Thursday, December 31, 2020

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

SDxCentral's Top 10 Articles of 2020

Despite the enduring chaos 2020 threw down, technology kept communities connected, businesses afloat, and tethered us to some semblance of stability. Here’s our list of the 10 most read articles of 2020, covering the SDxCentral universe of SDN, NFV, and related topics. Rankings are based on unique visitors aggregated during the year.

Cisco, VMware, Nutanix Among Biggest Tech Battles of 2020

The world’s biggest technology vendors’ battles over market share, rankings, and overall bragging rights continued in 2020, and this year the feuds stretched from the clouds to court and even to a galaxy far, far away. We saw Cisco and VMware duel over SD-WAN, while Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise moved beyond hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to cloud-delivered everything. However, the ongoing VMware-Nutanix feud stole the show with VMware filing an 11th-hour lawsuit against the new Nutanix CEO with just three days left until 2021.

FCC’s Pai circulates draft NPRM on 12 GHz band

With just a few weeks left in his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Chairman Ajit Pai circulated to his colleagues a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that, if adopted, would seek comment on whether to allow mobiles services in the 12 GHz band.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

5 Ransomware Predictions to Ring In 2021

Ransomware and a red, spiky virus were perhaps the only winners in 2020, and both celebrated a banner year. But while 2021 will (hopefully) usher in mass immunizations against COVID-19 and the beginning of the so-called post-pandemic new normal, ransomware’s not slowing down in the year ahead. By all accounts, it will only get bigger and badder in 2021.

COVID-19 forces UCC rethink – report

A new report from Omdia says lockdown measures have underlined the importance of business continuity over disaster recovery and shunted unified communications and collaboration (UCC) to the fore of industry thinking.

Industry Voices—Raynovich: Will 2021 get more SASE?

If you are an analyst, jargon and buzzwords can get you in some trouble. For example, when I decided to jump on the SASE (Secure Access Services Edge) train in 2020, a few people grumbled behind the scenes. Is Raynovich selling out to the Gartner propaganda? Let me explain why that matters and also why we jumped on the SASE train—and why we think it has legs. 

Monday, December 28, 2020

SAP’s Qualtrics Files IPO Plans

SAP’s Qualtrics division finally moved on its long-simmering initial public offering plans that could value the customer experience management company at more than $14 billion.

Chua: Edge computing in 2021 —When elephants dance

Technology pundits and media proclaimed that 2019 would be the year of 5G, then reasserted one year later that 2020 would be THE year. As we wrap up 2020, the same folks declare that 2021 is the year 5G will live up to its hype. 5G used to be the source of national pride. Remember the April 2019 fracas between U.S., China and South Korea MNOs fighting for the mantle of world's first commercial 5G rollout? Today, consumers appeared uninterested, unfazed and confused by the super-hyphenated qualified firsts — "world's-fastest-5G-mid-band-for-consumers-within-100-miles-of-any-U.S.-metro-area-with-more-than-1M-in-population-per-U.S.-2010-census."

Pongratz: What comes after the C-Band?

With the U.S. C-Band auction on track to approach or surpass $70 billion, the question is not so much about the investment thesis but more about what this means for future mobile bands. After all, global mobile data traffic has advanced roughly 1,000-fold since the 3G smartphone was introduced. And even though traffic growth rates are slowing, operators need to consider the potential of another 20x of growth over the next decade. Expanding the available capacity will remain essential objectives for any operator that wants to remain competitive.

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Will Biden Loosen Restrictions On Chinese Chipmakers?

There is no denying that 2020 has been an exciting year in the semiconductor space. We’ve seen a flurry of high-profile, multi-billion dollar acquisitions and the rise of Arm compute in the data center and PC markets. Oh, and how could I forget a U.S.-China trade war being waged over access to semiconductor technologies.

Friday, December 25, 2020

5G Gains and Wanes in 2020

5G came out screaming in 2020, and ended the year with a relative thud. The year that unraveled and continues to highlight the best and worst in all of us ends with all three major U.S. carriers claiming nationwide 5G coverage. 

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

SKT and AWS Launch the First 5G Edge Cloud Service in Korea

SK Telecom today announced the launch of ‘SKT 5GX Edge,’ the first 5G edge cloud service in Korea, in collaboration with Amazon Web Services. Using AWS Wavelength at the edge of the 5G multi-access edge computing (MEC) networks, SKT 5GX Edge enables customers to build mobile applications that require ultra-low latency.

VMware’s Biggest Buys of 2020

VMware’s ravenous appetite for smaller companies continued in 2020 with the software giant announcing seven acquisitions (so far) this year. And we wouldn’t put it past the company to ink another deal or two before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

Union backs Frontier's RDOF award in West Virginia

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that asked the FCC to reject West Virginia legislators' attempts to block Frontier Communication from taking part in the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

Operator wins and fails for 2020: Lowenstein

Each week, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, hosts of the terrific Pivot podcast, end an episode with their list of "wins and fails." This feature inspired me to write a column on U.S. operator successes and failures in 2020, as a sort of retrospective on an incredibly unusual year. The industry deserves a lot of credit for navigating the challenges of Covid-19 while still making progress on key initiatives: getting the T-Mobile/Sprint deal done; completing several successful spectrum auctions; and rolling out 5G networks.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

This Olde Website: 2020

Gather 'round, everyone! It's time for the annual jaunt down the World Wide Web of yesteryear to see how the webmasters of CableLabs, Cisco and Netflix rolled back in the day.

CBRS users learn the ins and outs of Spectrum Access Systems

CBRS spectrum is driving interest in private wireless networks for a wide range of users, from utilities to schools to wireless internet service providers. In some ways CBRS is like a more powerful version of Wi-Fi, but there are a few important differences. One major difference is access -- although some users can use the spectrum without paying for a license, all users need to pay for the software that “clears” the spectrum for them. Companies that are using CBRS say getting this part of the process right can be a challenge.

Monday, December 21, 2020

Mavenir Pins Open RAN Rise on Radios

Mavenir’s decision to more forcefully become a bonafide supplier of radios isn’t just a natural extension for the company, it’s also a necessary step to fuel growth in the open radio access network (RAN) space at large, according to John Baker, the vendor’s SVP of business development.

Top 3 Takeaways From Ciena’s Q4 Earnings

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caught many industries off guard, disrupting supply chains, demand, and even where and how we work. The optical transport market and more specifically Ciena was no exception.

Secureworks Puts Managed Detection and Response in XDR

As a managed security services provider for 20 years, Secureworks brings a services-first point of view to extended detection and response (XDR). Or, as Secureworks Director of Product Management Ed Martin says, “we were XDR before XDR was XDR, because we had to pull all the things together in order to enable our own teams to be successful.”

T-Mobile again advised to stop 5G reliability claims

In what was a partially successful appeal, T-Mobile has been advised by a national advertising review board panel to stop claiming that its 5G service is more reliable than competitors’, but doesn’t have to mention speed when talking up its superior coverage.   

Report: Hyperscale operator capex reaches record in Q3

Hyperscale operator capex topped $37 billion in Q3, which easily set a new quarterly record for spending, according to Synergy Research Group (SRG). Total spending for the first three quarters of this year reached $99 billion, which marked a 16% increase over the same period last year.

Dear Santa, please deliver these 5 wireless wishes in 2021

With Christmas just a few days away I thought I’d put in a few requests to jolly old Saint Nick and his crew in the North Pole. It’s been a tough year for everyone but now it’s time to look ahead and see what the wireless industry can do to improve itself in 2021. Here’s what I want this holiday season:

With next-gen communications tech, we can connect everyone

The next generation of wireless technology, 5G communications, is on a path to transform and improve our lives while offering huge opportunities for business, industry, and consumers. This realignment from the digital age into a 5G data-driven one will produce a seismic shift in industry.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Cisco’s SVP of Security Jumps Ship for Google Anthos

Longtime Cisco executive Jeff Reed has left the company and accepted a position at Google as VP of product for Anthos, the cloud provider’s hybrid cloud platform. His departure comes just four months after taking over as SVP of security at Cisco where he was, until recently, heading up the company’s emerging secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

Oracle, Cybereason Stretch Security From Endpoints to Cloud

Oracle and Cybereason today announced a partnership that will see the cloud provider sell Cybereason’s endpoint security platform, which is optimized for delivery via Oracle’s global cloud regions. Additionally, Cybereason selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as its preferred cloud to support its global expansion.

Verizon Product Chief Reflects on 2020 Scramble

Verizon is closing out 2020 with a sprint. The operator, in the span of a few days last week, expanded its low-band 5G network to reach a potential population of 230 million people, said its millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G network is now live in parts of 61 U.S. cities, revealed an on-premises private 4G LTE service for enterprises, expanded a partnership with SAP, inked a multi-year deal with Walgreens Boot Alliance, and launched an IoT Managed Services platform.

Friday, December 18, 2020

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Google Gifts CNCF $3M Holiday Bonus

Google forked over a $3 million holiday present to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that builds on a past commitment and could further smooth over what has been a tense year between the two organizations.

Trump Cuts Off China's Top Chipmaker

In the final throws of its presidency, the Trump Administration isn’t backing down on its tech war with China. The Wall Street Journal reported today that the U.S. Commerce Department banned the export of U.S. intellectual property related to semiconductor manufacturing over Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp’s (SMIC) alleged ties to the Chinese military.

HPE Wins HCI Upset, But Dell Remains King

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) pulled a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) upset and beat out Nutanix for the No. 2 spot in IDC’s quarterly market tracker for branded HCI systems. Dell Technologies, per usual, won the No. 1 spot in the quarterly ranking. However, for the second consecutive quarter both Dell’s and Nutanix’s revenues declined during the third quarter of 2020, while HPE’s grew twenty-five times faster than the overall market with 16.3% year-over-year revenue growth.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Microsoft CAPZ Drives More Kubernetes Control

Microsoft launched a more complete Kubernetes tool to manage clusters on its Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) that its open source team recommends as a replacement for the existing AKS Engine offering. The Cluster API Provider for Azure (CAPZ) also takes a step back from what has been a more abstracted view for managing container clusters on public cloud infrastructure.

Is Nokia Heading For a Split?

When Nokia’s three-year turnaround plan formally kicks off in two weeks, every area of its business will be under heightened pressure to grow and prove technology leadership in their respective segments.

Mirantis, Platform9 Tackle On-Prem Silos

Whether enterprises are orchestrating workloads in on-premises data centers or servers in edge locations, the full potential of running containers in the cloud remains to be seen as bare metal management is manual, slow, siloed, and expensive. But, in the final weeks of a very long march, Mirantis and Platform9 have given enterprises something to smile about, as each of the vendors released their own versions of fully-managed, bare metal orchestration platforms. 

Nokia CEO comments on Verizon relationship

It’s been widely assumed that Nokia lost a $6.6 billion 5G contract with Verizon this fall, when the U.S. carrier instead chose Samsung. Nokia’s CEO Pekka Lundmark addressed the Verizon relationship today when we was giving a Nokia investor relations update.

Bidding rounds reveal clues in C-band auction: Kellogg

A week into the C-band auction, bidding is off to a strong start, reaching more than $10.5 billion. With 5G deployments in full-swing, the 280 MHz of mid-band licenses being offered sit directly in the “goldilocks zone” that straddles attractive propagation characteristics and reasonably sized 20 MHz licenses large enough for a meaningful difference in capacity and speed for 5G, especially if a winner gets more than one license in a block.

3GPP sets new timeline for next 5G specification

3GPP, the global telecommunications standards body, agreed to a new extended timeline for the next 5G specification. Known as Release 17, the schedule now anticipates completion in 2022, with a freeze in March 2022, followed by coding protocols frozen and stable in June 2022.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Private 5G network deployed by Affirmed and partners

A Taiwanese IT hardware manufacturer has deployed a virtualized private 5G network using its own servers along with core network software from Affirmed, which was recently acquired by Microsoft. The RAN software comes from ASOCS, an Israeli provider of on-premise cloud solutions. The network was deployed on government-allocated spectrum.

Verizon tees up in-building 5G with WeWork

A few months after Verizon announced it would use indoor mmWave 5G cell sites from Corning, the pair recently started the first commercial installations at certain retail stores, and separately singed up WeWork. WeWork, a company offering co-working and flexible workspace, signed a deal with Verizon Business to deploy in-building 5G sites from and Corning across 10 locations in the U.S. Those sites are located in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City and Seattle. The project is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2021, according to a WeWork spokesperson.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Remote Workers Fuel Versa’s SD-WAN, SASE Growth

The rapid shift to remote work following the onset of the pandemic early this year helped to accelerate Versa Network’s SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) platforms in a new market: the home, said CMO Mike Wood in an interview with SDxCentral.

AWS, Oracle Lead Cloud Database Management Leaders

Gartner’s latest ranking of cloud database management systems is a who’s who of the cloud world with market dominant players Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Oracle all sharing the most upper-right quadrant of the “leaders” category. That category also houses SAP, IBM, Alibaba Cloud, and Teradata in its lower-left section.

Plume eyes 6 GHz as Wi-Fi becomes hip again

Comcast was an early investor in Plume and also Plume’s first major customer in the United States. Comcast uses Plume’s software as part of its Wi-Fi mesh offering. The software rides on Comcast’s xFi Pods and helps eliminate residential Wi-Fi dead spots. It also provides security, parental controls, and access controls for each connected device. It can also prioritize devices and optimize the Wi-Fi traffic in the home.

Google suffers widespread Monday morning outage

Google services across Gmail, YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Drive, Google Classroom and Google Docs, among others, were down for about an hour Monday morning. Google users first noticed the widespread outage around 6:55 a.m. Eastern Time Monday morning, which led to hashtags such as "#YouTubeDOWN" to start trending on Twitter. 

Mavenir and MTI deliver first Evenstar open RAN radio

An obscure, Taiwanese radio vendor – Microelectronics Technology (MTI) – got some attention last week for its work with Dish Network on open radio access network (RAN) hardware. And now, Mavenir has announced it partnered with MTI to create the Evenstar B3 remote radio head (RRH).

Unlock 5G speeds and low latencies with high-performance DPI

To meet the demands of increasing 5G use cases, network operators need DPI solutions that can be scaled up in real time. This article discusses how underlying server processing capabilities influence the speed and throughput of a DPI software library and talks about the upgrade requirements needed to support new 5G traffic volumes and the lower latencies. Learn more.

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Roku, Charter in streaming skirmish

Roku has blocked access to the cable op's Spectrum TV app after the two sides failed to cut a new deal. They are also arguing at the FCC as Charter tries to end a ban on data caps and paid peering deals.

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Money Moves: November 2020

Here are some of the most prominent venture capital and merger and acquisition news items from the past month. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s VC or M&A activity in our monthly Money Moves section, or if you have any tips on that activity, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya (ssawaya@sdxcentral.com).

Friday, December 11, 2020

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Ciena's opex flex

Looking ahead to 2021, Ciena's CEO talks about its 800G systems, network automation and webscale supplier status as the company looks beyond the pandemic.

Daily Roundup: Ericsson Sues Samsung

In case you’ve been stuck in video conference meetings all day, here are today’s top stories from SDxCentral. Also, make sure to subscribe to our daily newsletters to get these stories in your inbox.

Kubernetes Drops 1.20 Release Under Schedule, Security Cloud

The Kubernetes project this week released its 1.20 iteration, which is the third and final platform release for the year. The release comes after a difficult year for most and resulted in the alteration of the project’s typical quarterly update cycle and also came just days after a spurious new security issue was found that impacts every version of Kubernetes.

AWS Blends Cisco, 12 Other SD-WAN Vendors Into VPC

Amazon Web Services (AWS) this week revealed a new feature designed to natively integrate SD-WAN into its virtual private cloud (VPC) service. AWS Transit Gateway Connect simplifies what was previously a manual operation for the provisioning of AWS VPC via VPN and replaces that framework with natively integrated SD-WAN appliances and services.

Ericsson Slaps Samsung With Patent Lawsuit

Ericsson filed a lawsuit against Samsung claiming its infrastructure rival violated contracts for “good faith” negotiations on patent terms and conditions. Ericsson said the issue could cost it up to $177 million in operating income per quarter beginning next year.

Wednesday, December 09, 2020

CBRS drives military to experiment with private wireless

Open RAN, CBRS, 5G, public/private partnerships and IoT technology are all coming together at Colorado’s Fort Carson, where US Ignite has partnered with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) to build a dedicated 4G/5G network to monitor smart vehicles. The network will be part of ERDC’s $4 million Fort Carson Smart Transportation Testbed and will upload and analyze data from ERDC’s automated shuttle, called the Mountain Express. Fort Carson is home to a large number of retired military personnel, many of whom use the Mountain Express for transportation. 

A glimpse into Microsoft’s edge compute ambitions

Operators such as Verizon and AT&T have made announcements about partnerships with big cloud providers, including AWS and Microsoft Azure, to co-build edge compute locations. But we’ve not heard a lot from the cloud providers, themselves, about their perspective on edge compute.

Nutanix lands VMware COO as its new CEO and president

On Wednesday, Nutanix announced it has hired VMware COO Rajiv Ramaswami as its new CEO and president. Ramaswami will take over his new roles at Nutanix, which competes against VMware, on Monday when co-founder and current CEO Dheeraj Pandey steps aside. Pandey had previously said he would retire as CEO once his replacement was found.

Verizon Business expands its SD-WAN roster with Silver Peak

Verizon Business has added another arrow to its SD-WAN quiver with a new Silver Peak-based managed service. Verizon is now using Silver Peak's Unity EdgeConnect Platform to provide its enterprise customers more options as they transition to integrated WAN optimization for their managed business applications.

Industry Voices—Cochran: Who needs to SASE!

Every enterprise and business entity needs to Somehow Administer Security Everywhere! (SASE!). Meanwhile, the magic SASE (secure access service edge) notion promises to simplify this challenge through the integration of SD-WAN and a mixture of cloud-based security capabilities such as firewalls, zero trust network access and more. SASE does not tackle the repercussions of relying solely on security in the clouds.

Tuesday, December 08, 2020

AWS Exec Predicts IoT Namesake’s Demise

Sarah Cooper has been working to advance IoT, and the world of machine-to-machine (M2M) that preceded it, for at least 13 years and she thinks the namesake for this technology is facing an imminent demise.

Arista Drives Big Switch, Awake Deals Into DMF

Arista Networks made its first big move to integrate its Big Switch acquisition, rolling out an enterprise-focused network observability software platform that provides network visibility across data centers, campus, and edge use cases.

Daily Roundup: Nutanix Steals VMware COO

In case you’ve been stuck in video conference meetings all day, here are today’s top stories from SDxCentral. Also, make sure to subscribe to our daily newsletters to get these stories in your inbox.

Open Source Community Conquers 2020’s Pitfalls

The open source community has made its mark on the software development space through its one-for-all, all-for-one group think and pace of innovation that no single enterprise could ever hope to match. This has allowed open source-based platforms to spread quickly through the market and become the basis for much of the advancements across the software-defined ecosystem.

Nutanix Steals VMware COO to Lead Company

Nutanix today said it hired former VMware COO Rajiv Ramaswami as its new CEO effective Dec. 14. Ramaswami will succeed co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who announced his plans to retire as CEO of Nutanix upon the appointment of a successor, earlier this year.

Firebolt Emerges With Guns Blazing At Snowflake

The data warehouse market is shaping up to become a battle of the elements as Firebolt, a cloud-native data warehouse startup, emerged from stealth today with $37 million in financing and an offering that claims to boast speeds hot enough to melt Snowflake’s hype into a springtime puddle. 

HPE Brings HPC to GreenLake

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is betting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will drive the adoption of high-performance compute (HPC) in the data center. The company today announced it will offer HPC clusters through its GreenLake platform.

Trump’s FCC nomination gets approved by Senate

The U.S. Senate voted 49-46 on Tuesday to confirm Nathan Simington to replace Michael O’Rielly on the FCC. Simington’s term is for five years. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow Republican Brendan Carr immediately issued congratulatory statements, as did the heads of groups that will continue working closely with the FCC for the next five years. On the flip side, Democrats charged that the nomination was rammed through, designed to do President Trump’s bidding.

Lowenstein: My view of top priorities for the new FCC

When the Biden administration takes over in January 2021, the FCC will sport a new chairman and a 3-2 Democratic majority. In this column, I’d like to offer my views on what I think the FCC’s top priorities should be and what might be some strategies for fulfilling some of these objectives.

AT&T’s Stankey cites Q4 wireless momentum

AT&T CEO John Stankey said he likes what he’s seeing in the company’s wireless business when it comes to fourth-quarter momentum, and that’s in part because AT&T tweaked plans earlier this year to make them appeal to not only new customers but existing ones as well.

Monday, December 07, 2020

Verizon Slides In Silver Peak SD-WAN Expansion

Verizon Business is expanding its relationship with SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak that includes a new deployment model and more options for customers selecting the managed offering. The move also fills out Verizon’s SD-WAN portfolio, which also includes its managed Cisco-based service.

Verizon CEO Defends DSS, Details 5G Edge Strategy

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg today defended the mobile operator’s decision to lean heavily on dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) for its recently activated low-band 5G network, but he didn’t go so far as to admit the company had no other option. 

Can Open Source Technology Keep Our Planet Alive?

In the face of a looming recession and climate catastrophe, technology titans, service providers, and consumer giants are taking collaborative action and turning their technology to fight the effects of climate change and fundamentally transform practices that harm both people and the planet through sustainable innovation.

Cloudflare Moves to Keep Data Local

Cloudflare delivered an early holiday gift to customers with the launch of the its namesake Data Localization Suite. Through Cloudflare’s global cloud network, the new set of tools give enterprise customers the helicopter-parent control they need to manage where data goes and ensure it stays where it should. 

Untangle SD-WAN Adds VLANs to the Fray

SD-WAN Vendor Untangle launched version two of its SD-WAN router today, which adds support for local network segmentation through VLANs. The company claims the new capabilities provide small to midsize businesses with new tools to more effectively manage their internet connections.

Comcast extends support for internet access through June

For the third time, Comcast has extended its initiatives to keep users connected during the Covid-19 pandemic. Comcast will continue to provide free internet service for the first 60 days for new Internet Essential Customers, as well as keep providing free access to more than 1.5 million Wi-Fi hot spots, through June 30.

Sunday, December 06, 2020

Russian Hackers Exploit VMware Bug

Russian state-sponsored hackers are actively exploiting a bug in some VMware endpoint and identity management products, according to a U.S. National Security Agency warning issued today.

Common Edge Computing Framework Remains a Longshot

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is making progress in defining mobile edge computing integration standards, but the extent to which operators, developers, and cloud providers will embrace common interfaces is very much an open question. 

Open Source Accelerates Arm’s Data Center Fire

Not long ago x86 processors’ dominance in the data center and hyperscale spaces was uncontested. Today, Intel and AMD face new competition from a swath of chipmakers championing Arm-based data-center chips with more cores, lower power consumption, and greater scalability.

Will Open Source Cybersecurity Reach Critical Mass?

Cybersecurity professionals are quick to see the risks associated with open source — a developer may unknowingly insert buggy open source code into an enterprise application, which could make the company, its partners, and customers vulnerable to attacks.

Saturday, December 05, 2020

Headcount: Firings, Hirings, and Retirings — November 2020

Here are some of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes that happened in November. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya (ssawaya@sdxcentral.com) for inclusion in the monthly headcount column.

Friday, December 04, 2020

Cisco Eyes Growth in 400G, 5G Transitions

Cisco operates a deeply entrenched business that targets many layers of IT, but it’s making considerable investments of late to capture market-wide transitions to 400 Gb/s infrastructure and 5G, according to Jonathan Davidson, SVP and GM of Cisco’s Mass-Scale Infrastructure unit.

90% of smartphones to support CBRS by 2023, says SNS Telecom

SNS Telecom & IT predicts that by 2023, about 90% of all smartphone shipments in the United States will incorporate support for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band – specifically, 3GPP bands 48 and 49 for LTE and n48 for 5G NR connectivity. The research firm estimates total smartphone shipments in the U.S. at about 130 million.

Report: Facebook, Microsoft drag down data center switch market

Thanks to the European and Asia-Pacific regions, global data center switch revenue bounced back year-over-year in Q3 after two consecutive quarters of mid to high single-digit declines. By contrast, revenue in the North American data switch market decreased for the fourth consecutive quarter due in part to a capex slowdown by some of the hyperscale cloud providers.

TIM, Ericsson, Qualcomm achieve 1 Gbps on 5G mmWave FWA

Italy’s Telecom Italia (TIM), Ericsson and Qualcomm worked together to use 5G technology on a fixed wireless access (FWA) deployment to get a speed of 1 Gbps on the downlink and 700 Mbps on the uplink. The demonstration took place in Rome on 26 GHz millimeter wave spectrum at a distance of 6.5 kilometers between the 5G mmWave device and the base station.

Siemens deploys private wireless network to support microgrid

The U.S. Department of Energy defines a microgrid as a group of interconnected components and distributed energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries. Microgrids can operate independently of the larger grid, and if connected to the grid they act as a single controllable entity. A microgrid is one way for a large user of power to take control of its energy use and focus on renewables. 

Thursday, December 03, 2020

Snowflake Surges on Strong Earnings, Expectations

Snowflake’s first quarter as a public company got off on uneven footing with the data warehousing vendor posting strong revenue growth and a hefty financial loss for the quarter. But that awkwardness was expected as investors piled heavily onto the vendor.

What Cybersecurity Tech Will VCs Throw Money at in 2021?

COVID-19 affected every sector during 2020, and cybersecurity’s no different. Some of the pandemic-related changes proved beneficial as companies realized overnight the necessity of securing a now-perimeter-less workforce. As a result, security budgets were the one area that typically didn’t see any cuts — and in some cases even increased — during the economic downturn. But will that cybersecurity spending continue in 2021?

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