NetApp predicts data management and IT trends will lead in the New Year

2019 was a year of rapid innovation—and disruption—for both the IT industry and the broader business community. With the widespread adoption of hybrid multicloud as the de facto architecture for enterprise customers, organizations everywhere are under tremendous pressure to modernize their infrastructure and to deliver tangible business value around data-intensive applications and workloads.

As a result, organizations are shifting from on-premises environments to using public cloud services, building private clouds, and moving from disk to flash in data centers—sometimes concurrently. These transformations open the door to enormous potential, but they also introduce the unintended consequence of increased IT complexity.

NetApp predicts that a demand for simplicity and customizability will be the number one factor that drives IT purchasing decisions in 2020. Vendors will need to offer modern, flexible technologies with the choice of how to use and to consume those technologies so that customers can keep pace with their evolving business models. As IT departments strive to deemphasize maintenance and hardware, to reduce overhead, and to adopt pay-as-you-go models, simplicity and choice will be crucial.

Achieving this simplicity will serve as the foundation for companies as they navigate the exciting technological trends that we identify in the following sections.

1. As the advent of 5G makes AI-driven Internet of Things (IoT) a reality, edge computing environments are primed to become even more disruptive than cloud was.

In preparation for the widespread emergence of 5G, lower-cost sensors and maturing AI applications will be used to build compute-intensive edge environments. This effort will lay the groundwork for high-bandwidth, low-latency AI-driven IoT environments with the potential for huge innovation—and disruption.

The advent of 5G is what AI-driven IoT has been waiting for. It will take a few more years for 5G data technology to spread across the entire United States. However, 2020 will see many players in the technology industry and business community invest in building edge computing environments to support the reality of AI-driven IoT. These environments will make possible new use cases that rely on intelligent, instantaneous, and autonomous decision-making, with low-latency, high-bandwidth capabilities. This evolution will bring us to a world where the internet will work on our behalf—without even having to ask.

This AI-driven IoT innovation, however, will depend on a massive prioritization of edge computing, further disrupting IT infrastructures and data management priorities. As edge devices move beyond home devices (such as connected thermostats and speakers) and become more far-reaching (such as connected solar farms), more data centers will be placed at the edge. Also, platforms such as artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) will be necessary to help monitor complex environments across the edge, the core, and the cloud.

2. The impact of blockchain will be undeniable as indelible ledgers rapidly enable game-changing use cases outside of cryptocurrency.

The world is quickly moving beyond Bitcoin to adopt enterprise-distributed indelible ledgers, setting the stage for a transformation that’s exponentially bigger than the impact that cryptocurrency has had on blockchain in finance. 

While the crypto frenzy continues to steal the limelight when it comes to blockchain, most players in the industry understand the bigger picture of the technology and its potential. Going into 2020, we will see a tipping point for larger implementations as enterprises go a step further to adopt indelible ledgers based on Hyperledger, which represents the maturation of blockchain for wider use cases. Indeed, we will start to see blockchain go “mainstream” as it enables industries such as healthcare to create universal patient records, to improve chain-of-custody pharmaceutical processes, and more.

With such use cases validating blockchain and indelible ledgers, additional widespread adoption of the technology will drive transformation across society on a larger scale. This widespread adoption will build on the disruption that cryptocurrency has brought to finance to touch nearly every industry. As a result, new data management and compute capabilities will encourage companies to invest in indelible ledgers to build differentiated applications and to collaborate on critical, sensitive datasets.

3. Hardware-based composable architecture will have less short-term potential against commodity hardware and software-based infrastructure virtualization.

Continued improvements in commodity hardware performance, software-based virtualization, and microservice software architectures will eliminate much of the performance advantage of proprietary hardware-based composable architectures, relegating them to niche data center roles soon. 

Hardware-based composable architecture is being hyped as the next evolution of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). This architecture enables CPUs, networking cards, workload accelerators, and storage resources to be distributed across a rack-scale architecture and to be connected with low-latency PCIe-based switching. 

Although composable architecture does have potential, standardization has been slow, and adoption has been even slower. Meanwhile, software-based virtualization of storage, combined with software-based (but hardware-accelerated) compute and networking virtualization solutions, offers much of the flexibility of hardware-based composable architectures today with lower cost and consistently increasing performance.

Next year, attempts to build a true hardware-based rack-scale computing model will no doubt continue, and the space will continue to evolve quickly. However, most organizations that must transform within 2020 will be best served by a combination of modern HCI architectures (including disaggregated HCI) and software-based virtualization and containerization.

Ericsson strengthens its agreement for 5G research and development with NIB

Ericsson is announcing that it has signed an agreement for credit facility with the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) for USD 150 million, maturing in 2025. Of these new funds, 98 million will replace credit with NIB that was set to mature in 2021.

In addition to strengthening Ericsson’s balance sheet and financial flexibility, the loan has been granted for the purpose of financing Ericsson to support investments in research and development (R&D) in relation to the development of 5G technology during the years 2020-2022.

Key for success in the telecom industry is the delivery of future-proof, high-quality networks and solutions. To build on its technology leadership, Ericsson invested SEK 38 billion in R&D in 2018. This has enabled the company to be the leading contributor in the development of open telecom standards, with some 49,000 patents.

"Our increased investments to secure technology leadership in 5G, IoT and digital services have enabled us to reach nearly 80 commercial 5G agreements and contracts with unique operators, 24 of which are live networks - more than any other company,” said Erik Ekudden, Ericsson chief technology officer. “In the coming years, we will see 5G networks going live around the world, with major deployments from 2020 and we expect the global number of 5G subscriptions to top 2.6 billion in 2025. The technologies that we are investing in are fundamentally changing the way we innovate, collaborate, live and do business.”

Ericsson and Telstra achieve container-based commercial Evolved Packet Core milestone

Ericsson and Australian communications service provider Telstra have deployed the industry’s first live cloud-native container-based Evolved Packet Core for 4G and 5G services. The achievement is a significant milestone in network orchestration and automation.

The cloud-native container-based Evolved Packet Core has been deployed in Telstra’s production Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi), provided by Ericsson. It is fully integrated into Telstra’s mobile core network and is carrying live 4G and 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) traffic.

Telstra’s cloud-native Evolved Packet Core includes Ericsson Packet Core Controller and Ericsson Packet Core Gateway products. They support 4G and 5G Non-standalone (NSA) control and user plane functions in both a centralized configuration and edge-breakout configurations.

As part of this deployment, Ericsson’s Packet Core Controller is deployed as a cloud-native container-based Mobility Management Entity (MME) in an existing MME pool.

Both the Ericsson Packet Core Controller and Packet Core gateway are designed from the ground up to be fully cloud-native container-based solutions. They run on Ericsson’s Cloud Container Distribution (CCD) that is part of Ericsson’s NFVI solution or on other Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) aligned distributions.

Ericsson CCD provides container management and orchestration for the latest Ericsson cloud native applications. CCD can be run on bare metal or within a Virtual Machine in an OpenStack deployment.

Ericsson and Telstra have a long history of partnering in industry innovation. In May 2019 Telstra launched 5G commercial services using Ericsson solutions.  

This achievement is a key step in Telstra’s goal to build a web-scale core network and deliver the full power of 5G to consumers and enterprise customers. The containerization of core network functions will move communication service providers such as Telstra towards greater orchestration and automation of their networks. This in turn will help them to create and deliver new services such as enhanced mobile broadband, network slicing, mobile edge computing, mission critical vertical industry support and advanced enterprise services.

Containerized technologies are also designed to improve network resilience and software upgrade techniques to increase overall network availability for Telstra’s customers and services.

“Telstra and Ericsson are leading the mobile industry with this first container-based cloud-native Evolved Packet Core in Telstra’s production environment and carrying live traffic. This is an important step towards fundamentally changing the way both companies deploy and operate mobile core networks,” said Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand. “Core networks will become much more flexible and agile, allowing operators such as Telstra to quickly create and deploy compelling new services for their customers. This in turn helps operators build new revenues.”

“Through the T22 initiative, Telstra’s business is being transformed to improve service delivery and provide customers with enhanced experiences. To achieve this transformation, Telstra’s network needs to become more flexible and efficient, and cloud-native container-based applications such as Ericsson’s containerized Evolved Packet Core are a key element of this,” said Shailin Sehgal, product enablement technology executive, Telstra. “This is key to cost effectively scaling and automating our network and speeding up the delivery of innovative new services that are essential in a 5G world. We are pleased to be working with Ericsson to deliver innovation into our network that will assist Telstra maintain its industry leadership.”

Ericsson and MediaTek embark upon 5G voice landmark, using a 3.5 GHz TDD band

Conducted at the Ericsson Lab in Kista in early December, the interoperability test involved the use of an end-to-end solution from Ericsson and Dimensity 1000 commercial chipset from MediaTek deployed on a 3.5GHz TDD band. 

The first commercial 5G smartphones on the market use dual-mode connectivity to make voice calls over 4G but uses 5G for data boost. The next step in the network evolution is to tap 5G to accommodate data traffic while using 4G for voice calls with EPS Fallback. The final step, however, will involve avoiding dependence on 4G altogether, with the exclusive use of 5G (NR standalone) for both voice and data services.

Ericsson enables every step of this network evolution through its 5G portfolio, which includes 5G radio access, IMS, and 5G Core with the dual-mode 5G cloud core capability.

With Standalone New Radio (SA NR), a 5G-enabled device does not need to rely on 4G technology to make 5G voice (VoNR) calls. SA NR networks will enable a range of new services and simplify network architecture.

With the arrival of standalone NR access, voice and other communication services will need to be provided, requiring the 5G network to support native voice calling services for 5G smartphones. Using VoNR on SA architecture, service providers will be able to offer voice services on 5G-voice-capable devices as well as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services to consumers and business users.

Commercial 5G networks are going live around the world - and Ericsson technology is leading the way. First movers can reshape the market and increase market share and revenue streams. Combining improved capacity with increased cost-efficiency 5G represents an opportunity for telecom operators to improve their consumer business. 5G also allows operators to explore new use cases and business models and capture new revenue streams through addressing industry digitalization. 

“Although 5G is closely associated with superior data-transfer capabilities, voice services remain essential for mobile users. So 5G phones are expected to provide all the capabilities of 4G phones in addition to new 5G features and services,” said Hannes Ekström, head of product line 5G RAN, Ericsson. “Ensuring continued voice services on 5G devices must therefore be addressed properly.

“With multivendor interoperability, we can help our customers provide voice support for 5G SA. This shows our readiness with a complete 5G network solution tested with 5G chipsets, paving the way for native voice services on commercial 5G devices.”

Ericsson has collaborated with MediaTek on performing interoperability tests spanning SA NR, 5G Core and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to ensure that voice support is enabled as service providers evolve their 4G networks to 5G. The two partners have also successfully tested Evolved Packet System (EPS) Fallback for situations where SA is not available.

“As a 5G leader, MediaTek is committed to bringing unrivaled 5G experiences to consumers around the world,” said JS Pan, General Manager of Wireless System Design and Partnership, MediaTek. “This technology milestone will let device makers support native voice calling services on 5G networks, providing users with a seamless connectivity experience as SA 5G networks are rolled out in the coming year.”

A10 Networks Orion 5G security lineup delivers business transformation for service providers

A10 Networks announced its Orion 5G Security Suite that enables mobile carriers and service providers to be ready for the business transformation 5G and NFV brings. The suite allows customers to meet the requirements needed today and helps them future proof their networks for tomorrow by delivering security, scalability, agility and analytics, while integrating with a partner ecosystem. A10 brings unique expertise from working with many of the production 5G networks that are now operational around the world.

A10 Networks has been at the forefront of initial 5G rollouts with tier-one carriers worldwide and is working with many others to plan for their future 5G initiatives. 

With the announcement of the 5G Orion Security Suite, service providers have a proven comprehensive suite of secure applications services that have been engineered for cloud-native architecture to aid in making their 5G and NFV strategies successful. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite enables advanced security and reliability functions as individual services by modularizing and offering them as a service layer with a set of connected technologies that employ automated intelligence, machine learning and centralized visibility and control.

Partnering with tier-one operators, A10 has honed its solutions to meet the critical 5G requirements for improved security, reliability and performance learned from 5G network rollouts over the last year. A10 provides an interconnected suite – virtual or physical – resulting in lower latency, larger scale, higher reliability and lower TCO—all of which have been required for the emerging 5G use cases customers are enabling.

In the last year to 18 months, first movers have deployed the first wave of 5G networks and demonstrated improved customer satisfaction and increased average revenue per user (ARPU), despite an increase in network demands, including higher data usage and download rates.

The Orion 5G Security Suite addresses existing and emerging mobile network architecture requirements for agility, consolidated services, greater scale, and lower latency communications across the Gi-LAN, virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC), and multi-access edge computing (MEC) environments. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite’s disaggregated, cloud-native security services provide agility while maintaining scale and performance by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. It also goes beyond just protecting the data plane through a GiFW by adding protection for the control plane and signaling plane with full visibility.

The Orion 5G Security Suite represents a major evolution of the company’s 5G strategy outlined in late 2018 by providing a comprehensive solution for mobile operators and other service providers to successfully deploy 5G non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) solutions at hyperscale for 5G devices and new NFVi requirements.

A10 supports existing 4G and 3G network architectures and use cases for the Gi-LAN and EPC, while catering to demanding requirements for 5G architectures, including the cloud-native agility needed for MEC. These solutions can be deployed in infrastructure but are future proofed for 5G deployments. This includes functional consolidation for application visibility and control, subscriber-aware intelligent traffic steering, Gi/SGi firewall with carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), GTP/SCTP firewall, integrated DDoS for frequently attacked services, intelligent traffic steering and more.

5G demands are inherently different than 4G, with smaller packet sizes, more throughput, and higher concurrent session counts. A10 solutions can scale concurrent sessions to multi-billion levels and throughput to multi-terabit levels in a scale-out cluster. 5G deployments can benefit from compact and efficient options, for example, 385 Gbps in compact physical network functions (PNFs), or high-performance 180 Gbps virtual network functions (VNFs) and cloud-native network functions (CNFs). 

Support for Kubernetes and Docker containers are available now. The compact PNF form factors and very high-performance software offerings (including containerized) are especially beneficial in emerging MEC use cases where space and power are at a premium.

With new user-plane and control-plane security requirements coupled with the increased attack surface and scale brought by 5G and IoT device proliferation, more advanced, scalable and automated approaches are needed. To guarantee uptime and ensure control- and user-plane security, components include edge firewall, GTP firewall, Gi/SGi firewall, control- and user-plane policy enforcement, DNS protection, RAN security gateways (SeGW), and more. 

Additionally, A10’s advanced DDoS protection solution includes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities with its Zero-day Attack Protection (ZAP), continuous base lining, and One-DDoS for distributed intelligence. This provides full visibility into all packets versus traditional sample-based-only solutions. Network-wide ML-powered DDoS detection and mitigation for in-house protection can also be offered as a customer scrubbing service.

A10’s solutions can be delivered in a variety of form factors to meet the demands of the emerging NFVi architecture including, VNFs, CNFs, bare metal and PNFs. These solutions are integrated with leading NFVi architectures and interoperate with multiple MANO environments for faster network roll-out and optimized performance and agility. A10 also provides flexible software licensing and consumption with FlexPool subscription-based capacity pooling licensing.

A10 Harmony Controller provides actionable intelligence to manage subscriber services, meet law enforcement agency mandates and compliance, and deliver per-subscriber analytics. Harmony Controller provides visibility, management, orchestration and automation. Coordination of distributed One-DDoS data from all the Orion 5G Security Suite solutions is seamlessly orchestrated from the integrated aGalaxy TPS system.

A10’s products integrate with multiple third-party solutions and vendors, ranging from DevOps tools, such as Ansible, to providers of 5G solutions such as Ericsson, Red Hat, NEC, Tech Mahindra and Lenovo.

A10 Networks extends carrier-class firewall product lineup with a container offering, new 5G network ready features

A10 Networks announced Wednesday that it is extending the capabilities of the Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW), part of the A10 Orion 5G Security Suite, to support the coming cloud-native 5G requirements. The container-based carrier-class firewall delivers up to 180 Gbps throughput, one of the fastest in the industry. 

A10 is also releasing a new version of its Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) 5.1, which includes multiple 5G-ready updates. Thunder CFW running ACOS 5.1 brings functionality, performance and scale of the existing physical and virtual appliances to the container firewall, helping to prepare service provider customers in their transition to cloud-native 5G infrastructures.

The Thunder containerized firewall was recently demonstrated as part of the Linux Foundation’s end-to-end cloud-native 5G network proof of concept at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. This first of its kind proof-of-concept (PoC) was a fully containerized, end-to-end 5G non-stand-alone (NSA) distributed cloud network, which paves the way for commercial deployments in mobile operator networks globally.

The Thunder CFW includes functionality that helps ensure the security, reliability and availability of 5G networks as they transition from physical network functions to be completely cloud native. It can be broadly deployed in mobile networks at the SGi, roaming and radio access network (RAN) interfaces. 

The A10 vThunder virtual network function (VNF) package has been integrated and validated with leading NFV-MANO solutions, including Ericsson Cloud Manager, NEC Netcracker HOM, Red Hat OpenStack, and tested in recent ETSI NFV Plugtests for end-to-end VNF lifecycle operation capabilities.

“The Thunder CFW release is an integral foundational element to our comprehensive A10 Orion 5G Security Suite. With the ACOS 5.1 release, A10 has integrated comprehensive feedback from multiple proven deployments in tier-one mobile operators over the last year. These production networks have required hyperscale, lower latency, automation, and advanced security,” said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president, product management at A10 Networks. “As 5G adoption increasingly requires multi-terabit performance on the Gi-LAN, we continue to provide industry-leading scale in virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and physical network functions (PNFs), including scale-out agile deployments with containerized solutions for virtual mobile edge compute requirements.”

In addition to the release of the high-performance containerized firewall CNF, A10 Networks also released new PNFs with its 7600 series models, delivering up to 385 Gbps throughput in a compact RU physical appliance.

The A10 Orion 5G Security Suite is available now. Thunder CFW with ACOS 5.1 and the new CNF and PNF form factors will be available later this month.

Intel Solutions Marketplace for Partners enhances speed growth, innovation through global collaboration

Intel launched Intel Solutions Marketplace platform to help partners deploy solutions in an increasingly complex, data-centric economy. On the new platform, and all from personal dashboards, Intel partners can grow their businesses through new partner connections and matchmaking, receive and manage leads, monitor business performance, and market solutions to end customers. 

The Intel Solutions Marketplace is an online platform that drives collaboration in a new data-centric landscape, where users can explore offerings and network with Intel partners. For partners who have posting access, the Intel Solutions Marketplace enables network and co-create with industry providers, differentiate offerings and showcase them to enterprise end customers. 

The platform joins Intel Partner University as a key offering of Intel Partner Alliance, the company’s announced channel partner program transformation designed to help partners connect, innovate and grow in a data-centric world.

The Solutions Marketplace facilitates better collaboration between partners, helping them focus on desired outcomes and delivering customization. The platform is equipped with new capabilities that enable partners to connect and collaborate with a global network of other peer partners to jointly deliver innovative data-centric solutions to business end customers. 

Today, solutions typically include hardware, software and services in varying combinations and are increasingly being designed to solve specific business challenges. 

For example, a solution to help a municipality reduce energy consumption using smart devices could be entirely led by the services side of the business, while an artificial intelligence solution to drive predictive maintenance for reduced downtime might be led by a software or hardware vendor. The Solutions Marketplace makes this kind of collaboration easier and more efficient.

Intel Solutions Marketplace encourages partners to collaborate within an expanded ecosystem, allowing Intel partners and business end customers to research and pursue thousands of partner solutions, including Intel IOT Market Ready Solutions, artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, and next-generation computing. It enables a new way for partners to innovate, go to market and grow their businesses.

The Intel Solutions Marketplace is designed to drive collaboration across the ecosystem, making it easy for partners to connect with each other, all within the trusted Intel ecosystem. Intel will roll out enhancements throughout 2020 to help partners manage leads, monitor performance from personal dashboards and continue to grow their businesses.