Google Cloud adopts P4Runtime as foundational for network programming

Google Cloud will use P4Runtime as the foundation for its next generation of data centers and wide area network control-plane programming, according to a new blog posting from Jim Wanderer, Engineering Director at Google and Amin Vahdat, Google Fellow.

P4 is a programming language was designed to be target-independent (i.e. a program written in P4 could be compiled, without modification, to run on a variety of targets, such as ASICs, FPGAs, CPUs, NPUs, and GPUs), and protocol-independent (i.e. a P4 program can describe existing standard protocols, or be used to specify innovative, new, customized forwarding behaviors). P4 can be used for both programmable and fixed-function devices alike. For example, it is used to capture the switch pipeline behavior under the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) APIs. P4 is also used by the ONF Stratum project to describe forwarding behavior across a variety of fixed and programmable devices. The P4 Language Consortium (P4.org), creator of the P4 programming language, recently transitioned to become a project of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and part of the Linux Foundation portfolio.

Google, which designs and builds its own hardware switches and software, sees the P4Runtime as a new way for control plane software to program the forwarding path of a switch as it provides a well-defined API to specify the switch forwarding pipelines. The vision is that the P4Runtime will be used to control any forwarding plane, from a fixed-function ASIC to a fully programmable network switch.

Google is working with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) on Stratum, an open source project to implement an open reference platform for a truly "software-defined" data plane, designed and built around the P4Runtime.


https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/

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Facebook: Likely that most user public profile data has been scraped

Most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped by malicious actors or bots, according to a new blog posting by Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's Chief Technology Officer.  Data scraping occurs when a bot submits a person's email or phone number to a Facebook API to gain access to other public data on their account.

Facebook also confirmed that it analyzes call and text history for people using Messenger or Facebook lite but that it does not collect the content of messages. The tracking is described as an opt-in capability to help users build more useful contact lists.

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/

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Broadcom is now officially a U.S. company

Broadcom officially completed the redomiciliation process to change from a Singapore company to a Delaware corporation. Broadcom is now officially headquartered in San Jose, California. It has over 8,500 employees in 35 states.

The change in residency is expected to lead to several hundred million dollars in additional U.S. taxes.

Effective as of the close of trading on April 4, 2018, all issued ordinary shares of Broadcom Limited have been exchanged on a one-for-one basis for newly issued shares of common stock of Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. common stock will begin trading on April 5, 2018, and the company's trading symbol on NASDAQ will remain unchanged as "AVGO."

The completion of our redomiciliation to the United States marks an important milestone in our company's history as Broadcom has been an American company in every respect but our legal domicile. As I said when we announced our intention to redomicile from the Oval Office in November 2017, we believe that America is once again the best place for Broadcom to do business," Hock Tan, Broadcom's President and Chief Executive Officer.

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Juniper bolsters its unified cybersecurity platform

Juniper announced a series of enhancements to its unified cybersecurity platform, with a focus on simplifying security operations by accelerating time to detection and orchestrating mitigation, and helping customers improve their security posture across enterprise networks and cloud workloads whether in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or private data centers.

Enhancements include:

• A consolidated timeline view of threat behavior with integrated inline blocking: Juniper SRX Series Next-Generation Firewalls now feed directly into the Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) Appliance, enabling the aggregation and correlation of security events from various Juniper and third-party sources into a consolidated timeline view of all threats in the network.
• Adaptive detection and automated enforcement against advanced threats: the Juniper ATP Appliance is bringing its built-in threat behavior analytics and one-touch mitigation to Junos Space Security Director Policy Enforcer, offering a unified view of threat behavior across the security fabric for extended remediation. This integration enables adaptive malware detection that triggers automated policy enforcement for a substantially hardened security posture across networks and cloud environments.
• Extending cloud workload protection: Security Director Policy Enforcer is now integrated with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Juniper extends multicloud workload protection and consistent security across multicloud environments, securing workloads in AWS Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs).
• Global data center expansion for Juniper Sky ATP: As part of its commitment to global cybersecurity, Juniper Networks now has data centers for Juniper Sky ATP in Asia Pacific and Canada, in addition to its existing data centers in the U.S. and Europe. Customers with offices in these regions can rely on lower latency and may be better able to comply with regional data regulations.
• Sharing expert knowledge of the threat landscape: Juniper is joining the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA), an organization dedicated to improving the security of the global digital ecosystems through cyber threat information sharing. Be sure to visit us at RSA where we’ll be showcasing our refreshed threat research website featuring the latest threat research, information on in-the-wild cyber attacks and cyber operations from Juniper Threat Labs.
• Simplifying the buying process: Juniper now offers Enterprise Agreements (EAs) for its security portfolio.

“Juniper has a longstanding commitment to an open, unified approach to cybersecurity that helps customers automate, adapt and simplify their network security. This approach is further bolstered by our recent admission to the Cyber Threat Alliance, as we continue to make strides toward truly open threat sharing and collaboration to keep our customers’ networks safe," stated Bikash Koley, Chief Technology Officer, Juniper Networks.

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Shutterfly Goes All-In on AWS

Amazon Web Services announced Shutterfly as another business that will go "all in" on its cloud infrastructure.

Specifically,  Shutterfly is migrating all of its core production applications and its more than 75-petabyte image library to AWS. The company's next gen image sharing platform is also being developed on AWS, where it can leverage a wide range of AWS services, including machine learning and analytics, to deliver a more streamlined customer experience.

“Millions of customers turn to Shutterfly’s lifestyle brands to help them make memorable moments last a lifetime,” said Mike Clayville, Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS. “We are excited to deepen our relationship with Shutterfly, enabling them to allocate more of their valuable resources towards the development of new, cloud-based applications that deliver even more value to their customers."

AWS also announced that Cox Automotive is going all in. The already running several business-critical applications on AWS, and will migrate the majority of its more than 20 brands—including Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, vAuto, and Xtime—to AWS.

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ECI intros packet transport edge device for utilities

ECI introduced a compact, managed, packet transport edge device designed for cloud-based distributed energy resources (DER) network environments of power utility companies.

The NPT-1010D serves as an MPLS/Ethernet switch and is hardened to handle extreme conditions in locations without continual monitoring and maintenance and can be installed in compact or non-assisted cabinets.

“Revolutionary market shifts are looming, presenting a new host of challenges. The NPT-1010D is the most compact device available, about the length of a ballpoint pen. Moreover the appliance is fully hardened, meaning utilities can place it anywhere, even in non-assisted cabinets. It is one of the few solutions on the market with full management and monitoring capabilities due to Ethernet/MPLS support, which makes it a perfect DER gateway,” said Moshe Shimon, VP product management at ECI Telecom.

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AT&T's new ad campaign focuses on Edge-to-Edge Intelligence

AT&T kicked off a new advertising campaign with TV commercials that focus on "Edge-to-Edge Intelligence" -- covering a range of services to business customers and actionable intelligence. The ads debuted during the 2018 Masters Tournament broadcast.

“AT&T Business offers end-to-end solutions wrapped in security so that you can flexibly respond to business needs quickly, helping you increase revenue and decrease cost,” said Sandra Howard, vice president-Corporate Brand Marketing. “While other companies might be able to compete with us on specific products, our breadth of services sets us apart.”

There are also 2 new “It Can Wait” ads on distracted driving. They both feature professional golfer and AT&T athlete Jordan Spieth.

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Satellite TV from SES now reaches 1 billion viewers worldwide

SES now reaches 351 million TV homes, according to the company's research. This means that SES is now delivering video content to more than 1 billion global viewers.

This compares with 325 million households at the end of 2016.

SES attributes its increased reach to the addition of new countries (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Turkey) and the wider reach of Yahlive, namely in the Maghreb countries, together accounting for 17 million more SES TV homes. On a like-for-like basis, the technical reach grew by 9 million SES TV homes, mainly in Nigeria, Ghana and the Middle East.

Out of its 351 million TV homes, SES directly reaches 145 million, and indirectly serves another 147 million cable homes, 40 million IPTV homes, and 18 million terrestrial homes.

“The Satellite Monitor shows that our strategy to invest in growth markets is successful and results in a significantly larger geographical reach,” said Ferdinand Kayser, CEO of SES Video. “We continue to leverage our growing, unique technical reach worldwide to help our customers build their businesses and expand their audiences. In Africa, our infrastructure will continue to play a key role in the digital switch-over, while in developed countries, namely Europe, our satellites remain the leading platform to deliver HD and drive Ultra HD to millions of households. We are also strongly supporting the development and roll-out of HD and Ultra HD in the Americas and Asia Pacific.”

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Japan-Guam-Australia Cable promises design capacity of 36 Tbps

Construction has commenced on the Japan-Guam-Australia Cable (JGA),  a 9,500-kilometer undersea fiber optic cable system will deliver a design capacity of more than 36 terabits per second (Tbps) and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019.

JGA is being co-built by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and NEC.

JGA South (JGA-S), the segment between Sydney, Australia and Piti, Guam, is a consortium cable including AARNet, Google and RTI-C.

JGA North (JGA-N), the segment between the Minami-Boso, Japan and Piti, Guam, is a private cable with RTI-C as the sole purchaser. Both JGA-N and JGA-S will interconnect in Guam at GTA's newly built landing station.

Toru Kawauchi, General Manager of NEC's Submarine Network Division said, "We are honored to be selected once again by RTI-C to construct their third subsea cable. While both SEA-US and HK-G will provide horizontal East-West connectivity across the Pacific, JGA will now provide the much-needed vertical North-South connectivity, enabling high capacity communications to reach all corners. Furthermore, JGA will be the second project after HK-G to be co-financed by the Japanese government-led Japan ICT Fund, and the third project supporting RTI's investment after SEA-US and HK-G for the Japanese loan syndicate. We wish to further utilize these funds for many more cables in the future."

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Intel spins out Wind River

Intel has agreed to sell its Wind River subsidiary to TPG, a global alternative asset firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Wind River noted that its software "runs the computing systems of the most important modern infrastructure, including manufacturing plants, medical devices, aircraft, railway, automobiles, and communications networks."

“This acquisition will establish Wind River as a leading independent software provider uniquely positioned to advance digital transformation within critical infrastructure segments with our comprehensive edge to cloud portfolio,” said Jim Douglas, Wind River President. “At the same time, TPG will provide Wind River with the flexibility and financial resources to fuel our many growth opportunities as a standalone software company that enables the deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems.”

Wind River President, Jim Douglas, and his existing executive management team will lead the newly independent Wind River after the transaction closes.

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Microsoft Azure opens partner data centre in Canberra, Australia

Microsoft launched a new Azure region in Canberra, Australia.

The new Australia Central regions enable customers to deploy their own applications and infrastructure within Canberra Data Centres directly connected via Azure ExpressRoute to Microsoft’s global network. The services are provided in partnership with Australian-owned Canberra Data Centres and are specifically designed to address the requirements of the Australian and New Zealand governments and critical national infrastructure, including banks, utilities, transport and telecommunications.

Microsoft now offers Azure from three cities in Australia: Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra with connectivity to Perth, Brisbane and Auckland.

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Vodafone sells its mobile towers in India to American Tower

Vodafone India completed the sale of its standalone tower business in India to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited (a unit of American Tower) for an enterprise value of INR 38.5 billion (EUR 478 million).

Vodafone India is merging with Idea. Both parties announced their intention to sell their individual standalone tower businesses to strengthen the combined financial position of the merged entity. Completion of Idea’s sale of its standalone tower business to ATC is also expected in the first half of this calendar year.

Completion of Vodafone+Idea merger is expected to complete in the first half of the current calendar year.

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Spirent adds scale testing for the new TLS v1.3 encryption protocol

Spirent Communications has expanded the functionality of its CyberFlood and Avalanche solutions by adding performance and scale testing for the new TLS v1.3 encryption protocol.

The new functionality enables testing and stressing traffic capacities on TLS v1.3-enabled devices and endpoint applications.

TLS (transport layer security) enables secure communication between web browsers and servers on the Internet. TLS v1.3 is the latest version and is quickly becoming the de facto encryption standard.

“TLS v1.3 will ultimately improve security and privacy for Internet users; however, there is risk with new standards and new potential holes in customers’ security,” said David DeSanto, director of products and threat research at Spirent Communications. “With Spirent’s performance and scale testing of this bleeding edge cryptographic standard, customers can validate that they are securely deployed, that they can achieve their desired performance, and that they know where the skeletons are in their TLS v1.3 deployments. With this capability, Spirent is helping to secure the future of the connected world.”

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Coriant names Senior VP of Global Sales Enablement

Coriant announced the promotion of Robert Shore to the role of Senior Vice President of Global Sales Enablement, where he will lead a global team driving the company’s ongoing transformation into a software-centric and multi-sided platform solutions provider in a new era of open ecosystem innovation. His responsibilities include global sales strategy, multi-sided platform partnerships, technical sales, systems engineering, network planning and design, product marketing, brand communications, and digital and social media marketing.

“I am thrilled to promote Rob to one of the most critical roles on my executive leadership team,” said Homayoun Razavi, Chief Customer Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Sales & Digital Marketing, Coriant. “Rob brings a wealth of customer-facing industry experience and solution expertise that will be instrumental as we expand the value we bring to our global customers with service-enabling software solutions and multi-side platform innovations spanning 5G, IoT, cloud, and the Industrial Internet.”

Coriant also announced new leadership appointments and roles under Shore that reinforce the Global Sales Enablement organization’s depth and breadth of industry knowledge, technical expertise and customer experience. The new appointments and roles include: Farshid Mohammadi, Vice President, Multi-Sided Platform Partner Program; Dr. Andreas Iselt, Director of Software Strategy; Bert Buescher, Vice President, Global Technical Sales; Russ Fordyce, Executive Director, Content Marketing & Solutions Promotion; Scott Larson, Vice President, Digital & Social Media Marketing; Bill Kautz, Director of Market Intelligence & Industry Analyst Relations; and Dr. Stefan Spaelter, Vice President of Global Technical Sales Support.

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DeepScale attracts $15M for perception software

DeepScale, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, announced $15 million in Series A funding for its work in efficient deep learning perception software for use in mass-produced automated vehicles.

DeepScale said it is using efficient deep neural networks (DNNs) on small, low-cost, automotive-grade sensors and processors. The goal is to interpret and classify sensor data in real-time for automated vehicles.

"One of our core objectives is to drastically reduce the number of deaths and injuries on the road," said Forrest Iandola, co-founder and CEO of DeepScale. "The company's Series A funding will not only empower our engineering team to continue to make breakthroughs in automated driving safety, but will also help us attract the brightest talent in the industry to transform the future of transportation."

DeepScale says it has lined up a number of strategic partnerships with Tier 1 suppliers, OEMs and semiconductor suppliers to provide automated driving perception solutions, including Visteon and HELLA-Aglaia Mobile Vision GmbH, a major German automotive supplier.

The funding round was led by Point72 and next47. Additional Series A funding was provided by existing investor Autotech Ventures and Trucks Venture Capital. Previous seed investors included Andy Bechtolsheim, Ali Partovi, Lip-Bu Tan and Jerry Yang's AME Cloud Ventures.

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Kingston intros consumer-grade PCIe NVMe SSD using 3D NAND

Kingston Digital introduced a line of entry-level consumer-grade PCIe NVMe SSD utilizing 3D NAND for notebooks and desktop. The drive is available in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB2 capacities,

The single-sided M.2 2280 (22mm x 80mm) form factor makes SSD features a Gen 3.0 x2 interface, 4-channel Phison 5008 controller, and 3D NAND Flash. It delivers 2x the performance of SATA SSDs with read/write speeds up to 1500MB/s and 1000MB/s.

Some key specs

Interface: PCIe NVMe Gen 3.0 x2 Lanes
Controller: Phison 5008
NAND: 3D TLC
Sequential Read/Write:

• 240GB: up to 1,500/800MB/s
• 480GB: up to 1,500/900MB/s
• 960GB: up to 1,500/1,000MB/s

Random 4K Read/Write:

• 240GB: up to 100,000/80,000MB/s
• 480GB: up to 100,000/90,000MB/s
• 960GB: up to 120,000/100,000MB/s

MTBF: 1 million hours

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JetStream launches cross-cloud data management platform

JetStream Software, a start-up based in San Jose, California, emerged from stealth to introduce its cross-cloud data management platform.

The JetStream Cross-Cloud Platform promises a better way to support workload migration, resource elasticity, and business continuity across multi-cloud and multi-data center infrastructures. The company says its platform will provide “built for the cloud” data management capability in an all-software, hypervisor-integrated solution for multi-cloud, multi-data center operations. The platform will be designed to complement VMware-based cloud infrastructures offered by VMware Cloud Provider Partners and VMware Cloud on AWS. Beta testing is underway.

Jetstream was founded by CTO Serge Shats, CEO Tom Critser and President Rich Petersen, each of whom had been at FlashSoft Software, which was acquired by SanDisk in 2012.

http://www.jetstreamsoft.com

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Riverbed's Jerry Kennelly steps down

Jerry M. Kennelly, who has served as CEO of Riverbed Technology since co-founding the company in 2002, is retiring.

Paul Mountford, who currently is Chief Sales Officer at Riverbed, will take over as CEO. Mountford joined Riverbed four years ago. Previously, he was CEO of Sentillian, a New York-based web intelligence startup focused on monitoring publicly shared content. Mountford's resume also includes 16 years at Cisco including running its Enterprise line of business.

“I’m extremely proud of what our team has built at Riverbed the last 16 years, growing from a start-up to a billion-dollar company serving 30,000 customers and every Forbes Global 100 company,” said Kennelly. “Riverbed is experiencing significant market momentum in today’s digital world, and I’ve never been more confident about the future of our company and opportunities ahead. After 40+ years in the tech industry, and with Riverbed in a strong position, the time is right for me to retire and hand the reins over to a proven leader in Paul Mountford. Paul has the experience, leadership capabilities, customer-focus, and passion to lead Riverbed through the next phase of growth while continuing to surpass our customers’ expectations.”

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Cloudera posts quarterly revenue of $103M, up 42% yoy

Cloudera reported revenue was $103.5 million for its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018, ended January 31, 2018, an increase of 42% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. Subscription revenue was $84.3 million, an increase of 50% from the year-ago period.

GAAP loss from operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was $45.7 million, compared to a GAAP loss from operations of $61.0 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. Non-GAAP loss from operations for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was $16.6 million, compared to a non-GAAP loss from operations of $33.4 million in the year-ago period.

"It was a year of considerable accomplishment for Cloudera and our team. In our first few quarters as a public company, we introduced six major product offerings, completed a strategic acquisition, and delivered significant technological innovations -- with the open source community and also proprietary to our products," said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera. "Most enterprises are just embarking on their digital transformation journeys. In a rapidly evolving and disruptive market, we believe the investments we've made have us well-positioned to lead them on that journey."

Some highlights

• Subscription revenue was up 50% year-over-year to $84.3 million
• Non-GAAP subscription gross margin for the quarter was 86%, more than 200 basis points higher than the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017
• Dollar-based net expansion rate was 136% for the quarter
• International revenue grew 66% year-over-year
• 32 net new Global 8000 customers added

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IDC: Infrastructure sales for cloud data centers rises 27% in Q4 2017

Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 27.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), reaching $12.8 billion, according the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker. For the full year 2017, the combined public and private cloud deployments continued the double-digit annual growth trend from past years with revenues reaching $43.4 billion for 21.7% year-over-year growth.

Public cloud infrastructure revenue has almost doubled in the past two years to $8.5 billion, growing 34.0% year over year in 4Q17. Private cloud revenue reached $4.3 billion for an annual increase of 15.7%. Total worldwide cloud IT infrastructure revenue in 2017 more than doubled when compared to 2013. The combined public and private cloud revenues now represent 42.2% of the total worldwide IT infrastructure spending, up from 39.3% a year ago. Traditional (non-cloud) IT infrastructure revenue grew 12.8% from a year ago, although it has been generally declining over the past several years; at $17.5 billion in 4Q17 it still represents 57.8% of total worldwide IT infrastructure spending.

"2017 finished strong for public cloud IT infrastructure growth, led by continued expansion by Amazon and renewed growth in Google and Facebook infrastructure," said Kuba Stolarski, research director for Computing Platforms at IDC. "While there has been high growth in all IT infrastructure segments lately, public cloud, led by the hyperscalers, has resulted in the largest share of infrastructure growth, which is expected to continue at this pace for at least a few more quarters."

• Except for Latin America and Japan revenue, which grew 6.2% and 4.8% respectively from a year ago, all other regions in the world grew their cloud IT Infrastructure revenue by double digits. 
• Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) saw the fastest growth rates at 59.0% and 34.1%, respectively. 
• Canada (23.3%), Middle East & Africa (MEA) (27.5%) and USA (21.1%) had annual growth in the twenties, while Western Europe (16.6%) had annual growth in the teens.

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