields, making Firebase apps faster and easier to build.   Triggers, which will be available later this year, enables developers to define webhooks that are sent to external APIs when certain conditions are met.

Price reductions -- Network egress (47%), BigQuery storage (23%), Persistent Disk Snapshots (79%), Persistent Disk SSD (48%), and Cloud SQL (25%). These are in addition to the 10% reduction on Google Compute Engine that we announced at the beginning of October and reflect our commitment to make sure you benefit from increased efficiency and falling hardware prices.

Google Cloud Debugger -- making it easier to troubleshoot cloud applications.

Google Compute Engine Autoscaler -- uses the same technology that Google uses to seamlessly handle huge spikes in load and gives developers the ability to dynamically resize a VM fleet in response to utilization and based on a wide array of signals, from QPS of a HTTP Load Balancer, to VM CPU utilization, or custom metrics from the Cloud Monitoring service.

Bitnami announced its Launchpad for Google Cloud Platform -- almost 100 additional apps and development environments.

Fastly announced a collaboration with Google Cloud Platform, that improves content delivery and performance at the edge.

https://plus.google.com/s/%23GCPLive

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SDN Open Network Operating System Launches from On.Lab

The Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) launched an open source SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS) for Service Providers that enables agile service creation and deployment at scale on any hardware, including white boxes.

ONOS, which will be released on December 5th, delivers a highly available, scalable SDN control plane featuring northbound and southbound open APIs and paradigms for a diversity of management, control, and service applications across mission critical networks.

On.Lab said ONOS allows providers to gradually migrate their existing networks to SDN without requiring instant forklift upgrades by supporting a diversity of southbound devices and interfaces in addition to OpenFlow. Initial use cases for ONOS focus on new, innovative services and applications for service provider and WAN networks. These include examples such as: multi-layer optimization and traffic engineering over packet optical core; seamless peering of SDN islands with the Internet; SDN-based WAN control with segment routing; bandwidth calendaring; bandwidth and network provisioning; and a variety of configuration applications.

Another really important ONOS use case is Network Functions as a Service (NFaaS) – this is a scalable, easy to deploy and manage NFV where the smallest unit of provisioning is a “service.” These services can be managed easily, scaled up or down and composed together to create new value-added services. NFaaS truly enables service innovation, network optimization and cost reduction. Examples of NFaaS include caching, deep packet inspection, load balancing and security applications.

Founding members who are funding and contributing to the ONOS initiative include AT&T, NTT Communications, Ciena, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, NEC; and members who are collaborating and contributing to ONOS include Infoblox, SRI, Internet2, CNIT and Create-Net.

"Software-defined networking can radically reshape the wide area network,” said John Donovan, senior executive vice president, AT&T Technology & Operations. “The introduction of ONOS provides another open source SDN option designed for service provider networks with the potential to deliver the performance, scale, availability and core features that we value.”

“ONOS is built from scratch, from the ground-up, to be highly available, fast and extensible. It can be used to control existing equipment or new white boxes, allowing service providers to gain more control of their networks and reduce costs,” said Nick McKeown, professor of CS and EE at Stanford and faculty director of the Open Network Research Center.

"By now, SDN is deployed in data centers worldwide, based on proprietary software,” said Scott Shenker, professor of CS at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Open Network Research Center. “The next frontier for SDN is service provider networks, where large network operators need to program their networks to create new, differentiated services. To enable this, we need a highly available, scalable control plane such as ONOS upon which new services can be instantiated and deployed.”

“NTT Communications and ON.Lab are well aligned in our goals for developing SDN for service provider networks,” said Yukio Ito, senior vice president and board member at NTT Communications. “We have been at the forefront of deploying SDN in carrier networks. We recognize the need for an open source network OS that provides carrier grade features to deliver carrier grade services. With ONOS’ northbound abstractions we now have an opportunity to develop control, management, and configuration applications quickly. We are excited to pilot use cases on ONOS in 2015.”

http://onlab.us/

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Riverbed Boosts its WAN Optimization for Hybrid Enterprise Clouds

Riverbed rolled out significant enhancements to its flagship products – Riverbed SteelHead 9.0 and Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse 9.5 – with a focus on visibility, control, and optimization to accelerate performance of on-premises, cloud, and SaaS applications. The company sees enterprises moving rapidly to hybrid cloud architectures, where business traffic flows over both predictable WAN trunks and myriad Internet links between mobile users and their favorite cloud services. The new challenge is not only to handle congestion, but to ensure security, control and visibility of these new "Shadow IT" resources.

“Riverbed is now poised to do for cloud and SaaS applications what we’ve done for more than 1100 applications across the wide area network for the last decade,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, Riverbed Chairman and CEO, speaking at its Riverbed FORCE 2014 conference in San Jose, California.  

Riverbed customers have now deployed over 750,000 SteelHead appliances, giving the company a deeply embedded platform upon which to build further innovations in network management.

To accelerate the transition to global, hybrid enterprise networks, the company is also kicking off a Riverbed-Ready Technology Alliance program with 17 charter program members. Partners can leverage Riverbed open APIs and additional development tools to help with customization, integration, and automation.

Some highlights of the coming enhancements to the Riverbed platforms:

SteelHead 9.0 integrates with SteelCentral AppReponse 9.5 to provide visibility of on-premises, cloud, and SaaS apps.

• SteelCentral AppResponse 9.5 can measure end-user experience for both SteelHead-optimized and non-optimized enterprise web and SaaS applications for faster, more effective monitoring, and troubleshooting
  .
• SteelHead 9.0 can group applications according to their type and business priority to automate SLA activation for different types of apps.
   
• SteelHead 9.0 brings centralized, application-driven control of hybrid networks with “business intent”-based policies that make it easy to configure and manage path selection, quality of service (QoS), and secure transport.
   
• With Path Selection, SteelHead 9.0 intelligently derives all network paths and, based on business needs then prioritizes, secures and delivers business-critical applications over the fastest networks, while less critical applications are sent over the Internet. For example, Microsoft Lync voice traffic can be delivered over MPLS, while Lync video traffic is directed to the Internet.
  
• SteelHead 9.0 identifies over 1,100 applications – on-premises, cloud, and SaaS – which can be optimized for maximum productivity. Riverbed is rapidly expanding the number and type of applications that SteelHead recognizes, with a particular focus on SaaS apps.
• 
  
• Geo IQ for Microsoft Office 365 – The latest release of SteelHead 9.0 also offers Geo IQ for Microsoft Office 365, which ensures users are always connected to the native mailbox for optimal performance no matter where the Office 365 mailbox or the user is located.

http://www.riverbed.com/

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Brocade Expands its Campus Switching Line-up, Adds OpenFlow 1.3

Brocade unveiled a number of new campus network products, including the Brocade ICX 7750-based distributed chassis, the new Brocade ICX 7450 enterprise campus stackable switch, and the availability of OpenFlow 1.3 support for emerging campus SDN applications.

Highlights of the Expanded Brocade Campus Strategy:

Brocade ICX 7750

• a 1U fixed form factor 10/40 GbE switch with up to 32 40 GbE or 96 10 GbE ports per unit, 
• Delivers a scale-out architecture enabling up to 12 Brocade ICX 7750 switches to be stacked across the campus in a more flexible topology for network aggregation and core layers
• Provides consolidated management touch points and support for SDN to automate network configuration tasks

Brocade ICX 7450 Switch

• Up to 12 switches can be stacked for 160 Gbps of stacking bandwidth, and long-distance stacking using open-standards QSFP+ ports to enable single-point management across the campus
• Modular design with three expansion slots for a choice of 1, 10, or 40 GbE uplinks
• Power over HDBaseT (PoH), to power video surveillance and video conferencing equipment, VDI terminals, and HD displays directly from the switch

OpenFlow 1.3 Support for the Brocade ICX Product Family

• Brocade OpenFlow Hybrid Port Mode supports both OpenFlow forwarding and normal routing traffic forwarding, enabling a seamless transition to real-world SDN deployment
• OpenFlow is universally supported in Brocade ICX switches whether deployed individually, in mixed stacks, or in distributed stacks for SDN implementation flexibility across wiring closets
• Campus customers can build a reliable SDN network that has been certified with the OpenDaylight-based Brocade Vyatta Controller and emerging SDN applications

In addition, Brocade and Aruba are working together on open standards-based unified wired and wireless network access. The collaboration is expected to yield new product releases of Brocade Network Advisor 12.3, Aruba Airwave 8.0, and Brocade FastIron 8.0.20 with Aruba ClearPass CoA support.


http://newsroom.brocade.com/press-releases/brocade-expands-the-effortless-network-strategy-wi-nasdaq-brcd-1156057#.VFlgCPmjOM7

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Wind River Partners on HP Helion OpenStack Solutions for NFV

HP and Wind River have entered into a partnership to develop solutions with HP Helion OpenStack technology to enable carrier grade network functions virtualization (NFV) capabilities.

HP Helion OpenStack solutions with carrier grade capabilities will be available in calendar year 2015.

Key benefits of the HP Helion OpenStack-Wind River integrated solutions will include:

• Reliability – Carrier grade Linux and kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor, advanced self-healing, and high availability add-ons for OpenStack Control Plane to enable service availability levels that carriers and CSPs demand
• Performance – Carrier grade accelerated vSwitch for high performance networking, advanced NFV workload placement to maximize the number of subscribers supported per server, utilization of system topology to optimize Virtual Network Function (VNF) performance, and an availability and affinity model designed to ensure VNF service availability while providing max performance with the lowest latency
• Manageability – Scheduling and orchestration of workloads, security features to meet carrier needs, and open, standards based applications programming interfaces (APIs)

“The telecom industry is eager to tap into the vast potential of NFV. By taking advantage of a virtualized or cloud environment, service providers can easily and quickly introduce new high-value services while reducing costs. In every case, maintaining carrier grade reliability is critical,” said Jim Douglas, senior vice president and CMO, Wind River. “By partnering with a leader like HP, we’re enabling a new generation of carrier grade, cloud-enabled NFV deployments for our customers in this changing market.”

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1830185#.VFmzRvmjOM4

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Microsoft Partners with Dropbox

Microsoft announced a partnership with Dropbox that will allow Office applications to work better with Dropbox folders.

Over 1.2 billion people use Office. Dropbox has more than 300,000,000 users and has become home to more than 35 billion Office files.

“In our mobile-first and cloud-first world, people need easier ways to create, share and collaborate regardless of their device or platform,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Microsoft and Dropbox will provide our shared customers with flexible tools that put them at the center for the way they live and work today.”

http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.dropbox.com

• Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Austin, New York, Dublin, and Sydney.  The service is now available in 19 languages.

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Stratoscale Raises $32M for Data Center OS

Stratoscale, a start-up based in Herzeliya, Israel, raised $32 million in Series B funding for its distributed data center operating system.

Stratoscale’s rack-scale architecture aims to transform standard x86 servers into a hyper-converged infrastructure for cloud services while supporting both containers and virtualization on the same platform.  Stratoscale’s true “plug and play” architecture supports OpenStack and Docker.

The funding round was led by Intel Capital, with participation by Cisco® Investments and SanDisk, as well as other investors including the original series A investors, Battery Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP).

http://www.stratoscale.com/

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Nuage Networks Gains Oracle Exastack Ready

Nuage Networks announced that its Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) has achieved Oracle Exadata Ready, Oracle Exalytics Ready, Oracle Database Appliance Ready, Oracle Big Data Appliance Ready, Oracle Linux Ready and Oracle VM Ready statuses through Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

Nuage Networks said it is committed to supporting enterprise-grade Oracle environments to accelerate moving enterprises toward cloud architectures that meld application-driven virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN) technology using open technology platforms.

“We’re pleased to work with Oracle and to receive seven new Oracle Exastack Ready statuses to date. The Oracle Exastack program and Oracle PartnerNetwork have helped us to provide customers with the confidence that our Virtualized Services Platform is supported and ready to run with Oracle products and solutions,” said Sunil Khandekar, CEO of Nuage Networks.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2014/nuage-networks-press-release-nuage-networks-achieves-oracle-exadata-ready-oracle-exalytics-ready

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AT&T and Verizon Work toward VoLTE Interoperability

Verizon and AT&T are working to establish VoLTE interoperability between their networks.

The companies are working through a full set of requirements, beginning with extensive testing in lab environments and then moving to field trials.  This approach ensures customers will have a seamless experience making VoLTE HD Voice calls between networks and lays the foundation for interoperability of other Rich Communications Services (RCS) such as video calls, rich messaging, and more in the future.


VoLTE interoperability between Verizon and AT&T customers is expected in 2015.  

"Interoperability among all VoLTE providers takes connectivity to the next level with HD quality voice and additional features that customers want," said Tony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon. "We're pleased to be working with AT&T as our first interoperating carrier, and we look forward to working with other operators as VoLTE continues to grow."

"Interoperability of VoLTE between wireless carriers is crucial to a positive customer experience," said Krish Prabhu, president, AT&T Labs and Chief Technology Officer, AT&T.  "Customers expect to be able to connect anywhere, anytime– and as LTE technology continues to evolve, it's imperative that we provide a seamless experience between carriers. We are pleased to work with Verizon on this initiative.  We continue to work with others in the industry on similar collaborative arrangements and hope to see similar collaboration across the industry in the near future."

Verizon introduced its Advanced Calling 1.0 services across the United States in September, and will continue to make Advanced Calling-capable smartphones available to its customers, further expanding the reach of the technology.

AT&T introduced VoLTE services in its initial markets earlier this year, and will continue to expand to more devices and more markets across the United States.  


http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2014/11/verizon-and-att-move-toward-voice-over-lte-volte-interoperability.html

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