Supermicro Showcases Enterprise, Datacenter Solutions at CeBIT 2017

HANNOVER, Germany, March 20, 2017 — #SuperMicro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in compute, storage and networking technologies including green computing, announces participation in the annual CeBIT exhibition being held in Hannover, Germany from March 20 to 24. Supermicro will showcase enterprise and data center solutions in Booth B-66. This year Supermicro’s showcased products include the new SuperBlade and BigTwin high density computing solutions. The 8U SuperBlade is the newest in Supermicro’s blade systems. The new 8U SuperBlade supports both current and next generation Intel Xeon processor-based blade servers with the fastest 100G EDR InfiniBand and Omni-Path switches for mission critical, enterprise and data center applications. It also leverages the same Ethernet switches, chassis management modules, and software as the successful MicroBlade for improved reliability, serviceability, and affordability. It maximizes the performance and power efficiency with DP and MP processors in half-height and full-height blades, respectively. The new smaller form factor 4U SuperBlade maximizes density and power efficiency while enabling up to 140 dual-processor servers or 280 single-processor servers per 42U rack. The Supermicro BigTwin is a breakthrough multi-node server system with a multitude of innovations and industry firsts. BigTwin supports maximum system performance and efficiency by delivering 30% better thermal capacity in a compact 2U form-factor enabling solutions with the highest performance processor, memory, storage and I/O. Continuing Supermicro’s NVMe leadership, the BigTwin is the first All-Flash NVMe multi-node system. BigTwin doubles the I/O capacity with three PCI-e 3.0 x16 slots and provides added flexibility with more than 10 networking options including 1GbE, 10G, 25G, 100G Ethernet and InfiniBand with its industry leading SIOM modular interconnect. Supermicro will also be featuring the newest edition to the company’s NVMe Flash portfolio supporting Intel’s new Optane SSDs. Supermicro’s industry leading portfolio of 60+ NVMe Flash based solutions with Intel Optane SSDs can deliver up to 11 million Write IOPs and 30TB of high performance Optane storage in a 1U form factor.

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/supermicro-showcases-enterprise-datacenter-solutions-cebit-2017/

Huawei sees switch to flash as right time to rethink whole storage infrastructure

#Huawei Technologies is going all flash with its latest enterprise storage system, the #OceanStor #Dorado V3. It's part of the new storage-as-a-service (STaaS) offering the company unveiled at Cebit on Monday, with which it aims to deliver the same experience on-premises and in the cloud.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3183509/cloud-computing/huawei-sees-switch-to-flash-as-right-time-to-rethink-whole-storage-infrastructure.html

HPE unveils a new SimpliVity appliance

Two months after acquiring #SimpliVity for US$650 million, #HewlettPackardEnterprise is beginning to reshape the company's converged infrastructure offering in its own image. SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, the #OmniCube, replaces storage switches, cloud gateways, high-availability shared storage, and appliances for backup and deduplication, WAN optimization, and storage caching. The company also offers OmniStack, the software powering the OmniCube, packaged for other vendors’ hardware.

Now HPE has qualified that software on its workhorse ProLiant DL380 server and will sell it as the snappily titled HPE SimpliVity 380 with OmniStack, Mark Linesch, the vice president for global strategy and operations of HPE's enterprise group, said Tuesday at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.

SimpliVity's website already lists the 380 among the product options, alongside versions of OmniStack tailored for Dell PowerEdge, Lenovo System x, and Cisco UCS servers for which it provided first-line support, handing off hardware matters to the vendors.

The website still lists the OmniCube for sale, too.

Linesch said HPE will continue to provide the same support for that hardware as SimpliVity did, although going forward, it hopes to see more customers on the ProLiant version.

SimpliVity used to guarantee that the OmniCube would offer a 90 percent capacity saving across production and backup storage while improving application performance, and HPE will offer the same guarantee for the SimpliVity 380, Linesch said. 

Three versions of the SimpliVity 380 are available, with five, nine or 12 SSDs of a capacity of 1.9 gigabytes each. The servers have dual Intel E5-2600 v4 (Broadwell) processors, and customers can configure them with up to 44 cores. Depending on how much RAM is ordered, usable memory will range from about 140 GB to 1.4 TB. Depending on the configuration requested by the customer, the total cost will vary between $26,000 and $100,000, an HPE spokesman said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3183100/data-center/hpe-unveils-a-new-simplivity-appliance.html

Intel x86: No cloud for you

While there are many milestones in the history of computing, few are as important as the introduction of the #Intel 8086 microprocessor, a 16-bit CPU that laid the foundation for the client-server, multi-tier systems architecture that dominates just about every IT environment today, 40 years after it was brought to market in 1976. Other than the IBM mainframe, which began with the System/360 in 1964 and used code that can run emulated on modern IBM System z systems in 2017, no computing systems architecture has managed to survive the ages in widespread, continuous use that long.

In industry terms, where major paradigms tend to shift every five or 10 years, the x86 is a true dinosaur.

Although the Intel x86 architecture was first released with the introduction of the 8086 microprocessor in 1976, it wasn't until 1981 when an 8-bit derivative, the 8088, was chosen for the original IBM PC.

As PC generations evolved, it gave rise to the 286, the 386 (which was the first 32-bit version), the 486, the Pentium, the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, the Pentium III, the Pentium 4, and so on.

Depending on who you talk to, it is generally regarded that we are now in the seventh generation of the Intel x86 architecture.

A lot of things have transpired in the IT industry since 1981. Workgroup LANs, PC servers, enterprise servers, multi-tier applications, wide area networks, widespread internet use, virtualization, and now the cloud, just to name a few.

Never mind the utter explosion of mobile device proliferation, and I'm also ignoring the Open Source revolution, as well as a bunch of other things related to software development methodology and multiple generations of programming languages.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-x86-no-cloud-for-you/

Quantum Bits: D-Wave and VW; Google Quantum Lab; IBM Expands Access

For a technology that’s usually characterized as far off and in a distant galaxy, #quantumcomputing has been steadily picking up steam. Just how close real-world applications are depends on whom you talk to and for what kinds of applications. Los Alamos National Lab, for example, has an active application development effort for its #DWave system and LANL researcher Susan Mniszewski and colleagues have made progress on using the D-Wave machine for aspects of quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) simulations. At CeBIT this week #DWave and #Volkswagen will discuss their pilot project to monitor and control taxi traffic in Beijing using a hybrid #HPC-quantum system – this is on the heels of recent customer upgrade news from D-Wave (more below). Last week #IBM announced expanded access to its five-qubit cloud-based quantum developer platform. In early March, researchers from the #GoogleQuantumAILab published an excellent commentary in Nature examining real-world opportunities, challenges and timeframes for quantum computing more broadly. Google is also considering making its homegrown quantum capability available through the cloud. As an overview, the Google commentary provides a great snapshot, noting soberly that challenges such as the lack of solid error correction and the small size (number of qubits) in today’s machines – whether “universal” digital machines like IBM’s or “analog” adiabatic annealing machines like D-Wave’s – have prompted many observers to declare useful quantum computing is still a decade way. Not so fast, says Google. “This conservative view of quantum computing gives the impression that investors will benefit only in the long term. We contend that short-term returns are possible with the small devices that will emerge within the next five years, even though these will lack full error correction…Heuristic ‘hybrid’ methods that blend quantum and classical approaches could be the foundation for powerful future applications. The recent success of neural networks in machine learning is a good example,” write Masoud Mohseni, Peter Read, and John Martinis (a 2017 HPCwire Person to Watch) and colleagues (Nature, March 8, “Commercialize early quantum technologies”)

https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/03/21/quantum-bits-d-wave-vw-google-quantum-lab-ibm-expands-access/

Michael Dell says PGA event benefits Austin charities

AUSTIN, Texas — The top 50 golfers in the world just rolled into Austin for the PGA’s #DellTechnologies Match Play event at Austin Country Club.

“Close to a billion people around the world will watch this tournament,” Dell Technologies founder and CEO #MichaelDell said. “And it’s a thrill to see these world class athletes in their element.”

But for Dell, he says it’s much more than a golf tournament. He says it’s a chance to showcase Austin.

“We’re really excited to have this tournament here in Austin,” Dell said. “This is the second consecutive year and it’s totally sold out. The reaction from the community has been tremendous.”

Dell says the Austin community will be one of the big winners at this tournament with a focus on local charities.

“When we thought about getting involved in this we wanted to be involved in something that had a charitable component,” Dell said.

Dell says five charities will benefit from the tournament proceeds.

First, he wants to help meet the needs of children in Austin with money going to the Helping Hand Home, a safe haven for children who have been abused and neglected. Money will also be directed to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Austin and the First Tee Program for kids.

“We love the youth and education focus,” Dell said.

Money will also go to Keep Austin Beautiful and the Austin Parks Foundation to improve, develop and maintain more than 300 parks, trails and green spaces.

“It’s a great chance for us to give back again to the wonderful Austin community that has been home to Dell for the past 33 years,” Dell said.

He also says he wanted to only showcase and support Austin’s unique food vendors instead of having generic concession stands.

“It’s just another special thing that we have here in our community,” Dell said. “We wanted this to be very much of an Austin tournament.”

Dell says his love for Austin is no secret and when it comes to golf and his game he wanted to make one thing perfectly clear.

“I would say I’m more of fan than a golfer,” Dell said. “I may be known some things but golfing is not one of them.”

http://keyetv.com/news/local/michael-dell-hosts-pgas-dell-technologies-match-play

Need a huge amount of reliable storage? 10TB of enterprise storage from Seagate

The #SeagateBarracuda Pro 10TB Enterprise HDD won't give you the fastest access to your data, but if you have a large amount of storage in a reliable format it is worth looking at this review. The MSRP of $444.45USD is much lower than you would pay for 10TB of SSD storage, though you might be able to set up several smaller disks in a #Drobo or similar device for a similar price. The MTBF is 2.5 million hours, the endurance rating is 550TB per year and there is a 5 year warranty so even with heavy usage you should be able to depend on this drive for quite a long time. You can drop by NikKTech to see how it performs.

https://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Need-huge-amount-reliable-storage-10TB-enterprise-storage-Seagate

Tegile Systems sees opportunities in NVMe, HPE-Nimble buy

The #Tegile CEO talks about how the #allflash market is shaping up with the advent of NVM express, and how his company is battling against the major data storage vendors.

Like most flash array vendors, Tegile Systems Inc. is waiting for advances such as nonvolatile memory express, or #NVMe, and #3DXPoint to become market reality. The vendor is banking on its flash design to maximize those technologies, compared to legacy systems originally built for HDDs. #HPE #Nimble

Unlike established vendors who come from the hard-disk world and newcomers who built all-flash arrays from the start, Tegile started in hybrids. It had flash in all of its arrays from the start in 2012, but added all-flash a few years later. Now, it has two flash platforms: The Tegile IntelliFlash T Series is based on the vendor's own technology, and the Tegile IntelliFlash HD(high density) incorporates chassis from partner SanDisk -- now Western Digital -- for higher-capacity loads.

SearchSolidStateStorage talked to Tegile Systems' CEO, Rohit Kshetrapal, about the latest developments in the flash storage market. We discussed Tegile Systems' NVMe plans, how customers are using flash and the cloud, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) acquisition of Nimble Storage and why an initial public offering (IPO) is not in the near-term future.

What is the mix among your customers between all-flash and hybrid arrays?

Kshetrapal: I would say in excess of 60% of our business has become all-flash. As we see the economics changing and larger-sized flash drives coming in, we hear less discussion around hybrids. The exception is when people may want a disaster recovery box.

http://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/news/450415202/Tegile-Systems-sees-opportunities-in-NVMe-HPE-Nimble-buy

IBM Announces New Pricing Model to Change Economics of Cloud Storage

LAS VEGAS, March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #IBMInterConnect -- #IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled new additions to the #IBMClouObjectStorage family. The company is offering clients new choices for archival data and a new pricing model to more easily apply intelligence to unpredictable data patterns using analytics and cognitive tools. IBM also announced an expanded partnership with #NetApp that provides NetApp customers with more ways to take advantage of IBM Cloud.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-announces-pricing-model-change-120200145.html

3D XPoint based drives launched, but we still don’t know how it works

It’s getting on for two years since #Intel and #Micron launched their #3DXPoint memory concept. Describing the approach as ‘the first new class of mainstream memory technology since 1989’, they claimed 3D XPoint would be ‘up to 1000 times faster than #NAND flash’. However, since its launch, the performance advantage claims have been reduced. What the companies didn’t explain then – and haven’t really done since – was how 3D XPoint operates. Most observers suggested that 3D XPoint would be an update on #phasechangememory (PCM), a technology developed by both companies. But Intel says no. Suggesting that 3D XPoint ‘doesn’t use electrons’, it also says that it’s not based on PCM or memristor technology. Intel planned to launch 3D XPoint based solid state drives (SSDs) under the Optane brand ‘early in 2016’. For whatever reason – likely to be manufacturing yield related – Optane SSDs have only just launched and Micron’s version – QuantX – has yet to be seen. 3D XPoint is one of the technologies vying to be a universal memory: something which is as cheap as DRAM, as fast as SRAM and non volatile like flash. The Optane SSD isn't cheap: the 375Gbyte device just announced will cost more than $1500. But it does appear to hit the spot when it comes to speed and non volatility. Interestingly, the SSD can be configured to appear to an operating system as DRAM – in other words, a massive cache memory. A high end controller could, in theory, push data into and out of the SSD rapidly through operations like prefetching, boosting performance. While the focus has been on 3D XPoint memory, Intel insisted that Optane would be a ‘bundle’ – alongside 3D XPoint, there is a memory controller, a PCIe interface, plus software and some other hardware elements. Could it be this combination which brings the performance boost over NAND based SSDs, rather than the memory alone? All that remains is for Intel to explain how the memory works.

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-blogs/3d-xpoint-based-drives-launched/152950/

Step aside cloud computing, 'fog computing' is here

Going all the way back to the 1970s, firms have relied on remotely located computing clusters to solve hardware-intensive problems. Today, it's the dominant way of doing business for many companies. But there's a problem. While hosting computer power on a remote server is handy, it's kind of a security risk; if that server is compromised, then the data of thousands – even millions – of users can be exposed in one fell swoop. Endlessly relocate So computer scientists at the University of Camerino have developed a new concept that spreads data across many servers, with no single location. It uses virtual buffers to endlessly relocate data packets without a file ever being complete in one place. They're calling it 'fog computing'. "Our proposal is based on this idea of a service which renders information completely immaterial in the sense that for a given period of time there is no place on earth that contains information complete in its entirety," said Rosario Culmone and Maria Concetta De Vivo, who developed the concept. "We want to realise a fog of files rather than a cloud." Never delivered They compare the system to a letter with a secure tracking device that gets sent continuously between different post offices and is never delivered. It would be hard for a thief to find it, but when you need it again you simply activate the tracking device, and it can then be easily located. "The inaccessibility by others, the non-location, and the dynamics of the system offer significant advantages in terms of security, but raise some legal problems.” the pair said. The full details of Culmone and De Vivo's "fog computing" system were published in the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics.

http://www.techradar.com/news/step-aside-cloud-computing-fog-computing-is-here

MORGAN STANLEY: IBM has the most upside in the cloud

Last week, #MorganStanley released a report on cloud computing, that evaluated the major players in the cloud ( #IBM, #BABA, #ORCL, #AMZN, #MSFT, #GOOGL, #SAP) by compiling estimates of "revenues, expenses, and capital requirements through 2020 to yield cloud free cash flow." Their findings: IBM has the most upside potential followed by #Alibaba. Morgan Stanley thinks IBM's $3 billion #publiccloud business will grow by 33% from 2016-2020.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/morgan-stanley-ibm-most-upside-181200281.html

Cisco Is Sitting on a $16 Billion Opportunity, If It Can Hold On

Next generation networking ( #NGN ) will provide a big opportunity for #Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) as telecom companies will need more equipment to handle the spike in data traffic. As it turns out, data traffic is estimated to grow 53% annually until 2020, creating demand for next-generation routing equipment, a market Cisco currently leads. How big could NGN routing get? NGN routing was 15% of Cisco's business in fiscal year 2016, which ended in July last year. The company's market share in this business stood at 40% at that time, putting the size of the overall market at roughly $18.5 billion . Grand View Research forecasts that the revenue opportunity from routers will rise to $41 billion by 2022, growing at a rate 14.2% annually. This growth rate suggests that the size of the routing market will increase to almost $21 billion this year. Cisco's current standing in NGN routers puts the segment's revenue at $8.40 billion this fiscal year, up 13% from last year. The company should get close to this mark as its NGN routing revenue in the first half of the fiscal year was almost $4 billion, and its sales should pick up pace in the second half due to order growth. If Cisco can maintain its currently slice of the NGN market, it could mean revenue of over $16 billion from the segment by 2022.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/20/cisco-is-sitting-on-a-16-billion-opportunity-if-it.aspx

The King Of Hyper-Converged No Longer Has A Hyper Valuation

#Nutanix - How long is the road to profitability? Nutanix (NASDAQ:NTNX) has been one of the worst performing names so far in 2017, and as I write this, it is down almost 23% year to date. It is less than six months since the company went public and appreciated 130% on its first day of trading at the end of September 2016. Shortly thereafter, it made a high at $44/share, and for the most part, it has been tracking lower since that time. The company reported earnings at the start of this month, and the shares have fallen to the current trading range losing about one-third of their value in that time and more than 50% of their value since the high that was made back on October 3rd. The concern was guidance, which showed rapidly slowing sequential growth and a deterioration in margins. It is the second time that the shares have reacted negatively to an earnings release since the company had its public debut. Should investors look at this as an entry point, or a name from which to stay far away? I think the valuation has reached a level that presents a reasonable entry point into the name and I think that competitive concerns, while hardly inconsequential, are more than discounted at current share price levels. Nutanix, for those unfamiliar with the company, is a leader in what is called the hyper-converged space. Hyper-converged is a technology that has been developed over a bit more than the past decade that uses software to integrate compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources in a single box built around commodity hardware. That is, no doubt, a gross oversimplification for some. But the fact that multiple functions have been seamlessly integrated in a single box using commodity hardware is seen by some as revolutionary. It has dramatic impacts on the total cost of a data center and turning some of the economics of IT hardware on its head. Currently, many observers and competitors of Nutanix suggest that hyper-converged infrastructure has been optimized for small data centers such as those run in the branches of large enterprises. While that may sound like a quibble, it isn't really. Nutanix is close to a $1 billion annual run rate in terms of revenues today. It is not likely to achieve continued hyper-growth status if it is unable to sell its solutions to large businesses for mission critical applications. NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP), in its most recent call, talked about building enterprise class hyper-converged products as though that was a virgin market. It is not an easy argument to decide, but it appears that Nutanix, even in a difficult quarter, has been able to penetrate a fair number of new Global 2000 nameplates and to do so by providing infrastructure with which to run mission-critical workloads.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4056551-king-hyper-converged-longer-hyper-valuation

Chemical Romance -- BASF Tapes Hope On Hewlett Packard Enterprise Supercomputer

For those of a certain age (around 40-years old and onwards), the ' #compactcassette ' was a wonderful thing. Manufacturer brand names including #Memorex, #TDK, #Sony, #AGFA and #BASF are etched into our memory because we carried the soundtrack to our youth around on these tough little plastic units. But those days are gone... and then the CD happened and then the Internet happened and then music streaming happened and so we forgot all about some of those names. All those brands do in fact all still trade to this day (Sony, more obviously than some). Mostly they are all to be found working in areas encompassing digital imaging and media in one form or another. German chemical firm BASF is today known for its work in plastics, biotechnology and chemicals. A chemical (research) romance In this regard then, BASF is now working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (or #HPE, as we are now encouraged to call it) on a project to develop one of the world's largest #supercomputer s for industrial chemical research. The work itself is being undertaken at BASF's headquarters in the fabulously named Ludwigshafen, Germany. "The new supercomputer will promote the application and development of complex modeling and simulation approaches, opening up completely new avenues for our research at BASF," said Dr. Martin Brudermueller, vice chairman of the board of executive directors and chief technology officer at BASF. This very big supercomputer (in German: sehr große supercomputer) will be based on HPE Apollo 6000 systems, which, in terms of form factor, are 'racks' of computer power typically deployed in High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. How long is an HPC calculation? Used in practice, complex HPC calculations performed in areas like chemical research can take 'several months' (so say the firms) to actually execute. The new machine aims to reduce months down to days. As part of BASF's wider digitalization strategy, the company also plans to expand its capabilities to run virtual experiments with this supercomputer. BASF says it will use the machine, for example, to simulate processes on 'catalyst surfaces' more precisely or accelerating the design of new polymers with pre-defined properties. Hewlett Packard Enterprise chief executive officer Meg Whitman is on the record saying how pleased she is about the 'prodigious calculations' about the be carried out by BASF. "In today's data-driven economy, high performance computing plays a pivotal role in driving advances in space exploration, biology and Artificial Intelligence." The machine itself will feature Intel Xeon processors as well as high-bandwidth low-latency Intel Omni-Path Fabric and HPE management software. Several 'racks' of HPE computer power strung together, the supercomputer acts as a single system with an effective performance of more than 1 Petaflop (1 Petaflop equals one quadrillion floating point operations per second). With this system architecture, a multitude of nodes can work simultaneously on highly complex tasks. Developed and built by HPE, the new supercomputer will consist of several hundred computer nodes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2017/03/20/chemical-romance-basf-tapes-hope-on-hewlett-packard-enterprise-supercomputer/#2c7778c853ce

Central Texans land on Forbes 2017 billionaires list

AUSTIN (KXAN) — #Forbes released its 2017 list of billionaires Monday and there are several Central Texans who have made the list. According to Forbes’ report, there are more billionaires worldwide this year than there was last year. In 2016, there were 1,810, this year the number is 2,043 — a 13 percent increase. Forbes still has #BillGates has the richest person on the planet — his fourth straight year. Gates is valued at $86 billion, up from $75 billion in 2016. Central Texas’ own tech giant, #MichaelDell, 52, is the richest person in the Austin-area, coming in at No. 38 with a net worth of $20.4 billion. In September 2016, #Dell finalized a deal to acquire #EMC Corporation in a $60 billion deal. The combination of the two companies created a $74 billion company. In 2016, Dell’s net worth was valued at $19.8 billion. Paul Mitchell owner John Paul DeJoria, 72, dropped to No. 630 with a net worth of $3.1 billion. Robert Smith, of Austin, runs a private equity shop, Vista Equity Partners. His net worth is valued at $2.5 billion, putting him at No. 814.
http://kxan.com/2017/03/20/forbes-2017-billionaires-list-michael-dell-is-still-rich/

A simple command allows the CIA to commandeer 318 models of Cisco switches

#Cisco Systems said that more than 300 models of switches it sells contain a critical vulnerability that allows the CIA to use a simple command to remotely execute malicious code that takes full control of the devices. There currently is no fix. Cisco researchers said they discovered the vulnerability as they analyzed a cache of documents that are believed to have been stolen from the CIA and published by WikiLeaks two weeks ago. The flaw, found in at least 318 switches, allows remote attackers to execute code that runs with elevated privileges, Cisco warned in an advisory published Friday. The bug resides in the Cisco Cluster Management Protocol (CMP), which uses the telnet protocol to deliver signals and commands on internal networks. It stems from a failure to restrict telnet options to local communications and the incorrect processing of malformed CMP-only telnet options. "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending malformed CMP-specific telnet options while establishing a telnet session with an affected Cisco device configured to accept telnet connections," the advisory stated. "An exploit could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code and obtain full control of the device or cause a reload of the affected device."
https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/03/a-simple-command-allows-the-cia-to-commandeer-318-models-of-cisco-switches/

How One Service Provider Developed On Demand Network Services with SDN and NFV

Javier Benitez discusses #Colt ’s #SDN and #NFV solutions, focusing on current development efforts and future plans. #CreativeCommons Zero Pixabay IT virtualization has radically changed the face of compute, storage, and network services in data centers and beyond. In response, Colt -- a network and communications service provider -- back in 2015 began developing a program that has transformed the way the company offers network services to customers, says Javier Benitez, Senior Network Architect, Colt Technology Services, who will be speaking at Open Networking Summit. According to Benitez, the aim was to move away from a traditional consumption model to one where network services are consumed through an on-demand model based on software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies. Here, Benitez explains more about Colt’s SDN and NFV solutions, focusing on current development efforts and future plans.

https://www.linux.com/news/event/open-networking-summit/2017/3/developing-demand-network-services-SDN-NFV

Partners To Juniper Networks: Dump Security, Focus Reorganization Around SDN

As #Juniper Networks undergoes a reorganization, which includes some layoffs, partners are asking the vendor to leave behind its "failing" security business and refocus innovation on its bread-and-butter networking and its software-defined networking ( #SDN ) portfolio. "Customers have moved away from looking at Juniper as a serious security contender with the others that are out there – like #PaloAlto Networks and #Fortinet," said one CEO from a solution provider who partners with Juniper and declined to be named. "They need to seriously consider what they should do with their security piece, but I think they should focus their effort on switching and routing and building software around that to enhance those technologies."  Several partners said their overall Juniper business declined around 10 to 15 percent in 2016 year over year in part due to a lack of security sales.

http://m.crn.com/news/networking/300084251/partners-to-juniper-networks-dump-security-focus-reorganization-around-sdn.htm?itc=hp_ots

Software Defined Capacity Aims to Make Optical Networks More Flexible

Manufacturers continue to find novel ways of helping carriers operate their networks more efficiently, as news today from #Infinera illustrates. The #opticalnetworking company launched what it is calling Infinera Instant Network, which as Infinera executive Mark Showalter explained, gives carriers the ability to “activate capacity before they pay for it, match cost to revenue, and accelerate service delivery.” The capability builds on software defined capacity, which lets network operators pay for network capacity only when it is needed. For example, equipment might support speeds of up to 400 Gbps per line card but operators would pay for capacity only as it is activated. Infinera previously used software defined capacity to support the company’s Instant Bandwidth capability launched several years ago. Instant Bandwidth enables network operators to deposit money into a license store and drop or add capacity as needed on the Infinera optical equipment installed in their network. About half of Infinera’s long-haul customers use the capability today, Showalter said.

http://www.telecompetitor.com/software-defined-capacity-aims-to-make-optical-networks-more-flexible/