QNAP Supports JumpCloud's Directory-as-a-Service for Simplified User Management and Authentication
CellTrust and Smarsh Help North Thurston Public Schools Empower Staff, Save Money and Minimize Risk
II-VI Incorporated and Samtec Demonstrate 56 Gbps PAM4 per Channel FireFly On-Board Optical Engines at OFC 2019
QNAP Officially Launches the TS-2888X AI-Ready NAS for Machine Learning
Bentley’s SYNCHRO XR brings the benefits of mixed reality to users in the AEC industry
UK emergency services need to harness every technological tool available to ensure future success, says telent
Percepio announces Device Firmware Monitor The Next Step in IoT Software Quality Assurance
CONTACT Software launches own AI unit
HUBER+SUHNER to present latest developments for next-generation data center connectivity at Cisco Live 2019
NetFoundry & myCloudDoor Partner to Implement Cloud Solutions
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IBM Korea 2018 Top 5 News & 2019 Major Agenda Media Briefings
IBM Korea hosted ‘IBM Korea 2018 Top 5 News and 2019 Major Agenda Media Briefings’ at its office in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on the morning of January 3. The briefing session was organized by IBM Korea to announce the top five news in 2018 and the five major agendas in 2019, with the attendance of the President Hwa-jin Chang and CTO & Director Kyung-soon Um at IBM Korea. “After declaring to reborn as a cloud platform company in 2017, we have been focusing on that part in 2018. In 2019, IBM Korea will concentrate on the hybrid cloud business and focus on artificial intelligence and cloud platform after 2018. We ask for continuing the interest and support you gave also in 2019.” Mr. Hwa-jin Chang, president of IBM Korea, said. ▲ IBM Korea's New Year Media Briefing was held. ▲ "IBM plans to focus on the hybrid cloud business in 2019 and focus on artificial intelligence and cloud platforms after 2018," said Hwa-jin Chang, president of IBM Korea. IBM Korea's 2018 five major news were announced: 'AI', 'Cloud', 'Block Chain', 'System' and 'P-TECH'. First, it was mentioned that 2018 was a year of expansion through the ‘AI’ and IBM has made various active attempts to apply it to real business beyond proof-of-concept. For example, Korean-based artificial intelligence chatbot were created with HyundaiCard, and artificial shopping advisor was produced with Lotte Department Store, by adopting artificial intelligence inside the process to help tasks more efficiently. In addition to the chatbot, IBM also has expanded the use of enterprise artificial intelligence from a customer-facing chatbot to a variety of industrial artificial intelligence areas. In aspect of the ‘Cloud’, IBM has improved the security and stability of on-premises while simultaneously providing the speed and flexibility of a public cloud with the proliferation of ‘IBM Cloud Private Platforms’. The public cloud business of IBM Korea grew by 78 percent last year, and it was introduced that ‘private cloud’ will rise in this year. At the same time, IBM will provide the latest technologies, including Watson, blockchain, and Big Data Analysis, on all clouds, and will take leadership in several areas by acquiring Red Hat, a leader in open source technology portfolio. Next, in the 'Blockchain', the number of projects of blockchain increased 2.6 times compared to 2017, and various proof-of-concept projects were conducted in Korea. IBM launched a network that commercializes logistics and food distribution blockchain, such as TradeLens and IBM Food Trust, to demonstrate the benefits of cost savings and faster speed by making transactions transparently based on blockchain and sharing information in real time. The case of Wal – Mart adopting IBM Food Trust to reduce distribution time of fruits from 6.6 days to 2.2 seconds was introduced. In addition, Everest Group's PEAK Matrix survey of blockchain services has revealed that capability and influence of IBM's blockchain business are excellent. IBM Korea’s ‘System’, which was introduced to be used by 44 of the top 50 banks in the world, has been selected as an accounting system by KB Kookmin Bank based on security, performance, and stability. System Z of IBM Korea is programmable in Java and has been newly upgraded based on block chain technology, and its security is outstanding since all data is automatically encrypted when the application is running. Along with this, the entire lineup of Power 9 has been enhanced and completed, and the recently introduced Summit has become the fastest supercomputer in the world. ‘P-TECH’, a social contribution program, is a five-year public education system that fosters human resources related to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, and blockchain. ‘P-TECH’, which started as a social contribution in the United States, was the sixth in Korea after Australia, Morocco, Singapore and Taiwan, and is scheduled to open in March 2019 with Semyeong Computer High School and Gyeonggi College of Science and Technology. IBM Korea will create the Department of Artificial Intelligence Software, and plan to have one-on-one mentoring and IBM-paid internship program. ▲ In the 'Blockchain', IBM launched a network that commercializes logistics and food distribution blockchain. ▲ IBM's ‘System’ was introduced to be in use by 44 out of 50 top banks worldwide. Next, IBM Korea announced that it will focus on five areas in 2019: ‘Hybrid Cloud’, ‘Security’, ‘AI’, ‘Blockchain’, and ‘Quantum Computing’. According to the IBM Institute for Business Value, 85 percent of companies worldwide are using multi-cloud, and by 2021, 98 percent will adopt hybrid multi-cloud. In addition, various financial regulations are anticipated to be eased in 2019, including the revision of the Electronic Banking Supervision Regulation, so that many companies are expected to effectively use the private cloud and public cloud, both of which establish a cloud environment in their own data centers, together. IBM Korea is ready to offer services and solutions for multi-cloud management with its hybrid multi-cloud capability, cloud security and open source competitiveness, and will lead the market with private cloud leadership. At the same time, with the rise of AI and cloud, it was announced that ‘Security’ aspect is significant. In the situation in which personal information and data protection issues are strengthened and Europe GDPR much be complied, domestic security market size is 2.2 trillion won and security service market is 1.26 trillion won. Therefore, IBM Korea stated that it will provide security-related services through SOC in the field by a manpower that customer wants, or solve the shortage of specific security manpower by providing the security technology using artificial intelligent through SOC. Moreover, IBM Korea explained that the 'AI' is expected to grow at a CAGR of 69.8% in the Asia-Pacific region by 2021, spending $5 billion, and 70% of Asia-Pacific companies use AI. The firm asserted that it will make the process of how AI decides and studies with data transparent. Also, it will use ‘AI Open Scale’ technology to detect data bias and provide solutions to prevent misinformation during the process of training AI. In addition, IBM Korea will concentrate on 'Blockchain', expecting to reduce transaction costs by 35% by 2021 as implement industry-specific blockchain and the omni-ecosystem expands. At the government level, blockchain is expected to become more active as the government plans to encourage blockchain technology such as voting, shipping, logistics, and intergovernmental documents with the 25 billion won of budget this year. Therefore, IBM Korea has grown by 400% in the blockchain field last year and activated about 600 projects and 10 blockchain networks. In this year, IBM Korea expects the token economy to become more active this year, with the announcement and activation of various blockchain commercialization networks in each industry. Lastly, ‘Quantum Computing’ that IBM Korea saw potential and focused on was introduced. More than 100,000 people worldwide have experienced the ‘IBM Q’ through IBM Cloud, more than 5 million of experiments and more than 110 papers were published, and 1800 institutions and 300 private research institutes are using ‘IBM Q’. Currently, only Samsung Electronics is participating in the development of the quantum computer ‘IBM Q’. In the first half of this year, IBM will announce a quantum computing program in which major institutions and companies participated, and the first commercial version of the quantum computing system and quantum cryptography. ▲ IBM Korea tries to solve the shortage of specific security manpower through SOC or remote SOC. ▲ It was stated that IBM Korea will use ‘AI Open Scale’ technology to detect data bias and provide solutions. ▲ In the first half of this year, IBM Korea will announce a quantum computing program in which major organizations and companies participated.
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QNAP to Introduce Fibre Channel Connectivity Solution for QNAP NAS
QNAP® Systems, Inc. have been leading the Network-attached Storage (NAS) field for years, developing numerous cutting-edge technologies and innovations that take QNAP NAS beyond being simple storage devices. In response to market demands for reliability and low latency that is favorable with Fibre Channel (FC), QNAP will be incorporating FC SAN services into its application scope, making QNAP NAS a unified storage solution that provides SAN, NAS, and cloud storage features. FC is a set of advanced data transport standards that form Storage-area Networks (SANs). Providing high reliability and throughput over distance, FC is scalable and optimized for data-centric applications. As 32Gb FC is now mainstream, and higher speeds are being constantly innovated, FC has been widely adopted by financial services, data centers, and the film/television industry for media storage and advanced streaming applications including 8K editing. “QNAP always stay attuned to our users' requirements, and have re-examined the application potential of implementing SAN solutions using Fibre Channel,” said Y.T. Lee, Vice President of QNAP, adding “we believe that the integration of Fibre Channel SAN services with QNAP NAS can fulfill needs in a wider range of usage scenarios for tackling IOPS-demanding applications and workflows that require reliable, on-time data delivery, while also allowing organizations to easily deploy QNAP NAS in their existing Fibre Channel SAN infrastructure.” QNAP will collaborate with Fibre Channel vendors Marvell® and ATTO® to deliver economical 32Gb/16Gb/8Gb Fibre Channel SAN solutions. A brand-new iSCSI & FC Manager app will be introduced soon in future versions of QNAP's QTS NAS operating system to help with the management of Fibre Channel SAN. "Fibre Channel technology innovations continue to shape how cloud and enterprise data centers connect to shared storage,” said Anand Singh, Senior Director of Marketing, Server Connectivity Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. “I am excited about our technology collaboration with QNAP to enable Fibre Channel connectivity for QNAP NAS systems. Marvell QLogic® 32Gb FC adapters are the industry’s preferred Fibre Channel adapter due to their compelling flexibility, scale and performance." "The technology based partnership between ATTO and QNAP is a key step as we ensure validated Fibre Channel storage solutions for today's data intensive application environments and give users the confidence that their storage infrastructure will have the highest performance and lowest latency," said Tom Kolniak, senior director of marketing at ATTO Technology, Inc. "ATTO Fibre Channel products are engineered to meet the most demanding workflows for work groups and data centers that require solid reliability, high performance and scalability.”
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Microsoft Korea 'Digital Transformation Summit' Press Conference
Microsoft Korea held a press conference on 'Digital Transformation Summit' at Hotel Lotte World in Songpa-gu, Seoul on March 20, 2018. Before ‘Digital Transformation Summit’ that was to be held on the same day, the press conference was organized to announce the content of a report “Unlocking the Economic Impact of Digital Transformation in Asia Pacific” on digital transformation and introduce the current status of domestic data centers that started operations in February, 2017. At the conference, the officials including Soon-dong Koh, CEO for Microsoft Korea, Andrea Della Mattea, President for Microsoft Asia Pacific, Eun-seon Han, Director for IDC Korea, attended. “Digital Transformation has a positive and notable impact on the economy of the Asia-Pacific region, and many organizations in Asia-Pacific already feel the need to transform into a digital enterprise. Digital Transformation is now a reality, not a future, as it is believed that the actual benefits that companies enjoy with digital transformation now range from 15% to 18%.” – said Andrea Della Mattea, President for Microsoft Asia Pacific. ▲ Microsoft Korea’s 'Digital Transformation Summit' press conference was held. According to the report, published jointly by Microsoft and IDC, digital transformations will increase Korea's gross domestic product (GDP) of about $42 billion by 2021 and the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.5% every year. Domestic business leaders surveyed in this survey, which included 100 respondents from Korea, predicted that by 2020, an average growth rate of each sector is over 50% by digital transformation, and among them, the customer support sector would be most affected. Moreover, 77% of Korean companies are in the process of digital transformation, but only 7% of them are classified as digital leaders. Organizations that are classified as digital leaders are building or preparing specific strategies for digital transformation, and digital products or services account for more than one third of total sales. In particular, it has been shown that digital leaders are benefiting from 20-30% profit improvement across various business areas. In addition, digital leaders are enjoying more than twice the benefits of digital transformations compared to followers, and this trend is expected to become more apparent by 2020. According to the report, 48% of digital leaders now have a complete digital transformation strategy. The positive effects of digital transformation on society are expected to be smart, safe and efficient urban development, improved quality of education using better textbooks, and greater opportunities for education and training. On the other hand, in order to enjoy the benefits of digital transformation, organizations must build a data-centered culture and a strong digital ecosystem that spans employees, customers, and partners. Therefore, Microsoft Korea suggested strategies to be reborn as a digital leader, including 'create a digital culture', 'build a digital ecosystem', 'embrace micro-revolutions', 'investment in AI', and 'cultivation of technology for the future'. ▲ The conditions required to become a digital transformation leader have been introduced. After the announcement of the report, the current status of Microsoft's data center in Korea was introduced. According to the current status, Microsoft is providing cloud services to more than 140 countries in 50 azure regions around the world. The domestic data center, which was launched in February 2017, is a cloud facility that has the highest level of reliability and performance, and it is playing a big role in strengthening business efficiency and continuity of domestic customers. In addition, over the past year, Microsoft has grown more than 300% in sales in the domestic azure sector. Also, the sales of PaaS-oriented azure data services, including machine learning, AI, big data and cognitive service, not just a storage-based IaaS-centric, have grown 277%. At the same time, as it is important to build a solid ecosystem of partners, Microsoft Korea introduced that it is closely working with partners in three ways – growing professional cloud solution partners (CSP), strategic partnership with major SI companies in Korea, and expanding open source support – so that the benefits of digital transformation would spread across the industry. Meanwhile, over the past year, open source-based apps, solutions and services running on Azure Cloud have grown by 700%. “Over the past year, many companies are realizing digital transformations with cloud services through Korean data centers. In the future, Microsoft Korea will continue to play a leading role in helping the digital transformation by supporting the latest IT technologies such as AI, block chains, and Mixed Reality (MR) more quickly and easily in Korea.” – said CEO Soon-dong Koh.
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QNAP Launches the Server-grade TS-x83XU NAS Series with Intel Xeon E Processors
QNAP® Systems, Inc. (QNAP), a leading storage, network and computing solution provider, today launched the Intel® Xeon® E based TS-x83XU enterprise NAS series with ECC DDR4 memory that delivers server-class performance and dependable reliability. All models in the series feature two 10GbE SFP+ ports using Mellanox® ConnectX®-4 Lx SmartNIC controllers and support installing a PCIe graphics card for empowering video surveillance, virtual machines and AI applications. Coupled with QNAP’s exclusive software-defined SSD extra over-provisioning and comprehensive virtualization capabilities, the TS-x83XU series provides a high-performance and dependable - yet cost-efficient - NAS solution for uncompromising enterprise IT requirements. “The TS-x83XU was specifically designed for enterprises that require server-class standards of performance and reliability for business-critical data and applications,” said David Tsao, Product Manager of QNAP, adding “businesses and organizations can unlock greater application potential and increase their everyday working efficiency by leveraging game-changing features such as PCIe expandability, SSD-optimization technologies, and tiered storage.” The TS-x83XU series includes models with 8, 12, 16, and 24 drive-bays - and also a 9-bay hybrid storage model that supports four 3.5-inch HDDs and five 2.5-inch SSDs. It features server-grade hardware with Intel® Xeon® E processors, up to 64 GB dual-channel ECC DDR4 memory that assists in maintaining data integrity. The PCIe slots introduce flexible I/O expansion by installing 10GbE/ 25GbE/ 40GbE network cards for bandwidth-demanding applications, QM2 cards for adding additional M.2 SSDs, graphics cards for empowering GPGPU tasks, and SAS expansion cards for JBOD expansion. The TS-x83XU series provides two 10GbE SFP+ ports and will support QNAP’s upcoming 25GbE NIC (QXG-25G2SF-CX4) to accelerate file sharing and intensive data transfer, realize high-speed remote backup via Hybrid Backup Sync, and support iSER (iSCSI Extension for RDMA) to improve VMware virtualization performance by using the Mellanox® ConnectX®-4 Lx SmartNIC controllers. Users can also enable SSD caching to tackle IOPS-demanding applications and allocate SSD extra over-provisioning (from 1% to 60%) to potentially attain higher SSD endurance levels and improved random write performance, ideal for enterprise applications, data centers, and storage virtualization. The TS-x83XU performs as a scalable, integrated storage solution. It supports VMware®, Citrix®, Microsoft® Hyper-V® and Windows Server® 2016. The ability to host multiple virtual machines and containers fulfills greater application potential. Block-based snapshots enable instant data backup and recovery with minimized RTO. The Network & Virtual Switch app features flexible manageability for reorganizing physical and virtual network connections with greater ease. QVR Pro can help create a professional-grade video surveillance system (includes 8 free IP camera channels, can be expanded to 128 channels by purchasing additional licenses). Key specifications TS-883XU-E2124-8G: 2U rackmount with 8 drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 8 GB ECC RAM (4 GB x2), 350W single PSU TS-883XU-RP-E2124-8G: 2U rackmount with 8 drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 8 GB ECC RAM (4 GB x2), 300W redundant PSU TS-1283XU-RP-E2124-8G: 2U rackmount with 12 drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 8 GB ECC RAM (4 GB x2), 300W redundant PSU TS-1683XU-RP-E2124-16G: 3U rackmount with 16 drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 16 GB ECC RAM (8 GB x2), 500W redundant PSU TS-2483XU-RP-E2136-16G: 4U rackmount with 24 drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2136 six-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.5 GHz), 16 GB ECC RAM (8 GB x2), 800W redundant PSU Up to 64 GB DDR4 ECC RAM (4 x 16 GB DDR4 Long-DIMM modules); hot-swappable 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps HDDs/SSDs; 2x 10GbE SFP+ SmartNIC ports, 4x Gigabit LAN ports; 4x PCle slots (One slot is pre-installed with a 10GbE NIC; TS-2483XU-RP provides 5x PCIe slots); 2x Type-C USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbps ports, 4x Type-A USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbps ports TS-983XU-E2124-8G: 1U rackmount with four 3.5-inch HDD and five 2.5-inch SSD drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 8 GB DDR4 ECC RAM (4 GB x2), 250W single PSU TS-983XU-RP-E2124-8G: 1U rackmount with four 3.5-inch HDD and five 2.5-inch SSD drive bays, Intel® Xeon® E-2124 quad-core 3.3 GHz processor (burst up to 4.3 GHz), 8 GB DDR4 ECC RAM (4 GB x2), 300W redundant PSU Up to 64 GB DDR4 ECC RAM (4 x 16 GB DDR4 Long-DIMM modules); hot-swappable 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps HDDs/SSDs; 2x 10GbE SFP+ SmartNIC ports, 2x Gigabit LAN ports; 1 x PCle Gen3 slot; 2x Type-C USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbps ports, 4x Type-A USB 3.1 Gen1 5Gbps ports Availability The TS-x83XU NAS series with 8, 12, 16, and 24 drive bay models are now available. The TS-983XU and TS-983XU-RP will be available soon.
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QNAP Launches the TS-977XU - the First 1U Hybrid Structure NAS
QNAP® Systems, Inc. today launched the TS-977XU AMD Ryzen™ NAS series, QNAP’s first 1U hybrid-structure NAS. The series provides four 3.5-inch SATA drive bays for hard drives and five 2.5-inch SATA drive bays for SSDs, allowing users to enable caching and Qtier™ auto-tiering storage and to benefit from QNAP’s revolutionary software-defined SSD extra over-provisioning technology. The TS-977XU also provides well-rounded virtualization applications, providing businesses and organizations with a highly-efficient and cost-effective storage solution. "By combining AMD Ryzen processors with an advanced hybrid storage structure and 10GbE SFP+ connectivity, the TS-977XU packs tremendous performance into a compact 1U frame. The TS-977XU is further enhanced by PCIe expandability, allowing users to expand core NAS functionality as needed to accommodate changing requirements and business growth," said David Tsao, product manager of QNAP. The TS-977XU series is available with AMD Ryzen 3 1200 and Ryzen 5 2600 processors with up to 6 cores/12 threads. Its hybrid structure allows users to combine the benefits of high-capacity 3.5-inch hard drives and high-performance 2.5-inch SSDs to optimize storage and application performance. The TS-977XU also supports QNAP's new software-defined SSD extra over-provisioning (OP) that enables users to allocate additional OP space to SSDs - which provides the potential to attain enterprise-grade performance and lifespan from consumer-grade SSDs. The TS-977XU features dual Mellanox® ConnectX®-4 Lx 10GbE network ports, providing users with high-speed connectivity and greater network deployment flexibility. A PCIe slot is also available for users to install a QM2 expansion card, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) card, wireless network card, or a low-profile entry-level graphics card. The TS-977XU series can host virtual machines and containers, providing users with greater application potential and for consolidating services into a single machine. Snapshots and virtual machine backups are supported for complete virtualization management. The TS-977XU-RP (powered by a Ryzen 5 2600 processor) provides a redundant power supply and also supports Virtual QTS, allowing users to run multiple virtual QTS operating systems on a single NAS, providing benefits of resource segregation (CPU, memory, networking), flexible application deployment, and providing energy, cost, and space savings. Key specifications Redundant power supply models TS-977XU-RP-1200-4G: AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply TS-977XU-RP-2600-8G: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6-core/12-thread, 3.4 GHz, max. 3.9 GHz) processor, 8 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply Single power supply model TS-977XU-1200-4G: AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 250 W power supply 1U Rackmount NAS; 4 x 3.5-inch drive bays and 5 x 2.5-inch SSD slots; up to 64 GB DDR4 RAM (4 x 16 GB DDR4 UDIMM RAM); 1 x PCle 3.0 slots; 2 x 10GbE SFP+ SmartNIC ports; 2 x Gigabit LAN ports; 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A port and 4 x USB 3.0 Type-A ports
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NetFoundry & Lemongrass Partner to Meet the Challenge of Cloud Migration
NetFoundry™, the leader of Application-Specific Networking, announces the expansion of its partnership with Lemongrass Consulting to deploy fully production-ready SAP S/4 environments, harnessing NetFoundry AppWANs for connectivity, with unmatched security and performance over the Internet in just a few hours. Lemongrass Consulting is an Advanced & MSP certified AWS global partner specializing on migrating, automating and running SAP-centric enterprises on Amazon Web Services. Lemongrass is working with NetFoundry in the development of a new SAP S/4 AWS Solution Space release to provide an agile, secure connectivity for their customers.’ Lemongrass plans to optimize their customers’ time-to-deployment timescales while streamlining their own processes by engaging with NetFoundry connection technology. Lemongrass automation can enable the rapid deployment of SAP landscapes, however establishing the customer to AWS connection can sometimes represent both a significant cost and time challenge. NetFoundry makes it easy to spin up highly secure, performant, edge-to-cloud networks to cloud providers such as AWS over the Internet using our web-based orchestration tools and APIs with micro-segmented networks called AppWANs. AppWANs can be deployed to connect anything (from users to ancillary applications) over the Internet, to cloud-migrated workloads with dynamically optimized performance and a robust, multi-dimensional security posture. NetFoundry brings agility, security, and speed that traditional connectivity solutions can’t match. Networks can be spun up instantly using virtual gateways that are pre-built for AWS. NetFoundry enables Zero Trust application-specific connectivity across the public Internet through sub-network isolation, identity-bound connections and enhanced data transport performance. Public cloud providers such as AWS typically offer advanced and interconnected global networks capable of linking regions and customers over a diverse range of connections types and sizes. While this provides a rich set of options to connect customers across the public cloud provider’s ecosystem, a local connection is still required to the nearest point of presence. These are typically either IPSec VPN tunnels over transient Internet connections with variable speed, or MPLS lines which are both highly expensive and time intensive to establish. NetFoundry eases cloud migration across three key areas: Workload migration - Spin up secure, software-only AppWANs directly to AWS VPCs over existing Internet connections without sacrificing security or speed. Since NetFoundry’s AppWANs encapsulate TCP in the more performant UDP protocol, while dynamically optimizing data flows to follow the best performing paths across our global network fabric, the time it takes to migrate data from on premises to public clouds such as AWS is drastically reduced as compared to traditional VPNs. Post-migration connectivity - Establish micro-segmented AppWANs between users, data centers, other cloud providers, and the cloud migrated application. Customers can rest assured that data-in-motion is protected, because each AppWAN built with the NetFoundry platform is fortified by a multi-dimensional security architecture which isolates, encrypts, and protects data flows, resulting in Zero Trust, private, dark networks over the Internet, micro-segmented by application. Post-migration change management - Inevitably, changes have to be made, such as connections to ancillary applications that may have been overlooked in the initial migration, or to accommodate growth. Since spinning up AppWANs is quick and easy, oversights and growing pains can be mitigated in a matter of minutes, rather than days or weeks with other connectivity options. NetFoundry AppWANs can greatly facilitate enterprise application deployment such as SAP on AWS. Backend services for an application will typically be spread across AWS Regions, private data centers, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments. Enterprise applications on AWS such as SAP may require three categories of compliant and performant access connectivity, each of which can be easily implemented and operated using NetFoundry AppWANs. NetFoundry delivers a new level of network agility to businesses embracing cloud migration and modern application practices. Now, with Lemongrass and NetFoundry, enterprises can experience the efficiency, security, speed, agility, reliability and profitability that is associated with digital technology and cloud migrations without the hassle and headache. “Lemongrass often find establishing customer connections can be a challenging area, MPLS lines are both expensive and slow to implement, and MPLS lines in some regions can be bandwidth constrained. Their customers can rest assured that data-in-motion is protected, because each AppWAN built with the NetFoundry platform is fortified by a multi-dimensional security architecture which isolates, encrypts, and protects data flows, resulting in zero trust, private, dark networks over the Internet, micro-segmented by application.” said Michael Kochanik, Global Head of Revenue and Alliances at NetFoundry.
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New Open Applications Advance Comprehensive Modeling Environment for Multidiscipline Collaboration
Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, today launched OpenSite Designer, a built-for-purpose application for the design and construction of civil site projects. It also launched OpenBuildings, bringing together its AECOsim building design and Speedikon factory and industrial design applications; and announced the availability of OpenBuildings Station Designer, a specialized application for designing rail and metro stations. At the same time, Bentley announced the availability of OpenBridge Designer, which combines Bentley’s bridge modeling, analysis and design capabilities into one comprehensive package, and OpenFlows FLOOD, a flood analysis and early warning system. In addition, in pursuit of its ‘industrialization’ strategy, Bentley announced it has rebranded under its Open portfolio several of its applications based on MicroStation technology which collectively accelerate the advancement of its comprehensive modeling environment by connecting digital workflows across disciplines and sharing digital components in its Connected Data Environment (CDE). Bhupinder Singh, chief product officer, Bentley Systems, said, “Open has three meanings. First, it signifies open to multiple disciplines. Second, it means open to analysis and simulation. Using different applications, two different disciplines, for example, a geotechnical engineer and a structural engineer, can iterate on the same dataset in our comprehensive modeling environment, providing a ‘digital feedback loop’ and enhancing their collaboration across BIM workflows. And third, because MicroStation technology underpins Open applications, users can produce multidiscipline deliverables and accomplish multidiscipline clash resolution from any Open application. Bentley’s comprehensive modeling environment is ‘Open’ for collaborative digital workflows.” Fully 49 of the 62 finalists and awardees of this year’s Year in Infrastructure Awards credited collaborative digital workflows in their successful outcomes. For example, OpenRoads, Bentley’s civil design applications for road networks, is credited by 22 awards finalists’ projects in 12 categories, and OpenPlant, Bentley’s plant design project management applications, is credited by 10 finalists’ projects in 9 different categories. ProjectWise and/or AssetWise were credited by finalists’ projects in 16 of 19 awards categories this year. OpenSite Designer The collaborative nature of digital workflows connecting analysis and simulation with design and modeling is exemplified in OpenSite, Bentley’s new solution for the design and construction of civil site projects. OpenSite provides rapid site modeling and analysis, earthwork optimization and quantification, drainage and underground utilities, and automated project deliverables. OpenSite Designer provides the most comprehensive site design workflow available including reality modeling, geotechnical, underground utilities, stormwater drainage, terrain modeling, detailed drawing production, and visualization. OpenSite Designer optimizes design outcomes with multidiscipline information modeling and analysis. Interoperating with PLAXIS, Bentley’s newly acquired geotechnical engineering solution, site plans can be enhanced with new information about the active properties of soil including bearing capacity, stresses, and displacement. OpenBuildings Designer The newly launched OpenBuildings Designer incorporates all of the capabilities of AECOsim Building Designer as well as Components Center and a range of new capabilities and standards including EnergyPlus, a building energy model to help users comply with ASHRAE standards in the US, and UK energy requirements; support of international standards including IFC 2x3, IFC4 Reference View, COBie, and Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority; new capabilities to design curtain wall systems; and OpenBuildings Speedikon, a leading application for industrialized design and construction. OpenBuildings Designer takes advantage of collaborative digital workflows with other applications in Bentley’s Open portfolio, for example templates in OpenBuildings Station Designer for tunnel segments created through GenerativeComponents based on linear alignment from OpenRail. Showcasing their robustness and versatility, OpenBuildings applications were credited by 32 of 62 of the Year in Infrastructure Awards finalists projects in 15 of 19 categories. OpenBridge Designer OpenBridge Designer is a new, all-encompassing application that integrates the modeling capabilities of OpenBridge Modeler and the analysis and design features of RM Bridge, LEAP Bridge Concrete, and LEAP Bridge Steel to meet the design and construction needs of both concrete and steel bridges. OpenBridge Designer enables bridge designers to rapidly create an intelligent, parametric bridge model, fully integrated with analysis and design, as well as drawings. It enables seamless synchronization of various disciplines for analysis, design, detailing, documentation, construction engineering and load-rating. OpenFlows FLOOD Bentley also announced the rebranding of its Haestad water modeling and ACTION Modulers flood analysis product lines to form OpenFlows for water districts, sewer utilities and flood plain managers. OpenFlows extends smart water networks capabilities with GIS-based asset-centric information for water loss reduction, water operations, flood prediction and prevention. OpenFlows FLOOD continuously monitors watersheds, integrating data from real-time monitoring stations and numerical models to calculate risk levels. OpenFlows FLOOD mitigates flood risk, improving understanding of the processes involved in flood generation, and transmitting early alerts to reduce the impact caused by floods. Connecting Digital Workflows Across Disciplines Applications for analysis and simulation, on the one hand, can collaboratively and iteratively work with applications for design and modeling, and on the other, connect operational workflows and converge the work of different disciplines. Collaborative digital workflows are characterized by data captured or created for one purpose being accessed and used by other applications for other purposes thereby saving time, minimizing rework, and improving data quality over the asset lifecycle. An example of multidiscipline collaboration with OpenFlows involves workflows that use ContextCapture to create a 3D reality mesh, feeding into OpenFlows FLOOD modeling and using the terrain as input to various analyses in a single review environment for visualization and presentation to stakeholders using LumenRT. Connecting analysis with modeling in another Open collaborative digital workflow involves the layout of road geometry, and hydraulic analysis and design using storm analysis tools including the determination of the size of storm inlets, pipes, depth of pipes, and manholes. The collaborative nature of the workflow enables clash detection in the subsurface environment, and iteration and adjustment as needed, to confirm functional and physical characteristics. Other instances of Open collaborative digital workflows connecting design and analysis include OpenUtilities with Siemens’ PSS©SINCAL, which helps utilities improve resilience and deal with weak spots in the grid; and OpenBuildings Station Designer with LEGION pedestrian simulation, to enable designers to design, test, and validate simulations of scenarios for pedestrian traffic. Rebranding Completing its announcement about Open applications, Bentley said that Bentley Map will be rebranded as OpenCities Map; and OpenComms, aimed primarily at multisystem operators, will incorporate Bentley Fiber and Bentley Coax.
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CITIC Telecom CPC increases its global footprint with new SmartCLOUD Services Centres in Moscow and London
To provide higher flexibility and more comprehensive cloud connecting capabilities for its customers, CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited (“CITIC Telecom CPC”), a wholly owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (SEHK:1883), has announced today that it will launch new connected SmartCLOUDTM Services Centres in Moscow and London. This significant investment in the development of innovative ICT solutions provides enterprise customers with high performance and reliable solutions, real-time scaling of infrastructure and optimal cloud resources. This follows the company’s global cloud centre network expansion strategy, marked by the debut of two cloud centres in Frankfurt, Germany, and Cape Town, South Africa. The addition of these two new centres takes CITIC Telecom CPC’s total of cloud centres to 18. The centres cover Asia Pacific, America, South Africa, Europe and Russia. The services centres in Moscow and London will provide further flexibility and benefits from secure multi-cloud connectivity and increase CITIC Telecom CPC’s unique network footprint across East and West, extending to across the world. “We believe a reliable communication infrastructure is the foundation of successful digital transformation. As a global ICT services partner, we help our customers design their network infrastructure resources based on their business models and needs,” said Stephen Ho, CEO of CITIC Telecom CPC. “In the past few years, we have been growing together with customers, with our footprint not only covering Asia Pacific to Europe and America, but also extending to Russia and South Africa. This means we can continue to provide innovative ICT solutions to help our customers leveraging digitalisation to transform their businesses, and even the whole industry,” he added. The ‘Europe & Russia Cloud Ring’ will be crucial for European-based enterprises who are looking to invest in and explore the emerging market and business opportunities in mainland China. Not only will it provide a scalable cloud platform with full disaster recovery capability to intra-city, inter-city and cross-boundary redundancies, it will also provide round-the-clock professional support optimising customers’ IT investment, achieving a faster response time and ensuring business continuity. “This will allow CITIC Telecom CPC’s enterprise customers to concentrate on continuing to run their core businesses.” These new business investments have significantly expanded CITIC Telecom CPC’s global footprint from the Asia Pacific, to Europe and Russia. In addition to this expanded network reach, the new Moscow Cloud services centre will enhance CITIC Telecom CPC’s Russian language market capabilities and allows further access to as yet underserved markets, for itself and its customers. The growth of EdTech, especially in Europe has been recognised as a critical development towards a better future. Technology is increasingly seen as a crucial enabler for new strategic capabilities for education institutions. It is no longer just an enabler of business trends, but to drive success for many industries worldwide.
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Enterprise IT Seeking VPN Alternatives for Applications Networking, IIoT and Multi-cloud; According to Futuriom Survey
NetFoundry today announced the findings of a new survey of 200 enterprise IT managers discussing applications networking, security and the cloud. The shift of applications from on premises applications to hybrid-cloud environments has posed myriad challenges to IT departments who need to efficiently and securely connect applications. To gain insight into these challenges, the research firm Futuriom surveyed 200 IT managers in application development, networking, security and DevOps and reached some major conclusions in a new report. Conclusions of the research, based on survey data and primary research with enterprise end users, include the following: Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are seen as having significant security and performance drawbacks for use in networking cloud applications. 63.5% of users surveyed cited issues with VPN performance 47.5% cited issues with security 75% of VPN users said they are seeking a better solution for cloud networks While some respondents believe that MPLS/SD-WAN can be used to network cloud applications, it’s clear that there is the desire for additional layers of security and virtualization. The view on using MPLS for cloud applications is split down the middle. 45.5% of the respondents agreed that carrier-delivered MPLS wasn’t the right solution for cloud-based networking, while 46% disagreed with that statement. This indicates that conviction is lacking in MPLS and that many IT managers believe additional technology is needed for networking cloud applications. A key area of concern about MPLS is security. This is because MPLS does not have full security baked into the service, and requires additional measures, according to our respondents. 73.5% of the respondents said they run an additional layer of security over MPLS. 74.5% said they see hardware root-of-trust as a significant security feature. When asked if Zero Trust network architectures are a significant improvement in networking security, 55.5% agreed this was true, while only 15% disagreed. 29.5% said they don't know. Users don’t see private lines or MPLS as fully secure networking solutions for cloud applications. Most respondents today use an additional security overlay. Internet of Things (IoT) technology is viewed as an outlier in the world of secure networking. Several high-profile hacks of IoT devices, including surveillance cameras and automobiles, has led to security concern about IoT devices. End-user research, including survey from the data and end-user interviews, backs this up. Survey respondents do not view VPNs as suitable for IoT security, nor do they see SD-WAN technology as a panacea. Respondents did identify hardware root of trust and Zero Trust networks as potential security solutions. - ASN to the Rescue Application Specific Networking (ASN) is an architectural paradigm shift in connectivity, offering compelling alternatives to VPNs and MPLS, and improved and secure architectures for the IIoT, especially as a majority of end users are seeking zero-trust networks and hardware root of trust for network security. Harnessing the power of Application Specific Networking, NetFoundry’s AppWANs are software-only networks that connect applications without requiring management of hardware devices, operating systems, or servers. Unlike VPNs, AppWANs can be provisioned automatically by the applications in the cloud. - AppWAN Key features Secure networking tied to applications, not devices Applications-based networking that is easy to set up and tear down with software No “box management” necessary to instantiate a network Networking and security features targeted at DevOps and software development staff
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Neural Technologies releases the Optimus Ecosystem, a leap forward in digital transformation
Neural Technologies today announces the launch of the Optimus Ecosystem, an integrated compilation of solutions spread across the areas of Revenue Management, Digital Integration and Advanced Automation & Analytics that is able to address effectively the challenges associated with digitizing business processes across the enterprise. Optimus Ecosystem is the answer to a successful digital transformation journey. The Optimus Ecosystem is powered by Optimus – an all-in-one highly configurable Event Data Lake Platform with built-in end-to-end dynamic orchestration. Optimus ultimately delivers on the promise of the enterprise’s digital transformation strategic goals by eliminating the risks of digitizing end-to-end business processes combined with an overall lower investment. David Toms, CEO at Neural Technologies commented: “Optimus represents a way of effectively replacing numerous separate product investments that require to be integrated with one single pre-integrated product. “With Optimus we have removed some of the biggest challenges that contribute to digital transformation failures by reducing the risk and time-to-market with a lower overall investment. “The challenge of combining often complex aspects of Digital Integration, Advanced Automation & Analytics and Revenue Management, as well as effectively tracking these, remains tough for many enterprises. Optimus, by combining and pre-integrating these components, answers this challenge, allowing our customers to save time and money. “Under one investment, Optimus combines myriad elements of the business and makes sure they work together.” Offering exceptionally high levels of scalability which allows the enterprises to digitize and integrate increasing data volumes, Optimus also has built in big data capability and powers its own Event Data Lake, which has the capability to manage and store infinitely scalable volumes of Event Data, whilst effectively collecting and distributing Event Data in any acquired or distributed format or protocol. VP of Engineering at Neural Technologies, Bernd Niedergesäß, said: “We are confident that Optimus is the perfect choice to support all of your Big Data Analytics (BDA) requirements. This is evident from our choice of cost-effective technology for our Event Data Lake (EDL) and our more than 25 years of expertise in dealing with large amounts of Event Data from Communication Service Providers. We have selected Apache Kudu as our preferred data storage technology for our Analytics Data Model (ADM), which offers more than 60 use-cases and 800+ KPIs in a predefined TMF SID compliant model." Neural Technologies will be showcasing the Optimus Ecosystem and the capabilities of Optimus at Big Data World, taking place in Singapore on October 10. Neural Technologies can be found at stand Q20.
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Why is Messenger becoming an unpopular collaboration tool?
The Messenger that reduced unnecessary meetings and opened the new world of real-time collaboration became a troublemaker because it is giving work stresses even after work hours. Since France enacted the right to disconnect in its labor standards last year, the worldwide ban on work orders through messengers is becoming increasingly popular. However, many indications are pointing that these changes are the full answer for the problem. This is because, creating an efficient work environment for finishing work within working hours are as important as stop giving work orders after working hours. Many experts point out that instant messaging notification during office hours can cause business interruption, and even can lead to stress disorder. According to reports from McKinsey and the Korea Productivity Center, typical office workers spend an average of 2.2 hours on their e-mail and replying messengers during their work hours. it is equivalent to 27.5 percent from a typical 8-hour work day. Considering that messenger work order can occur in anytime, it would interrupt workflows interruption throughout the working hours. The actual wasting hours for workers due to interruption are beyond expectations. Hackernoon, a website for IT engineers, conducted a survey of 4,000 High-Performance Employees (HPE) in 2017. According to the report, the average time a worker wastes as a work hindrance is 2 hours and 18 minutes a day, and when converted to a year, it is equivalent to 600 hours (75 days) respectively. Considering that the average hourly wage of HPE in the U.S. is $53, the annual loss per capita is $31,800 (Approximately 3.5 million KRW), and if a company has 40 HPEs, the loss would reach $1,250,000 (Approximately 1.4 billion KRW). The damage caused by the work interruption was found to have a great influence on the work performance of the workers as well. Including ‘Interruptions to workflow: Their relationship with irritation and satisfaction with performance, and the mediating roles of time pressure and mental demands’ (2013), published by Anja Baethge, a professor of psychology at University of Leipzig, Germany and many universities and research institutes’ study on changes in cognitive ability due to work disruption confirms that people who are disturbed have more than twice the rate of work mistakes, nervous and irritated reactions, compared to people who are not disturbed, and it has been found that it takes up to 27% more time to complete an existing task. As the side effects of Messenger, which is the beneficiary of the real-time collaboration are highlighted, some companies are restricting the use of messenger to 'temporary discussion use only', or set specific time zone as concentrating working hours to prevent 'messenger pollution'. In addition, some are moving away from messenger-centric collaboration tools, and are moving toward more collaborative tools that match with its workers’ workflow. For this reason, the third generation collaboration solutions, so-called issue based collaboration tools is getting famous. ‘collabee’, the most well-known issue-based collaborative tool, supports file sharing and communication functions like the existing collaboration tools, but also it displays the user-oriented user interface (UI) in the real-time collaborative environment. When one of the members creates a 'project space' for collaborative work, anyone who is invited to this space can write, and can directly comment on the written articles including assigning specific tasks, requesting decisions. All articles, materials, and requests can be viewed through your own news feed or easily viewed through the Kanban view, which is sorted by progress. Especially since it supports both PC and Android as well as iOS, users can cope with collaborative situations regardless of time and place. An industry official said, "Many companies are wondering how to guarantee their rights not to be disturbed at times other than working hours, but what is important is that they should not be disturbed during working hours to improve work performance and reduce overtime works. As collaborative tools emphasize real-time or communication, it is important to build a new collaborative environment that allows workers to concentrate on their work without disturbing the work, as it becomes more complicated by the structure of disturbance and unrealistic collaboration flow."
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Versa Driving Trend Toward Secure Multi-Cloud/SD-WAN Services, according to new analyst report by Futuriom
Versa Networks is highlighted as a key market driver for its Secure Cloud IP architecture by analyst Futuriom with the launch of its new report Networking the Secure IP Cloud – Trends Driving the Cloud at NetEvents EMEA, in Portugal. Versa Networks has also recently been recognised by NSS Labs, the globally trusted source for independent fact-based cybersecurity guidance, as the only pure-play SD-WAN vendor to achieve a 100% evaluation for security in the first ever NSS Labs group test for SD-WAN. Versa has been awarded a ‘Recommended’ rating in the NSS Labs Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Group Test. Cloud, SD-WAN and security are in the midst of an evolution that is quickly growing in importance and will eventually dominate the WAN-edge architecture. The new report by R. Scott Raynovich, Futuriom, makes the important point that: “Cloud networks have entirely different requirements from client/server networks. They need to connect a variety of physical and virtual endpoints, including branches, private data centers, and the Internet.” R. Scott Raynovich also says: “Advances in commercial silicon and virtualization mean it’s possible to use advanced software to manage networks on a virtual, software-driven platform. These networks can connect internally in data centers, or they can be used to connect the edge of an organization to partners, branches, the cloud and private data centers, using advances in software-defined wide-area-network (SD-WAN) technology.” The move to a multi-cloud environment is likely to be a long, slow process, even though it’s inevitable. Research from Maverick Research recently indicated that 83 percent of U.S. CIOs estimated more than half of their transactions would be conducted on a cloud infrastructure by 2020. And 79 percent of the respondents predicted that more than half of their transactions would be completed on applications leased using a SaaS platform by 2020. Versa’s technology is enabled by the Secure Cloud IP architecture – a cloud-native multi-service, multi-tenant software platform that delivers elastic scale, segmentation, programmability and automation. Versa Secure Cloud IP integrates cloud networking, SD-WAN, wireless and mobile connectivity, transport line conditioning and software-defined security services (NGFW/UTM) in a flexible, versatile software stack that displaces multiple legacy branch-office hardware devices. “Applying Versa’s platform architecture to multi-cloud, enterprise edge and managed security environments results in the ability to deploy software-defined branches with fewer hardware devices and streamline operations (policy and enforcement),” said Atchison Frazer, worldwide head of marketing, Versa Networks. “The new report from Futuriom launched today, building upon the NSS Labs 100% next-gen firewall, evaluation for SD-WAN security confirms our ability to deliver high security effectiveness and performance.”
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Tacton Opens in Japan to Meet Demand amid Industry 4.0 Revolution
Tacton, a global leader in Configure Price Quote solutions (CPQ) for the manufacturing industry, announced today the establishment of a new office in Tokyo this month. The new office marks a deepened level of commitment to the Asian market. It also enables Tacton to better support Japanese customers during the digital transformation and evolution towards Industry 4.0. With over 20 years of experience in the CPQ software industry, Tacton has been working closely since 2010 with several partners in Japan and about 30 manufacturing customers like Toshiba Mitsubishi-Electric Industrial Systems Corporation and RYOBI MHI Graphic Technology Ltd. The reseller partners include Exa Corporation, NTT data MHI information Systems, Kozo Keikaku Engineering, Toshiba Digital Solution and the service partner Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI). With offices already established in Sweden, Germany, USA, and Poland, Tacton will now expand its global reach with a new office in Japan. Situated in the Ginza district of Tokyo, the new office will serve Tacton’s partners and clients in Japan. The wholly owned subsidiary will also enable Tacton to better serve growing demand for its CPQ and smart manufacturing solutions within Asia at large. "We look forward to establishing closer working relationships with our Japanese partners,” says Frederic Laziou, CEO of Tacton Systems. “Japan is one of the world’s most successful manufacturing countries, having invented the lean manufacturing philosophy Kaizen. The next step is smart manufacturing. Tacton is ideally positioned to meet this demand and take customers to the forefront of Industry 4.0.” The new office will bring Japanese customers even closer to Tacton’s advanced products, including engineered-to-order solutions, which are very much in demand. “Traditionally Japanese manufacturers have been ETO (Engineer-To-Order) oriented,” says Haruko Kato, Regional Channel Manager of Japan, Tacton Systems. “With Tacton, manufacturers can accelerate their digitalization and automation in both the design and order process corresponding to their customers' needs, while increasing speed and reducing the cost during global expansion.” Tacton’s smart manufacturing solutions are helping some of the world’s leading manufacturers operate more efficiently and sell more effectively. These include AI based CPQ software, Visual Configuration, Design and CAD Automation—plus integration with all major ERP, CRM and PLM systems.
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China Unicom Global will offer ngena’s Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) services to its global customer base
China Unicom Global announced today to join ngena – the Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance. By becoming a member of the global telecommunications alliance, China Unicom Global will be offering ngena’s fully managed SD-WAN services to its enterprise customers. In addition, all ngena alliance members will benefit from selected high-quality Ethernet and Internet based wholesale access services in China. ngena provides enterprises with consistent data connectivity services, integrating all the alliance partners’ networks into a single global Software-Defined Network (SDN). Using state-of-the-art cloud and virtualization technologies from ngena’s strategic technology partner Cisco-Viptela, the alliance offers end-to-end managed Software-Defined Wide Area Networks. The combination of this technology with the alliance’s operating model and ecosystem gives customers of the alliance members access to secure, stable, scalable and easy-to-use global corporate networks, and provides high-quality local customer care. Since ngena’s four founding members – CenturyLink, Deutsche Telekom, Reliance Jio and SK Telecom – made their official inaugural announcement at the Mobile World Congress in February 2016, the global alliance has now grown to include over 20 renowned international partners. - Data connectivity without limits and boundaries Alessandro Adriani, Managing Director at ngena, says: “With China Unicom Global becoming ngena’s partner, enterprise customers of all ngena alliance partners will benefit from the Software-Defined Wide Area Network services China Unicom Global is providing in their home market. In addition, we are extending our global reach to one of the biggest markets in the world, thus being able to offer our highly automated network services to our customers’ premises in China”.
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The Power of Ryzen in Rackmount NAS - QNAP Introduces the TS-x77XU Series
QNAP® Systems, Inc. (QNAP), a leading storage, network and computing solution provider, unveiled the high-performance TS-x77XU rackmount NAS series. This series features the 8-bay TS-877XU-RP, 12-bay TS-1277XU-RP, and 16-bay TS-1677XU-RP. Utilizing the blazing-fast AMD Ryzen™ processor family with high core/thread counts, the TS-x77XU series has been significantly boosted to meet the most-demanding virtualization needs of enterprises. The TS-x77XU series is available with Ryzen 3 1200, Ryzen 5 2600, and Ryzen 7 2700 processors, all of which demonstrate astonishing processing power for versatile applications and scenarios (including desktop and server virtualization, on-the-fly video transcoding/streaming, and private cloud infrastructure). Four PCI Express (PCIe) slots are available in all models, allowing users to expand NAS functionality with network adapters (40GbE, 10GBASE-T/NBASE-T™), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) cards, M.2 SSD cards, and graphics cards. The TS-1677XU comes with a 500 W power supply unit (PSU) to support a graphics card that requires additional power. Models with redundant power supplies are also available. "In response to strong market demands, QNAP has added AMD Ryzen-based NAS to our rackmount lineup," noted David Tsao, Director of Product Management of QNAP. "With powerful processing capabilities, versatile expandability and high potential storage capacity, the TS-x77XU series enables enterprises to take their businesses to the next level," he added. The multi-threading advantages of the TS-x77XU series are especially suited for virtualization. The series is virtualization-ready for VMware®, Citrix® and Windows Server® 2016 environments with the support of iSER (iSCSI Extension for RDMA) thanks to built-in Mellanox® ConnectX®-4 SmartNICs. The TS-x77XU series can also host virtual machines and containers, acting as an efficient all-in-one server, and supports snapshots and virtual machine backups for complete virtualization management. The series also supports* Virtual QTS, allowing users to run multiple virtual QTS operating systems on a single NAS, providing benefits of resource segregation (CPU, memory, networking), flexible application deployment, and providing energy, cost, and space savings. The TS-x77XU series supports RAID 50/60 to provide greater protection and random write performance, striking a balance between capacity, protection and performance. The latest Qtier™ 2.0 adds IO Aware capabilities for SSD tiered storage to keep a cache-like reserved space to handle burst I/O in real time, maximizing the cost-to-performance value. The TS-x77XU series also features a redundant power supply to ensure that mission-critical applications can maintain 24/7 business operations. A single power supply model (the TS-877XU ) is also available. Running the latest version of QTS - the intelligent NAS operating system, the TS-x77XU series is a comprehensive storage solution for data storage, backup/restoration, sharing and management. The built-in QTS App Center includes hundreds of install-on-demand apps to extend NAS functionality while increasing productivity gains. QRM+ is a centralized management solution the features graphic topology diagrams for managing Windows®, Linux®, and IPMI devices; Q'center consolidates the management of multiple QNAP NAS; QVPN integrates settings of VPN server and VPN clients; Browser Station enables secure and convenient access to private networks; QVR Pro provides a professional video surveillance solution; QIoT Suite Lite builds a private IoT cloud platform; and much more. *Virtual QTS is only supported by Ryzen 5 2600 and Ryzen 7 2700 variants of the TS-x77XU series. Key specifications Redundant power supply models TS-877XU-RP-1200-4G: 8-bay, AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply, 2U TS-877XU-RP-2600-8G: 8-bay, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6-core/12-thread, 3.4 GHz, max. 3.9 GHz) processor, 8 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply, 2U TS-1277XU-RP-1200-4G: 12-bay, AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply, 2U TS-1277XU-RP-2600-8G: 12-bay, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6-core/12-thread, 3.4 GHz, max. 3.9 GHz) processor, 8 GB RAM, 2 x 300 W redundant power supply, 2U TS-1677XU-RP-1200-4G: 16-bay, AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 2 x 500 W redundant power supply (power connector for graphics card included), 3U TS-1677XU-RP-2600-8G: 16-bay, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6-core/12-thread, 3.4 GHz, max. 3.9 GHz) processor, 8 GB RAM, 2 x 500 W redundant power supply (power connector for graphics card included), 3U TS-1677XU-RP-2700-16G: 16-bay, AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (8-core/16-thread, 3.2 GHz, max. 4.1 GHz) processor, 16 GB RAM, 2 x 500 W redundant power supply (power connector for graphics card included), 3U Single power supply models TS-877XU-1200-4G: 8-bay, AMD Ryzen 3 1200 (4-core/4-thread, 3.1 GHz, max. 3.4 GHz) processor, 4 GB RAM, 350 W power supply, 2U Rackmount NAS; up to 64 GB DDR4 RAM (4 x 16 GB DDR4 UDIMM RAM); hot-swappable 2.5/3.5-inch SATA 6Gbps HDDs or SSDs; 4 x PCle 3.0 slots; 2 x 10GbE SFP+ ports; 2 x Gigabit LAN ports; 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports (1 x Type-A, 1 x Type-C), 4 x USB 3.0 ports (Type A)
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Collaboration tool rises as the Work-Life Balance strives trend
As the Work-Life balance culture is becoming more and more prevalent, there is a growing interest in collaboration tools for systematic task management and efficient teamwork support. Many experts claim that productive collaboration is likely to increase work satisfaction through the realization of Work-Life Balance. Collaboration task is already taking more than half of the working hours and the task proportion even increases further for general office workers. According to reports from McKinsey and Korea Productivity Center, typical knowledge workers spend 70% of their working time on collaborative communication and searching information. Along with the rising trend, the global collaboration tools market is experiencing significant growth every year. According to the Global Cloud Collaboration Market 2016-2020 Report published by Technavio, a UK market research firm, the global cloud collaboration tool market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 11% from the year 2016 to the year 2020. More interesting part is that the growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to outgrow the global average with an annual average rate of 16%. Also, ReportLinker, a US market researching firm forecasts that the global collaboration tool market will grow to $ 59.9 billion by the year 2023 from $ 34.5 billion this year with annual CAGR of 11%. The rapid growth of the global collaborative tool market is due to the fact that collaborative tools play a large role in effective communication and minimization of data integration costs between departments within the company or even between companies. Experts are consistently emphasizing that if collaboration efficiency increases within a limited working hour, it can lead to a reduction in management costs as well as improvement of corporate service quality from a long-term perspective. Especially, as the devices that access information are diversified due to the proliferation of mobile devices, the collaboration tools are also being expanded to web-based services or mobile apps. The proliferation of Work-Life Balance trend will not only lead to the introduction of collaboration tools but will also change the culture of collaboration among companies. In the meantime, the collaborative methods preferred by domestic companies have been conducted in a timelined manner; taking responsibility for their work, communicating in real time, and instructing and performing tasks. The optimized collaboration solution for domestic companies would be the timeline-based SNS collaborating platform and real-time communication-based messenger collaborating solution. However, this method has high team efficiency, but individual users have to invest a lot of working hours, and it has been pointed out that the decrease of work concentration due to real-time response is a disadvantage. Timeline method requires too much time to search past data or information, and it is structured to be interrupted in the midst of business hours because the prompt reply is required. According to a study by Professor Gloria Janet Mark, an informatics professor at the University of California, regular office workers are being interrupted once every 11 minutes and it takes an average of 25 minutes for workers to refocus on their tasks. An emerging solution to overcome these limitations is the issue-based collaboration tool. Also known as the Third Generation Collaboration Solutions and this tool supports data sharing, communication, decision making, and issue management as well as other collaborating tools, but the crucial difference is that the collaboration environment is fully reflecting the workflow. For instance, ‘Collabee’, the most well-known issue-based collaboration tool follows the workflow that takes place in the real work environment. If you create a 'project space' for each team or each project, everyone can contribute based on ideas or issues. Within the generated issue, various collaborations can be performed such as delivering feedback through comments, assigning tasks, requesting for decision making, sharing files, etc. All the communication for solving the issue can be confirmed on one page. In addition, a user can check project progress by Kanban method, or can solely check user’s own issue through the news feed section. Work-Life Balance is the natural flow and the demand that can no longer be resisted. As a result, companies can not postpone their homework, which should increase the productivity while guaranteeing the balance in between work and life. Collaboration tool is not a panacea for actualizing the balance, but it's a feasible solution. It is time to check, whether the issue-based collaboration tool will become the mainstream in Korea with the rising work-life balance trend.
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Broadband Forum automates, accelerates cloud-based access deployment
The Broadband Forum today announced the first code release and documentation of its new Open Broadband project – Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) to enable standardized, automated and accelerated deployment of new cloud-based access infrastructure and services. What differentiates this Open Broadband reference implementation is that it facilitates co-existence, seamless migration and the agility to adapt to an increasingly wide variety of software defined access models – the key business and operational challenge in creating a potentially vast market. “OB-BAA enables operators to optimize their decision-making process for introducing new infrastructure based on user demand and acceptance instead of being forced into a total replacement strategy,” said Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum CEO. “By reducing planning, risks and execution time, investment in new systems and services can be incremental.” As a freely-published, open source project, OB-BAA specifies northbound interfaces, core components and southbound interfaces for functions associated with access devices that have been virtualized. It is this standardized, layered architecture designed for SDN automation that distinguishes it from other approaches. It removes the need for difficult deployment planning by decoupling the device and software implementation choices from business and market decisions. An important and immediate use of OB-BAA is as an integrated layer in the Broadband Forum’s CloudCO project, as described in the published ‘CloudCO Architectural Framework (TR-384).’ OB-BAA also complements other industry initiatives and the work is being actively coordinated with related industry activities such as ONF. “The first release of OB-BAA marks a major milestone for the industry,” said Tim Carey, Lead Technology Strategist at Nokia and Chair of the Broadband Forum’s BAA project. “It delivers an open reference implementation based on standards-compliant interfaces, that operators and vendors worldwide can use to develop and deploy interoperable cloud-based access networks more easily and quickly.” Operators and equipment manufacturers involved in the project include Broadcom, BT, Calix, CenturyLink, China Telecom, Huawei, Nokia, Telecom Italia, Tibit Communications, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) and ZTE. “OB-BAA is a very important reference implementation of Cloud CO,” said Binchao Lin, Access Network Architect at Huawei and VC of OB-BAA. “It is a project which is important to the entire broadband community.” The first of several planned releases, consisting of code and supporting documentation is now publicly available at obbaa.broadband-forum.org Companies interested in participating in the ongoing work should contact: info@broadband-forum.org In addition to the release, the Forum has published a new OB-BAA system overview paper and is holding a public webinar on Wednesday, August 29, featuring service providers and vendors.
