Saturday, February 20, 2021

Friday, February 19, 2021

SolarWinds Lessons Learned, More Stolen Microsoft Source Code

As the fallout from the SolarWinds hack continues to unfold, Microsoft this week said attackers stole source code for three of its products (but didn’t hack any customers’ information), and an ExtraHop investigation found a 150% increase in suspicious network activity that went largely ignored during the peak of the attack.
           

Delta Air Lines hires IBM for hybrid cloud

Delta Air Lines hired IBM in a multi-year agreement under which IBM will transform Delta's computing environment to run on a hybrid cloud architecture built on Red Hat OpenShift. The goal is to enable a consistent environment across Delta’s private and public clouds.
           

Cisco closes IMImobile acquisition

Cisco has completed its $730 million acquisition of IMImobile, a UK provider of cloud communications software that helps businesses communicate with their customers through SMS, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger and in-app communications. By combining IMImobile’s solution with Webex Contact Center, Cisco plans to create a unified customer experience-as-a-service offering for business customers. 
           

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Daily Roundup: Arista Closes Strong Q4

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.
           

Something's up at Orby TV

Cryptic message that Orby TV is 'not activating customer accounts' has left customers in the dark about the fate of a prepaid satellite TV service that got off the ground in early 2019.
           

FCC advances $1.9B program to rip and replace Huawei gear

There is definitely “Huawei fatigue” in the news world, where reporters have been diligently covering the fall from grace of the Chinese telecom vendor since early 2018. And lawmakers probably have Huawei fatigue as well, having passed myriad legislation to get Huawei and ZTE equipment ripped out of American telecom networks.
           

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Podcast: Can live sports save pay-TV?

Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner discusses new streaming services such as Paramount+, whether live sports can keep pay-TV alive, and what other features are keeping pay-TV subscribers from cutting the cord.
           

FCC to dish out $3.2B in emergency broadband benefits

The FCC held an open meeting today to discuss its immediate priorities. The meeting was the first one conducted by Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. One of the top issues discussed today was the new Emergency Broadband Benefit program, which congress has directed the FCC to establish. In addition, the FCC discussed its efforts to accurately map broadband availability across the country. 
           

C-band assignment phase ends

The suspense lingers over who actually won licenses – and how much they each bid for them – but the FCC announced Wednesday that bidding in the assignment phase of the C-band auction has ended.
           

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Can Cisco, Palo Alto Networks Make XDR, SASE Collide?

Extended detection and response (XDR) and secure access service edge (SASE) were two of the hottest security trends last year, and they don’t show any sign of slowing down in 2021. If anything, they’re speeding up — and they’re not just running on parallel paths.
           

Databricks Drives Google Cloud to the Data Lakehouse

Databricks rounded out its public cloud support with the launch of Databricks on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with integrations to Google’s BigQuery and AI Platform. The extension secures the trifecta of major public cloud platforms included within Databricks’ offerings.
           

Cable One buys remaining stake in Hargray in $2.2B deal

Cable One continues its acquisition frenzy. The company, which offers broadband connectivity through its Sparklight brand to 900,000 residential and business customers in more than 21 states, has agreed to acquire the remaining 85% of Hargray Communications. Cable One is already a minority investor in Hargray, having secured a 15% stake in the company last October, which allowed Hargray to expand into Alabama. 
           

Cisco will work with Japan on mass-scale digitization program

Cisco is collaborating with the government of Japan on a massive digitization project that will include many industry verticals including government, education, healthcare and business. The goal of the program is to drive mass-scale digitization, stimulate Japan’s economic growth, enhance its quality of life and help the country in its recovery from the global Covid-19 pandemic.  
           

Accenture and VMware partner to help companies move to the cloud

Accenture is partnering with VMware to help clients move their businesses to the cloud. The new partnership is part of Accenture Cloud First, which Accenture committed $3 billion to and debuted last September. The goal of Accenture Cloud First is to help clients across all industries become cloud-first businesses and accelerate their digital transformation.
           

Monday, February 15, 2021

Will vRAN Ever Break Into mmWave 5G Networks?

Virtualized radio access networks (vRAN) promise many benefits, but it has some limitations that are rarely addressed. Most of these drawbacks hinge on spectrum and how mobile network infrastructure uses those airwaves to propagate coverage and transmit data, but there are also constraints that are unique to vRAN. 
           

Cable One stays on M&A tear

Deal to acquire rest of Hargray comes roughly four months after Cable One grabbed a 15% stake. Also, Cable One recently snapped up a big piece of Mega Broadband Investments and invested in two wireless ISPs.
           

What is NaaS? & Why NaaS Now?

I joined PacketFabric because it is one of the founding companies behind the NaaS (Network-as-a-Service) concept. For years, I had been all over SDN (Software Defined Networking); controllers, moving the industry via major vendors portfolios. Yet, things just weren’t going fast enough. I wanted a chance to explain why I joined Anna, Jezzibell, Chad and the team and what I see in the future for NaaS, which is an evolution of the Internet Architecture; in particular from the technical side. Towards that end, a first blog defining what is and what’s different about NaaS may bring some clarity to a seemingly crowded and semantically overloaded term. With increasing frequency, the analysts that traditional Enterprises have relied upon to provide guidance on technology trends have been focusing on NaaS. Sure, we’ve followed the SDN cycle through their analytical lens and NaaS IS SDN for the WAN, DCI or middle-mile-to-services that a real-time network requires and that now has their eye because it’s very timely. Over the last year, PacketFabric has made great strides in moving from its early startup stage by really ramping (portfolio, business and operations) and attracting recognition in recent analysis by Gartner, Futuriom and (most recently) GigaOm. These are all excellent reads, but the perspective of each individual analysis understandably leads to the inclusion of companies profiled with capabilities that are sometimes broader than what I would personally define as NaaS and other times just adjacent to NaaS. The lumping together of overlay tunnel companies, SD-WAN companies, security companies, and more I’ll discuss later, is confusing on both a technical and business level. Sometimes “lumping” things together is easy but, it’s time to sort and match up the socks. It’s time to define NaaS and create a new market category.How NaaS Started - Way back machine NaaS is different than other software-defined technologies because it starts with a fundamental architectural shift rooted in how automation and orchestration technology stacks are built. All from-the-ground-up reinvention, no patchwork quilt, natively utilizing dynamic private cloud and public cloud environments. Utilizing any protocol and automation language to “talk” to the boxes, NaaS creates a full on (per the trade marketing arm) “Network Operating System” to power a nextgen Service Provider. In combination with traditional colocation assets, Private Network Interconnect and IXs creating a secure, private internet. NaaS is really trying to solve fundamental problems in how networks were managed and presented to customers as a private internet. Summarized in our own “NaaS Operator’s Guide”. “The legacy model of WAN requires building a private data network or purchasing access from a service provider with a series of complex manual steps through both the business process as well as the technology infrastructure process. This is no longer compatible with today’s modern applications, which require a streamlined and automated process driven by digital technology rather than “pieces of paper and plugs.” Working with operators and network owners for decades; just about every aspect of the legacy WAN and DCI model was static and frankly unable to evolve out of its own way. The well was dry on that operational architecture. It was designed around static resource allocation with a slow rate of change (bandwidth, technology, peers/partners). It was hampered by complexity, lock-in, bureaucracy and gatekeeping. What am I talking about? Click here to read the full blog post.
           

Experts Answer Critical 5G Questions About 5G Safety, and more

A revolution in wireless communications is underway. The rollout of 5G wireless technology around the world is triggering excitement and trepidation. As this next-stage infrastructure begins to take shape, users will undoubtedly thrill at the new capabilities available from 5G: faster streaming, quicker uploads, and the ability to communicate across the globe at speeds of up to 100 Gigabits per second. Although there are concerns and questions around the biological and environmental effects of 5G, it is believed that the addition of 5G will introduce a revolutionary improvement to a country's communication systems, especially in terms of connectivity, latency, and bandwidth.   As the rollout of 5G accelerates, testing, validation and optimization of 5G infrastructure and devices is paramount, and 5G operators face two significant optimization challenges: bandwidth and propagation. It is also predicted that the number of IoT devices worldwide will be somewhere in the region of 40 billion within three years. Each of those devices will need a network to connect and communicate, and hopes are high that 5G will meet the challenge and expand IoT capabilities. To address all these concerns and more, Gap Wireless has put together a discussion panel featuring wireless and test and measurement industry experts. Our experts provide in-depth answers to critical 5G questions and concerns related to 5G health and safety, 5G testing, 5G coverage, 5G and IoT and 5G public safety applications. Hear from 5G Experts from Keysight Technologies, Radio Frequency Systems (RFS), Wavecontrol, JMA Wireless, ThinkRF, Health Canada, Bird, and more answer emerging questions such as:
           

Sunday, February 14, 2021

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