Semiweekly Updates
Is Level 3 The Next U.S. DoD’s CDN?
The United States Department of Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) will be offering contracts worth up to $4.3 billion to AT&T, CenturyLink, Level 3, Verizon Business, Artel, BT, GTT and others. DISA seeks a CDN that will improve enterprise-level infrastructure, provide telecom network solutions, and support the transmission requirements of DISA. Services will be needed primarily outside the United States, and Level 3 is poised to be a fierce competitor in the field, as it is well-established internationally.
CloudFlare Localizes European Internet Traffic
Hamburg, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria are the two new sites of CloudFlare’s data centers. CloudFlare now has 20 European data centers and 73 worldwide. Previously, Bulgaria’s networks were served primarily out of Frankfurt, about 1,000 miles away. By establishing this office in Sofia, CloudFlare has improved performance, expanded surface area to fight attacks and increased redundancy in their network. CloudFlare also notes that “1 in 73 of CloudFlare team members is Bulgarian, now 1 in 73 of CloudFlare data centers is in Bulgaria!”
Instart Logic and Magneto Partnership
Cloud services company Instart Logic has partnered with a global provider of open-source e-commerce platforms, Magneto, to provide an end-to-end platform to optimize performance and security. The platform will use machine learning technology, and patented CDN software will ensure speedy use with near end-user caching and enhance security, especially during traffic surges. Several companies have already begun using the joint platform and many more are expected to follow.
Alcatel-Lucent Expands in Romania and Partners with Azerbaijan, Italy’s TIM
Alcatel-Lucent opened an operating center in Timisoara, Romania this week. This center is its largest global operating center yet. Alcatel employs 1,600 people in Romania and this center offers services in seven languages to many major global companies. Additionally, Italian owned TIM has hired Alcatel-Lucent to provide 7950 Extensible Routing System (XRS), which will include its routers, 100G optical networking technology, service manager (SAM) and SDN-based network platform to deliver content to TIM’s users.
TIM will become more than one of 50 companies to deploy the 7950 XRS. Finally, Delta Telecom, owned by Azerbaijan, has purchased LTE equipment from Alcatel Lucent’s Teletas for $24.6 million. Launch dates for commercial services will be announced in 2016 by Telecom Invest, a Delta Telecom subsidiary. The LTE data network will be delivered first to the Baku and the cities of the Absheron peninsula. Voice services and other locations will follow.
Arista and OptumSoft Legal Dispute Settled
The California Superior Court has ruled that Arista, not OptumSoft, is the owner of code developed from work with OptumSoft’s royalty-free licensed software. An agreement between the two companies was made in 2004 outlining OptumSoft’s ownership of “improvements, corrections or modifications to” the code and “derivative works thereof, made by or for.”
Using part of the code, Arista developed a system database and routing and switching acceleration software. In 2014, OptumSoft sued Arista for the ownership of these derivative codes, breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets and declaratory relief and Arista countersued. The court ruled this week that “OptumSoft’s interpretation of the ownership agreement was too broad,” and Arista was the owner of the database and software that it developed. The remainder of the charges will be decided in 2016.
ChinaCache Announces Share Buyback
China’s CDN ChinaCache has announced that it will be launching a share buyback program in 2016. ChinaCache will purchase approximately $5 million worth of American Depositary Shares (ADSs). This program will be launched in addition to the program earlier in December that aimed to buyback $10 million in shares and in August to buy back shares totaling $6 million. As of September, ChinaCache had the equivalent of USD $97.3 million.
Akamai Renegotiates with Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Up’s Commitment to Indian Market
Akamai, a leading global CDN, has seen it stocks plummet in recent months after Apple announced delays in its launch of Apple WebTV and Akamai came up short on projected earnings for the quarter. Stocks have continued their freefall as Akamai renegotiates with some of its key content providers. Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have all launched, or projected for the launch, of their own cloud and CDN services. These in-house services will reduce the traffic demanded by Akamai’s servers and further reduce earnings.
Meanwhile, Akamai has extended and expanded its partnership with Mauj Mobile in India to increase its role in delivering speedy and secure content delivery. Akamai now delivers 90% of Mauj Mobile’s content, which is primarily mobile games. Mobile downloads of games on Mauj Mobile have occurred 30-40% through the wireless carrier and about 60% through WiFi. Both companies aim to increase the nation’s Internet connectivity as its population and demand for content booms.
Partnerships and Features May Help Close Gap Between Azure and AWS
The system requirements for the on-site cloud operating system Azure Stack have been released this week by Microsoft. Azure Stack will bring components of Azure into a company’s data center to create its own Microsoft cloud. Stack is a re-imagining of Azure Pack, and will allow increased management capabilities, services and infrastructure while maintaining the Azure experience.
Azure’s “intelligent cloud” platform will be further enhanced in upcoming months thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of Matanautix, a company specialized in data management for business analytics. Microsoft will be targeting these new capabilities to companies that aim to have a data-driven strategy but are unable to efficiently collect and analyze their masses of data from varied and numerous sources.
Through its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), southeastern India’s state of Andhra Pradesh hopes to “improve access, deployment and use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to offer better citizen services and drive digital inclusion” through a partnership with Microsoft India.
As a part of the agreement, the government will establish a Centre for Excellence, and Microsoft India will aid in the building of several proof-of-concept solutions for implementing Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and Advanced Visualization as a solution in education, agriculture and eCitizen services.
Additionally, when Azure is launched on Xbox, the game line-up will be expanded, and the Azure cloud compute platform used on the Xbox will be available for use on any platform or game. Azure will also be adding a feature that will allow a fleet of homogenous virtual machines (VMs) to be deployed and maintained as a set with its Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS).
VMSS will allow for management and scaling of elastic workloads and will eliminate the need to pre-provision auto-scaling. Rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers such as Netflix have utilized this technology on the AWS platform. Though AWS remains the leader in the cloud computing market, many experts believe that these improvements and partnerships will soon close the gap between AWS and Azure.