JPEG 2000 and H.264 codecs deployed for broadcast-quality video compression

OXNARD, Calif.—April 22, 2013—Video production services provider All Mobile Video has selected advanced video compression solutions from Nevion, a leading provider of next-generation managed media transport, to enable broadcast-quality video transport over IP. All Mobile Video chose JPEG 2000 and H.264 technology from Nevion’s Ventura family of media transport solutions to transport video between several locations – its studios in New York, its Gateway Teleport in New Jersey and its Westar Teleport in Texas – over its existing Gigabit Ethernet IP network.

“After thorough testing of equipment from a number of vendors we chose Nevion’s solutions based on their ability to deliver the highest visual quality over a Gigabit Ethernet link,” explained Michael Carberry, vice president of transmission services, All Mobile Video. “In addition, Nevion were able to deliver the solutions according to our timescales and provide the support we needed.”

For JPEG 2000 compression All Mobile Video chose Nevion’s VS901 solution. A key factor in their decision was its ability to auto detect input signal formats. The VS901 is a carrier-class solution designed for delay-sensitive applications that require visually lossless video quality. Frame-by-frame compression and low end-to-end latency make it ideal for fast-paced action sports and quick camera movements. It guarantees the highest possible quality with absolute minimal degradation through multiple encode/decode cycles.

All Mobile Video chose Nevion’s VS904 MPEG-2/H.264/AVC-Intra encoder for deploying contribution video over its bandwidth-limited IP infrastructure without sacrificing image quality. The VS904 provides the optimum balance between quality, latency and cost, and is available with low latency configurations to support real-time contribution applications. As well as encoding and decoding H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, AVC-Intra and MPEG-2, it supports HD/SD, 4:2:2/4:2:0 and 10-bit/8-bit video resolution.

“Nevion offers a complete range of state-of-the-art compression choices with very high visual quality for professional video transport applications, said Geir Bryn-Jensen, CEO, Nevion. “Our compression technology is ideal for a variety of applications, from contribution over low-bandwidth satellite links to high-bitrate media transport over IP or SONET. For any application, the ideal compression format is the one that provides the optimal balance between visual quality and latency given the bandwidth available.”

About All Mobile Video
All Mobile Video is a leading provider of end-to-end video and audio solutions for entertainment, sports and news programming and events. It offers a full spectrum of services – from spacious Manhattan-based sound stages with full post-production capabilities to mobile production and editing trucks and extensive uplink solutions – as well as an extensive equipment inventory to fully customize any facility or location.

It has handled every size and type of event – from professional and NCAA sporting events and internationally viewed awards shows to live documentaries, corporate communication events and daily television broadcasts. For more information please visit amvchelsea.com.

About Nevion
Building on a heritage of innovation and pioneering firsts, Nevion is a leader in media transport – from the camera to the home. A result of two industry-leading companies – Nevion and T-VIPS – coming together in late 2012, Nevion’s approach to innovation is driving the convergence of broadcast, IT and telecoms technologies.

Through long-term strategic relationships with partners and customers, Nevion delivers content for major sporting and live TV events worldwide. Some of the world’s largest media networks are built on Nevion technologies – including AT&T, Arqiva, BBC, BT, CCTV, EBU, TDF, Telefonica, Telenor and NASA.

Nevion fully manages all network types – from legacy infrastructure upgrades to entirely new digital systems – with intelligence, automation and security built-in, helping customers monetise content, save resources, and open doors to new revenue streams.

Nevion’s world headquarters are in Norway with Americas headquarters in California. Nevion also maintains offices in the UK, Dubai, Beijing and Singapore. For more information please visit www.nevion.com.

Media contacts: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
EMEA enquiries: Tristan Earl, t: +44 (0)20 7403 8878, e: tristane@rlyl.com
Americas/Asia enquiries: Kim Willsher, t: (+1) 310 569 2603, e: kimw@rlyl.com

Image via Nevion

Leonard Grace

Nevion to launch new live media networking solution at NAB

Nevion’s live media networking complements the company’s broadcast infrastructure offering

Sandefjord, Norway, March 7, 2013—At NAB (booth SU3117), Nevion, a leading provider of next-generation managed media transport, will unveil a new broadcast solution for live media networking of all signals involved in a live production—regardless of locations. The Flashlink live media networking solution can be integrated seamlessly with broadcasters’ in-house networks to provide a comprehensive offering that also includes signal processing, routing and contribution.

Flashlink live media networking encompasses all live production signals for studios, events and campus networks where system build time is reduced through an easily configured, streamlined solution. The Flashlink solution provides 10Gbps uncompressed video transport, asynchronous transport of multiplexed audio, Ethernet, data and communications over IP, and digital synch distribution — all with the highest fiber utilization, zero latency and ultra-high quality required by today’s live video broadcasting.

The system design allows for scalability of the video layer without adding cost to any other network function. With seamless integration to broadcasters’ in-house networks, the solution enables streamlined management of the full production process, significantly speeding and improving the live production workflow.

“The beauty of this architecture lies in how seamlessly all live media services are integrated with glue infrastructure into a highly secure contribution network,” said Janne T. Morstøl, chief product and marketing officer, Nevion. “The quality and broadness of this solution and the immediate, secure connection it provides can redefine live media networking.”

The Flashlink live media networking solution, in conjunction with Nevion’s in-house and campus networking based on a distributed optical/electrical routing architecture and full studio interfacing through to contribution, provides broadcasters with an end-to-end broadcast infrastructure, all under one, fully-managed system.

Nevion’s comprehensive broadcast infrastructure offering, encompassing the Flashlink live media solution, is consistently selected by broadcasters and service providers for the world’s major sporting events. Nevion will also showcase its complete portfolio for broadcast infrastructure including live media networking, forward-looking broadcast networking, glue products and transport solutions.

Image via nabshowbuzz.com

Leonard Grace

UFC and Aspera Team Up For Sports Content Delivery

World’s leading mixed martial arts promoter relies on Aspera for content delivery workflows to further expand its brand internationally

EMERYVILLE, Calif., March 2013—Aspera, Inc., creators of next-generation software technologies that move the world’s large data at maximum speed, today announced that the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®), the world’s leading promoter of mixed martial arts (MMA), has deployed Aspera’s high-speed transfer software to power its file-based content delivery workflows – for its internal teams during production of live events, for global distribution partners and for fans accessing content on the web or via their mobile devices from around the world.

With over 30 live events taking place annually worldwide, the UFC needed to implement a digital transport technology solution that would overcome wide area network challenges to deliver video content quickly to the production crew ahead of each event and distribute it internationally within hours of each event.

UFC deployed Aspera as the backbone of its digital asset management system allowing field production teams to quickly pull existing content from venues all over the world for inclusion in the live broadcasts. The same system links UFC’s Las Vegas headquarters and Los Angeles office, with video editors transferring gigabytes of file-based media on a daily basis.

UFC programming is broadcast to 800 million TV households throughout 145 countries, and content is hosted on UFC.com and delivered on every major mobile gaming platform including iTunes, Hulu, Xbox, Amazon, Roku, and Sony PS3. Exclusive footage offered includes fighters in training, event week activities such as workouts, weigh-ins and press conferences, and behind-the-scenes interviews.

“We needed to push large volumes of high-quality content from locations that sometimes have poor connectivity, so we developed a solution using Aspera,” said Christy King, vice president of digital and technology research and development at UFC. “There is simply no way we could have ever distributed this much content as broadly as we can today without the ability to deliver video as quickly as Aspera does.”

Adept Mobile worked with UFC to build the video ingest, transcoding, and distribution platform that allows UFC to upload high-resolution video clips for transcoding into various mobile device formats before posting them on UFC’s website.

Aspera is also at the heart of UFC’s content delivery to over 150 international partners. Over the past year, UFC shifted its workflow from 90% physical tape delivery to 95% digital delivery via Aspera.

“We are thrilled to support UFC in their exponential growth by allowing them to scale and accelerate their content delivery workflow,” said Richard Heitmann, vice president of marketing at Aspera. “With Aspera software deployed on-premise and in the cloud, UFC can confidently rely on its technology investments to meet the growing worldwide demand for mixed martial arts content.”

About the Ultimate Fighting Championship®
Universally recognized for its action-packed, can’t-miss events that have sold out some of the biggest arenas and stadiums across the globe, the UFC® is the world’s premier mixed martial arts (MMA) organization. Owned and operated by Zuffa, LLC, headquartered in Las Vegas and with offices in London, Toronto and Beijing, UFC produces more than 30 live events annually and is the largest pay-per-view event provider in the world. In 2012, the UFC burst into the mainstream with a landmark seven-year broadcast agreement with FOX Sports Media Group. The agreement includes four live events broadcast on the FOX network annually, with additional fight cards and thousands of hours of programming broadcast on FOX properties FX and FUEL TV. This also includes the longest-running sports reality show on television, The Ultimate Fighter®, which airs on FX.

In addition to its reach on FOX, UFC programming is broadcast in over 145 countries, to nearly 800 million TV households worldwide, in 28 different languages. UFC content is also distributed commercially in the United States to bars and restaurants through Joe Hand Promotions, in English throughout Canada via Premium Sports Broadcasting Inc. and Australia via Main Event and in French throughout Quebec via Interbox. The UFC also connects with tens of millions of fans through its website, UFC.com, as well as social media sites Facebook and Twitter. UFC President Dana White is considered one of the most accessible and followed executives in sports, with nearly 2.4 million followers on Twitter. Ancillary UFC businesses include best-selling DVDs and video games, an internationally distributed magazine, UFC.TV offering live event broadcasts and video on demand around the world, a new franchise in development with EA, UFC GYM®, UFC Fight Club affinity program, UFC Fan Expo® festivals, branded apparel and trading cards.

About Aspera
Aspera is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. Based on its patented fasp™ protocol, Aspera software fully utilizes existing infrastructures to deliver the fastest, most predictable file-transfer experience. Aspera’s core technology delivers unprecedented control over bandwidth, complete security and uncompromising reliability. Over 2000 organizations across a variety of industries on six continents rely on Aspera software for the business-critical transport of their digital assets. Please visit www.asperasoft.com and follow us on Twitter @asperasoft for more information.

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Leonard Grace

Now that Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona has come to a close, our main takeaway, particularly with regard to mobile infrastructure, is that the industry continues to move forward in its thoughts and plans to address increased bandwidth needs and drive revenue from the networks with value added services. The most widely discussed topics at the show centered on small cells, LTE and cloud.

Small Cells: Large Scale Rollouts Will Happen, Albeit Slowly

There were extensive discussions among operators and vendors about the current status of small cell deployment and related issues. The word small cell often includes residential and enterprise femtocells, which have been deployed in large volume. However, we refer here to public access small cells, which most operators agree are important to increase network capacity once basic 4G/LTE coverage has been addressed. However, only very limited roll outs are expected over the next year. It was clear that many technology issues related to large-scale deployment of these public access small cells are still open including the capex and opex of backhaul, providing accurate network timing to these small cells, interference mitigation, preference to use licensed vs. unlicensed spectrum, Line-of-Sight vs. Non-Line-of-Sight, etc. Despite this, our conclusion is that operators see small cells as a critical part of their future direction and the large-scale roll out will happen, albeit slowly.

Small Cell Backhaul: Ethernet/IP Is The Only Way To Go

There were several interesting announcements about small cell backhaul platforms operating over various mediums, including copper, fiber, microwave and millimeter-wave. For example, the Alcatel Lucent 7705 SAR-W, Tellabs 8602 and Fibrolan Falcon series targeted small cell backhaul over copper and fiber. The ALU and Tellabs platforms are part of the larger service router product family, while Fibrolan’s is a dedicated small cell backhaul platform with CE 2.0 support and options for caching to handle video traffic optimally. NEC, Bridgewave, Ceragon, Fastback Network and Tarana Wireless launched new platforms for microwave and millimeter wave backhaul with some interesting innovations addressing bandwidth scaling, space constraints, non line of sight and timing distribution issues.

In spite of different approaches, the common theme was packet-based (Ethernet/IP) backhaul. This may be old news to some. But our observation from MWC was that OEMs concur that other backhaul technologies such as T1/E1 are disappearing fast and Ethernet/IP is definitely the only way to go for small cells. Layer-2 versus Layer-3 networking for small cell backhaul is still an open discussion, ranging from related complexity of a L3 network at the network edge to the Layer-3 tools to manage a network with many nodes.

LTE and LTE-A: Network Timing is Critical

By now, LTE is a given as the future of mobile networks. But there were even some interesting LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) deployment announcements from Telstra and NTT Docomo by 2015. Both TD-LTE and LTE-A bring challenging timing requirements to the forefront. In conversations around MWC, it is clear that IEEE1588v2 (1588) is widely accepted as a requirement for packet-based backhaul networks. Even in the US, it is seen as a backup to the GPS based timing, in particular since GPS is not reliable at street level due to lack of satellite line-of-sight and susceptibility to jamming and spoofing. Some 1588 deployments are already underway. But the network based deployment model that can support 1588 phase accuracy required by LTE-A, is still a topic of heavy debate. Vitesse has provided some insights to an approach in the recently published white paper – Precise Timing for Base Stations in the Evolution to LTE

Cloud RAN and M2M

Finally, the topics of Cloud RAN and M2M networking were discussed by only a few vendors. But we expect these topics to gain more prominence over the next year and look forward to more discussions on these subjects in future events.

Uday Mudoi

Santa Clara, CA —Tuesday March 5, 2013 — Avaya today unveiled new, next generation analytics and customer interaction solutions that help harness the power of big data and the growing number of ways that customers want access to companies.  New Avaya Customer Experience Management solutions bring powerful new tools for mining and analyzing data, applications for expanding and synchronizing multichannel customer interactions and deployment options for virtualized environments. The new solutions help companies improve and streamline the customer experience through any access point at any moment in the customer life-cycle while increasing efficiency and adaptability in business operations.

Avaya’s Customer Experience Management analytics and multichannel solutions allow organizations to proactively address the multifaceted requirements and expectations of customers today. Many current technologies limit the ability to create an accurate picture – or contextual awareness – of the customer’s experience, their needs and behaviors. The growing number of customer interaction channels generates new challenges to delivering service across channels, yet also provide organizations with more opportunity than ever to extract valuable insights through smart analytics.

Avaya Customer Experience Management solutions enable enterprises to offer more personalized, seamless interactions that are built on a greater understanding of a customer’s situation, preferences and value.  Avaya’s unique solutions help companies deliver an exceptional brand experience that grows net promoter scores and ultimately, drives greater revenue – now boosted by the following new capabilities:

• Avaya Aura® Call Center Elite Multichannel layers multichannel capabilities – including web chat, social media, SMS, IM, and email – onto the world’s leading, most reliable call center software. Elite Multichannel makes it easier for organizations to add new access channels and manage cross-channel customer experiences. Existing Call Center Elite users can add multichannel with minimal disruption to operations or reporting systems.

• Avaya Automated Chat integrates with live chat support to deliver more responsive, personalized online service. Avaya Automated Chat can improve customer satisfaction with faster, more accurate responses delivered through an intelligent response engine and streamline the transition from self-service to live service. Agent resources can be used more effectively and lower the cost of serving customers. An optional feature, Answer Desk, allows non-chat agents to tap the automation engine to quickly get answers for their non-chat customer contacts.
• Avaya Speech Analytics integrates the actual voice of the customer into performance management practices. Avaya Speech Analytics mines voice-based customer interactions to deliver business intelligence that might otherwise be missed in text-based or manual analyses for insights that can drive process improvements, support regulatory compliance and identify new sources of revenue.

• Avaya Contact Flow Analytics enables organizations to find and remedy call flow issues through a number of visualization tools, including flow graphs, dashboards and tabular reports. Currently available through Avaya Professional Services, Contact Flow Analytics provides information about the effectiveness and efficiency of routing, agent performance and the overall customer experience.

With the addition of Avaya Aura Call Center Elite Multichannel, Avaya now delivers a complete virtualization solution for contact centers. Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environment provides organizations with Avaya contact center applications such as skills-based routing, multi-channel interactions, reporting and self-service capabilities optimized VMware environments. Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environment enables companies to simplify and accelerate deployment of sophisticated contact center applications while maintaining world-class functionality and reliability.

To support the growing demands on organizations, Avaya Contact Center Optimization services from Avaya Professional Services offers full customer experience management life-cycle consulting to determine the right solution for any situation. Avaya Contact Center Optimization services draw on the skills of Avaya consultants who are specialists in business strategy, solution road mapping and operational improvement, as well as experts at building and optimizing applications that improve customer experience and integrate into any business and technology environment.

“Companies today are struggling to keep pace with serving customers the way they need to be served to increase their lifetime value. Customers want convenience, but on the business side, delivering on convenience can be incredibly complex. Avaya’s customer experience management analytics tools coupled with our multichannel interaction solutions replaces guesswork with certainty to support strategic decisions that enable a more personal, streamlined experience that is integrated across channels throughout the customer’s journey.”

–Mark de la Vega, Vice President & General Manager Contact Center Business Unit, Avaya

Statistics:

• 33% of organizations implementing Big Data are doing so for customer facing initiatives — a number expected to grow.**
• 78% of consumers say they will only buy from businesses that make it easy for them, and one-third of consumers believe convenience is more important than choice.*
• 82% of customers say they use multiple channels to meet their needs, but only 17 % felt changing channels was an easy, seamless experience.
• Use of web chat is growing and is now up to 26% — a 36% increase over the previous year.*
• 22% of companies have multimodal contact centers currently with another 44% evaluating and planning implementations.**

About Avaya:

Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Leonard Grace

Comcast’s acquired the final stake in NBCU creating a vertical integration of both content and delivery of news and entertainment to U.S. consumers. Divestiture as a remedy should be viewed as a real possibility for Comcast now as its market power moves to dominate competitors. Although Wall Street analysts gave this deal a “thumbs up”, they continue to deny the overlying impact of how market dynamics will change as a result.

Inherently, the deal puts Comcast on a vertically integrated path of controlling both content and delivery of consumer news and entertainment. That should trigger a tipping point of more scrutiny from regulators as the giant moves to eliminate competition by gaining more control of external costs and distribution metrics.

Cable TV and/or Broadband Divestiture Seems Reasonable

It should be reasonable that with market domination of broadband, cable TV and content within the U.S., creating a clear business advantage, might inevitably raise more questions about the giant’s intentions toward competitors. Controlling those three markets, distinctly integrated with one another vertically, can only be construed as dangerous to consumer interests, as well as future market competition. Therefore U.S. regulators must take a harder look at how this recent transaction can benefit the public. Divesting is an answer that seems reasonable for Comcast whether it be its Cable TV Business or Broadband holdings.

Prevention of Monopoly

“There are times when companies are compelled to divest because of legal issues. In order to maintain fair trade and prevent monopolistic practices, anti-trust commissions in various countries mandate divestment. In the United States, the government agency responsible for determining if a company needs to sell or release its non-core asset is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).” Read more: http://www.finweb.com/investing/6-reasons-to-divest.html#ixzz2Ku7dKf3p

See (Comcast Reports 4^th Quarter and Year-End 2012 Results)

By far Comcast has more triple play subscribers than any of its cable counterparts. Direct TV and Dish Network are primarily video distributors lacking the vertical integration to compete effectively with a Comcast. Let us not make a mistake of believing there is not a clear market advantage. Clearly, having large content reserves, a mega distribution pipeline for broadband and cable TV is a disadvantage for any competitor.

Top 25 Multi-channel Video Distributors September 2012

A Lack of Competition

This multi-channel video distributor list in the U.S. indicates the divide in sheer video customer domination. Although Satellite DBS customers are most closely aligned with Comcast numbers, there is a lack of overlap in various markets. Understandably, consumers are not left with clear choices in every market, nor are those consumers advantaged with a DBS delivered broadband competitor in most markets.

As can be seen in this chart the potential competitors of Comcast via both Verizon and AT&T, have long ago began to discontinue their direct competition efforts due to the inherent costs of building new infrastructure. Although Google Fiber and FreedomPoP have made insignificant in-roads in a few markets, the majority of content, broadband, and video distributors remains non-existent. The true danger here is the scope of a Comcast vertically integrated control of such a large market area. The advantage is clear in that controlling both internal and external costs and distribution metrics represents and unfair market distinction.

Image via CNNMoney

Related articles

• Comcast doubles down on TV in $16.7B deal for NBCU
• Comcast’s NBCUniversal Deal: As One Media Era Ends, Another Begins
• Comcast Proud It Almost Didn’t Lose Video Subscribers – Quarterly Earnings Show Only a Loss of 7,000
• Key dates in the history of Comcast Corp.

Leonard Grace

Hampshire, UK – 13th February 2013: A new report from Juniper Research finds that 4G LTE revenues are set to grow rapidly, reaching more than $340 billion by 2017 globally, compared to just over $75 billion this year. This figure will represent approximately 31% of total service revenues from all mobile services of all generations (2G/3G/4G) at that time, and reflects the continued success of LTE in serving higher value subscribers.

The new report finds that with LTE gaining momentum over the past 12 months, initially dominated by the enterprise segment, consumer subscribers will begin to sign up for services in volume this year (2013) and will overtake the enterprise subscriber numbers in 2015.

Innovative & Affordable 4G LTE Pricing Critical

The new Juniper report, 4G LTE: Subscribers, Devices, Infrastructure & Service Revenue 2013-2017, found that with the increased penetration of LTE capable smartphones and other connected devices, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) will need to develop clear pricing strategies to transition customers.

“Overall they will have to present customers with innovative services that will meet users’ requirements and, crucially, that users will attach value to. Operators will have to review their tariff structures to balance the need to monetise the greatly increased data throughput, yet still offer attractive packages”, added report author Nitin Bhas.

For example, with spectrum auctions underway in the UK, EE felt obliged to cut down its initial LTE pricing by approximately 14% within weeks of their network launch while Three UK has already announced 4G access at no extra cost.

The ‘Twin Issues’ Related to Spectrum

With the twin spectrum issues – timing of availability and the cost of the spectrum – playing pivotal roles in deciding the speed of LTE rollouts (as has happened in the USA and the UK), 4G LTE can represent a substantial investment that will take several years to recoup. This is however critical, bearing in mind that at the outset only a comparatively small number of subscribers will be LTE-capable.

Other Key Findings Include:

· The vast majority of LTE revenues (almost 70%) will be generated by North American and Far Eastern & China markets.
· While LTE consumer subscribers will exceed enterprise in 2015, the consumer segment will only account for under half of total revenues.

The ‘4G LTE ~ Fast & Furious’ whitepaper is available to download from the Juniper website together with further details of the full report.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.

For further details please contact Rebecca Holman, Press Relations
T: +44(0)1256 830001
E: rebecca.holman@juniperresearch.com

Image via MotorAuthority

Leonard Grace

Cisco Unleashes Industry’s Fastest, Most Extensible Open Networking “Fabric” for Data Centers, Clouds

New industry-leading innovations include the highest-density 40-gigabit Layer 2/3 fixed switch; simplest hybrid cloud solution; and expansion of the Cisco Open Network Environment with the most extensible controller

SAN JOSE, Calif. – February 4, 2013 –   As Cisco continues to deliver on its Unified Data Center strategy to synthesize various networked functions into one “data center fabric” for more agile, automated and efficient business operations,  the company is continually addressing emerging industry trends like cloud computing and open networking.  Today, the company introduced a  wave of product innovation that covers a vast spectrum of needs within data center and cloud environments – from the Cisco Nexus 6000 Series Switches, the industry’s highest density 40 Gigabit Layer2/Layer 3 fixed switch, to seamless, secure and simple hybrid cloud functionality of Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud for connecting private enterprise and service provider clouds, to the availability  of the industry’s most extensible network- programmable controller as part of the expanded Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) portfolio.

With these innovations, Cisco continues to execute its Unified Data Center strategy to bring more infrastructure agility, operational simplicity and application-awareness for data center and multi-cloud environments. Complementing this, Cisco is also delivering on itsCisco ONE strategy, addressing emerging trends around open networking, programmability and software defined networking (SDN) for all places in the network including data center, campus, cloud, and service provider deployments.

Together, these technology developments are significant in that they help scale, extend, and open the networking fabric of data center, cloud and provider environments as well as bring consistency across physical, virtual and cloud-based deployments.  They enable enterprise customers to connect to multi-cloud and hybrid environments that expand the potential for their business operations and communications, and enable service provider customers to offer new monetized services while increasing agility and infrastructure optimization.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

Scaling the Fabric

Network speed, latency, and greater network port density in a single unit are key considerations for customers deploying virtualized data centers and moving to a managed cloud environment where microseconds count, and physical data center real estate is limited.  To sustain their differentiation, Cisco today unveiled the Cisco Nexus 6000, the world’s first 96-port, line rate 40-gigabit fixed form factor switch with Ethernet and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and 1-microsecond latency across all ports.  For example, the Nexus 6000 can transfer the entire content of the Library of Congress in just 210 seconds.  Cisco also added rich services modules to its Nexus 7000 Series, and 40-gigabit uplink extensions to its Nexus 5000 and 2000 product lines.  With these extensions, Cisco’s Unified Fabric portfolio now delivers an unequaled end-to-end 40-gigabit solution providing design flexibility for virtual and cloud deployments of converged networks with 10G and 40G FCoE support, while enabling greater visibility in the network.

• The Nexus 6000 Series expands Cisco’s data center switching portfolio, providing greater deployment flexibility through higher density and scalability. The new Nexus 6000 Series brings the highest 10GE/40GE density in a fixed form factor, and offers unprecedented network visibility and programmability. It runs the industry-leading Cisco NX-OS with robust integrated layer 2 and 3 feature set.
  • The two Nexus 6000 models are the Nexus 6004, industry’s highest density switch with up to 96 ports of line rate 40GE (384 ports of line rate 10GE) in a compact 4 RU (rack unit) form factor; and the Nexus 6001, which offers line rate 48 ports of GE/10GE fixed ports with 4 ports of 40GE (or 16 ports of 10GE) uplinks in 1 RU form factor.
  • The Nexus 6000 Series is purpose-built for high performance access, leaf/spine architectures, compact aggregation, or high-density FEX aggregation deployment options for building a scalable Cisco Unified Fabric.

• The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Network Analysis Module (NAM).  Cisco’s flagship data center switch continues to evolve into a services-rich platform with the announcement of the first services blade, the Network Analysis Module.  The NAM brings application awareness and performance analytics to the Cisco Nexus 7000, empowering IT with unparalleled actionable visibility into the network, improving application performance, optimizing network resources and  helping to more effectively manage services delivery in cloud and virtualized deployments.

• Cisco Nexus 2248PQ fabric extender and the Nexus 5500 Series switch 40 gigabit Ethernet uplink capabilities provide investment protection and choices for an end-to-end 40GE solution. The new Nexus 5500 40GE module provides customer with the option of deploying 40GE uplinks in their existing Nexus 5500 to reduce over-subscription, while the new Nexus 2248PQ switch provides a 10GE top-of-rack fabric extender with 40GE uplinks.

Extending the Fabric

Security concerns regarding provider clouds, deployment complexity and the inability to easily manage both enterprise and provider clouds workloads through a single interface, have held back many businesses from taking advantage of cloud resources.  Cisco solved this hybrid cloud challenge by developing unique technology in the Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch that allows enterprise workloads to be placed in service provider clouds, through a single point of management with a high degree of security.

• The Nexus 1000V InterCloud orchestrates hybrid cloud environments by extending corporate enterprise environments into the provider cloud with simplicity and industry-leading security.  The Nexus 1000V InterCloud  preserves existing networking capabilities and L4-7 services while bringing manageability of the enterprise into the provider cloud to create a consistent, reliable, predictable environment for physical, virtual and cloud workloads, freeing IT management to run and move applications without compromise.  The solution provides choice of provider clouds and operates in a hypervisor-agnostic manner.

• The Cisco Virtual Network Management Center (VNMC) InterCloud offers new capabilities including a single policy point for network services across both enterprise and provider domains; the ability to manage virtual machine lifecycle across multiple hypervisors in hybrid clouds; and the ability to manage multiple provider clouds via APIs.

Opening the Fabric

In June 2012 Cisco introduced Cisco ® Open Network Environment (Cisco ONE), the industry’s most comprehensive approach to open networking, programmability and application-awareness.  Cisco ONE enables flexible, application-driven customization of network infrastructure to help realize enterprise and service provider customers’ business objectives such as increased service velocity, resource optimization, and faster monetization of new services.

•   A new Cisco ONE Software Controller supports a highly available, scalable and extensible architecture; the industry’s first multiprotocol interfaces with One Platform Kit (onePK) and OpenFlow; consistent management, troubleshooting and security features; and built-in applications that include network slicing functionality for enabling logical partitioning of network resources. In addition, the ONE Controller will interact with Cisco networking applications such as Custom Forwarding and Network Tapping.

• Expanded platform support for Cisco onePK developer environment with Nexus 3000, Nexus 7000 and ASR 9000.   

• Solutions for overlay networks including Nexus 1000V support for VXLAN Gateway; Nexus 1000V support for Microsoft Hyper-V and integration with Microsoft System Center VM Manager; virtual Network Analysis Module (vNAM) for network analysis and monitoring of virtualized and cloud workloads

• Expanded platform support for OpenFlow with Nexus 3000, Nexus 7000, ASR 9000 and Catalyst 6500.

• Cisco Services for ONE include strategy workshops, proof of concepts, and global technical support. These new Services provide insight into current infrastructure, identify technical challenges and deliver an actionable road map to support successful adoption of Cisco ONE solutions.

SUPPORTING QUOTES

“As a leading service provider for cloud, managed hosting and colocation, Savvis relies upon technologies such as Cisco’s Data Center Unified Fabric solutions to help us quickly deliver secure, robust, agile infrastructure to our clients,” said Ken Owens, cloud CTO, at Savvis, a CenturyLink company. “Cisco continues to build on its reputation as an industry leader in providing end-to-end cloud-ready architecture through its recent cloud innovations, which enable service providers like Savvis to enhance their cloud capabilities.”

“The Online Service Division of Citrix, known for award-winning collaboration and remote support services including GoToMeeting, GoToAssist and GoToMyPC, relies on large scale, physical and virtualized environments in the Data Centers to meet increasing demands from our customers,” said Ansh Kanwar, director, network services, Citrix.   “Like many IT organizations, we are tasked with increasing business agility while lowering the total-cost of ownership. We have standardized on FEX architecture which gives us a choice for deploying different server environments with operational simplicity. The Cisco Nexus 6004 along with the new Nexus 2248PQ offers a solution to manage large pool of 10G servers. Introduction of 40G technology on these platforms allows us to build a robust DC fabric that can scale significantly to meet our DC growth in the coming years.”

“We’ve seen a large return on our investment in Cisco Prime NAM by reducing system downtime and greatly streamlining IT administration,” said Ron van Vliet, IT specialist – Datacenter LAN, Wireless and VPN, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.  “With thousands of connections to servers, we rely upon NAM to help keep vital network and customer services at maximum performance and availability.   As we will be deploying Cisco Nexus 7000 switches in our data centers, we are pleased that NAM will also be available as a services module for that platform.”

“Cisco’s new hybrid cloud architecture will help Smartronix quickly deploy our customer’s mission- critical applications to the cloud, while providing a seamless and secure extension of their data center environment to public cloud providers,” said Robert Groat, chief technology officer, Smartronix, Inc.  “This will help Smartronix optimize our customers’ existing IT resources while being more responsive to changes in their business activity and capacity requirements.”

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.

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Leonard Grace

Real Fiber Network Delivers Super High Speed Connectivity via FTTP (Fiber To The Premises) Next Phase to Serve I-85 Corridor in N.C. and S.C.

Shelby, North Carolina – Oct. 10, 2012 — Businesses and consumers in North Carolina can now connect to the Internet and receive broadband services with speeds up to 10-gigabits per second, more than 100 times faster than the average service offered by competing companies. This translates into huge time savings and increased productivity whether downloading an MRI, a (3D) movie, or making an international financial trade.

“There’s simply an insatiable appetite from all types of businesses, content suppliers and consumers for increased high-speed and bandwidth capacity,” stated Dan Limerick, RST’s CEO. “The evolution to all fiber networks is the perfect platform for content and digital transmission going forward. Moreover, ever evolving cloud computing requires “superhighway” transport pathways from the source to the consumer which is only possible on this type of network.”

One Step Ahead of Google Fiber in Kansas City

RST Global Communications, LLC (RST), based in Shelby, N.C., has completed the first phase of its Real Fiber Network, an underground, 100 percent fiber-optic network that includes backbone, middle and last mile installation. Unique to the industry, RST’s “core-out” network is comparable to Google Fiber in Kansas City but takes it one step further. Unlike the Google infrastructure, RST’s Real Fiber Network is installed entirely underground at an average depth of 10 feet ensuring maximum security, reliability and weather protection. The network currently serves North Carolina’s growing Piedmont region including Charlotte, west Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cleveland, and Rutherford counties.

The Real Fiber Network provides unprecedented broadband connectivity to also serve the booming data center growth taking place in the Piedmont region, including global technology leaders like AT&T, Wipro, Google, Apple, Facebook, The Walt Disney Company and others. With speed and reliability second to none, RST’s world class network positions the region as a prime destination for economic development, education and ongoing technology opportunities.

“This technology is critical to our business and an extensive evaluation was performed before selecting RST for the primary fiber path to our new King’s Mountain data center,” said Robert W. Pollock, vice president of Infocrossing. “After one year, I can say RST is a true business partner and we’ve had zero problems. The company is extremely responsive, technically knowledgeable and provides a high degree of added value.”

A sample of current RST clients include Infocrossing, a division of Wipro, and a world leader in datacenter development, as well as Gardner Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C. and Cleveland Community College in Shelby, N.C. Additional users are pending announcement.

Ongoing Expansion

RST’s next phase to expand its footprint has begun and will offer FTTP services to thousands of homes and businesses served by RST’s existing routes. Future expansion includes all-fiber installations throughout the I-85 corridor of N.C. and S.C., which encompasses more than three million potential customers. The company is also exploring partnering to launch an LTE wireless service during 2013.

Founder’s Invigorating Hometown Community

RST was founded and privately funded by entrepreneurs and industry pros Dan Limerick, Doug Brown and Randy Revels; all are natives of Shelby and Cleveland County, N.C. and have a personal interest in bringing state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure to a region still feeling the textile industry’s departure. Doug Brown, chairman of the board and a 30-year cable and satellite industry veteran, said,

“We believe the communities that have this technology will prosper in the future and the ones that don’t will not be able to compete. We wanted to do something for our community to help spur economic growth.”

Real Fiber Network design combines years of industry experience and careful research. Randy Revels, CTO, stated, “Working in the industry for over 25 years gave me tremendous insight on the problems encountered as systems were developed. While the major cable and telecommunications companies are continuously upgrading their infrastructure, their claim of fiber-optic capabilities is misleading. Often the “middle” or “last mile” segments are dramatically slower speed copper or coaxial cable; it’s not end-to-end. The cost to update these outdated legacy systems is astronomical. RST’s advantage is that we are not burdened with an outdated infrastructure and can deliver an all fiber network that’s 100 percent underground, which means maintenance requirements and outages are significantly reduced.”

About RST Global Communications

Based in Shelby, North Carolina, RST Global Communications, LLC (RST), www.rstfiber.com, is a member-owned company formed in 2009 to construct and manage state-of-the-art all fiber-optic networks in communities within the I-85 corridor in the southeast U.S. In addition to typical services (TV, Internet and phone), plans include home and business surveillance high-definition cameras and security, on-demand movie services and numerous à la carte offerings. The all fiber-optic network will also provide the foundation for Smart Grid technology, telemedicine, online education and other emerging applications. RST believes that fiber connected communities are America’s future. Dedicated to quality, high performance and lower cost through Reliable Scalable Technologies, RST has made the commitment to provide its enterprise, business and residential customers a better choice.

CONTACT: Beth McKenna or Mike Rieman, Cookerly Public Relations, 404-816-2037, beth@cookerly.com, mrieman@cookerly.com

Image via TweakTown

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Leonard Grace