Saturday, November 14, 2020

Money Moves: October 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).

Open RAN Takes Lumps From Ericsson

Don’t expect Ericsson to become a leading provider of open radio access network (RAN) infrastructure any time soon. The Swedish vendor formally embraced the framework, in part, with the recent introduction of its Cloud RAN offering, that it expects to begin shipping by late 2021. However, open RAN specified software will only compose about 3% of its total volumes by 2025, Fredrik Jejdling, EVP and head of business area networks, said this week during a presentation.

Friday, November 13, 2020

SAP Pushes Back on Enterprise Modernization Claims

SAP’s recent move to postpone an ambitious financial plan to take advantage of its cloud business was part of a deeper analysis by the vendor that found enterprise customers were not following up on statements that they planned to increase digitization spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Huawei Sets Stage for 5.5G

5G deployments are only just now making inroads in developing countries, but Huawei is already making plans for the technology’s evolution. The China-based vendor explained that the foundation for this “5.5G” evolution will be laid by improved IoT capabilities and scenarios, uplink centric broadband communication (UCBC), real-time broadband communication (RTBC), and harmonized communication and sensing (HCS).

ServiceNow: Keeping service experience as the focus of digital transformation

As communications service providers continue to wrestle with the speed and the shape of their digital transformation, Light Reading's editor in chief, Phil Harvey, and ServiceNow's GM and AVP for global telecom, media and technology, Chris Bauschka, sit down for a brief chat on the progress of digital transformation initiatives across the global telecom landscape.

Disney+ subs soar to 73M

Hulu ends period with 32.5 million SVoD subs and 4.1 million customers on Hulu's pay-TV streaming service as The Mouse continues its pivot toward streaming and direct-to-consumer video services.

Industry Voices—Raynovich: Cisco bounces back in Q1

Cisco shares rose as much as 8% in after-hours trading after the company reported an upbeat first fiscal quarter of 2021 (FQ21) after markets closed. Earnings exceeded the substantially lowered expectations the company had set after its last downbeat earnings report that resulted in the company issuing annual revenue guidance for a 10% decline. 

Dish looking ahead with Qualcomm collaboration

After announcing a collaboration with Qualcomm to test solutions containing its new open 5G radio access network (RAN) platforms, Dish Network is looking ahead at future equipment deployments for its planned 5G network, according to the service provider’s network chief Marc Rouanne.

Verizon, AWS use mmWave spectrum to test autonomous driving apps

Verizon and Amazon Web Services have added two more 5G mobile edge compute (MEC) cities: Dallas and Miami. This brings the total cities to seven, including Atlanta, New York, Washington, DC, Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area. The partners are still on track to have Verizon’s 5G Edge deployed in 10 cities by year end.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Daily Roundup: Verizon Faces 5G Skeptics

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 newsletter to get these stories in your inbox.

SonicWall SASE Taps Perimeter 81 ZTNA, Revamps Firewalls

SonicWall deepened its relationship with security vendor Perimeter 81 today to add zero-trust network access (ZTNA) to its emerging secure access service edge (SASE) offering. The announcement came alongside a swath of new appliances from SonicWall, including revamped enterprise and small branch next-generation firewalls running the company’s SonicOS 7 operating system.

Verizon Brass Faces 5G mmWave Skeptics

Verizon executives this week batted down pointed criticism and ongoing concerns about its millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G strategy during an event with analysts and investors. Verizon’s 5G effort began with a heavy push on mmWave to deploy its 5G Ultra Wideband network, but the coverage of that network remains narrow and sporadic, sometimes from city block to city block. 

Apple, Google start working on 6G

The first 5G phones from Apple and Google are barely out of the box, yet both companies have joined the Next G Alliance to 'advance North American mobile technology leadership in 6G.'

Google Cloud's Serverless Database Migration Takes Flight

It took a global pandemic for enterprises to pick up their database migration pace from a walk to a sprint, but Google is looking to accelerate that motion with a preview launch of its serverless Database Migration Service (DMS) that offers a first-class flight to fully managed cloud databases like Google Cloud SQL.

Amdocs partners with AWS to deliver cloud BSS offerings to CSPs

Amdocs has entered into a multi-year agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver intergrated, cloud-native business support systems (BSS) offerings to communications service providers (CSPs). As part of the deal, AWS is now Amdocs’ preferred cloud provider for Amdocs’ internal IT transformation. 

Orange links up West Africa

At AfricaTech, Orange formally launched its pan-West African network, designed to remove the need for complex cross-border interconnections in the region.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Ericsson Explains Why 5G Isn’t Awesome in the US (Yet)

The head of the North American market for Ericsson called it rather succinctly this week: 5G networks in the U.S. are not awesome. AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon, have deployed “nationwide” 5G networks that provide a platform to continue building upon, but plenty of work remains, Ericsson SVP Niklas Heuveldop said during a presentation for analysts and investors. 

Ericsson Revival Rides 5G, R&D

Ericsson executives this week claimed the company’s turnaround effort is complete and many areas of the business are poised for growth amid increased 5G adoption. A few executives, including CEO Börje Ekholm and CFO Carl Mellander, got together in person for the first time in many months to share a detailed update on Ericsson’s market position and its outlook for investors.

DriveNets drives disaggregation with new orchestrator

Israel-based DriveNets took the wraps off of its latest network orchestrator to help drive service providers' cloud-native networks and white box deployments. DriveNets' Network Orchestrator (DNOR 2.0) is part of its Network Cloud software. Network Cloud uses cloud-native routing software to support new functions in the underlying white-box hardware.

F5 augments telco container-based infrastructure

The wireless industry may know F5 as the company that helps operators manage applications across multiple private and public clouds via its Application Delivery Controller. But now, F5 plans to use its expertise to help carriers manage their container-based infrastructure.

Monday, November 09, 2020

Dell Packs Data Protection Power Punch

Dell Technologies rolled out a bunch of updates to its year-old PowerProtect data protection platform today including new integrated appliances for the DP series, updated Data Manager software capabilities for Kubernetes, and cloud data protection for Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and the VMware Tanzu portfolio. 

Cisco Busts HyperFlex HCI Free From Its Hardware Jail

Cisco’s HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) product will gain a software-only version at some point next year that will allow the platform to run on third-party and white box servers. And that expansion will eventually extend to the public cloud.

F5 Readies Kubernetes Services for 5G Standalone Core

F5 is tightening its grip on Kubernetes with a pair of services designed to support container-based network functions (CNFs) for operators deploying a 5G standalone core. The vendor today revealed Big-IP Service Proxy for Kubernetes (SPK), which will be commercially available before the end of the year, and Carrier-Grade Aspen Mesh, which is available now.

Private wireless network enhances security at Port of Long Beach

The Port of Long Beach generates more than $100 billion in trade each year and employs 316,000 people directly or indirectly. Dozens of shippers, vendors and customers work at the 3,200-acre site under the watchful eyes of hundreds of cameras deployed by the port for security. The cameras are used to ensure that traffic is flowing smoothly, detect equipment downtime and guard against the possibility of malicious attacks. Over the years, the port has upgraded from analog to high-definition IP cameras, most recently adding thermal imaging cameras that can operate in the dark.

Is open RAN’s bubble about to burst?

Open RAN technology — which refers to the separation of the hardware and software components of the radio access network (RAN) — has gained a lot of attention over the past year. And with good reason. Open RAN opens the door to more potential RAN vendors and makes hardware and software from different vendors interoperable, which in turn leads to cost savings for operators and more flexibility in the mobile network. 

Sunday, November 08, 2020

SKT and DT to Establish 5G Technology Joint Venture in Germany

SK Telecom and Deutsche Telekom today announced that they entered into an agreement to establish a 5G technology joint venture. They will each hold 50 percent of the joint venture and each will name one representative to lead the new entity. The joint venture will be headquartered in Germany.

The Slingbox era nears its end

Word that the pioneering video 'place-shifting' device is being discontinued, with plans to render all Slingboxes interoperable in two years, comes many months after the manufacturing of Slingboxes was halted.

Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin on network slicing, edge needs for 5G applications

Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin and Light Reading's Phil Harvey recapped the recent 5G Transport & Networking Strategies symposium and they discussed network slicing in transport networks, how Verizon is handling its 5G traffic and how the increasing importance of edge computing is shaping optical networking technologies and spending.

Deutsche Telekom, SK Telecom Ink 5G JV

Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom formed a joint venture to develop in-building 5G systems. Once the companies crack the code for in-building 5G propagation, they intend to create new services and technology in mixed reality, mobile edge computing, and applications.

Aryaka CEO: Managed SASE Is Where It’s At

How and where people work is changing, both now and into the future. And with this pivot to remote work, the way companies are architecting their networks has to change, too, said Aryaka CEO Matt Carter in an interview with SDxCentral.

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