Networks may be the critical component that makes the world work, but 70% of CEOs believe theirs is inhibiting business growth.
NTT has released its 2022 Global Network Report (via TechRepublic, and it paints a worrying picture about the state of many companies’ networks. A staggering 70% of CEOs believe their network is actually inhibiting their companies’ growth, while only 50% believe their network tech is aligned with business goals.
The adoption of new technologies, such as cloud deployments, AI, edge computing, and more, has led to a struggle to have staff with the necessary skills. In fact, 71% of organizations say they lack the necessary in-house talent to handle their network needs.
These challenges come at a time when the competitive and security factors driving advanced network adoption is higher than ever.
“Levels of investment in the network have surged, with the results of this research showing many organizations are leaning towards key partners and managed service solutions to fulfill their requirements,” said Amit Dhingra, executive vice president at NTT.
Because many executives are looking to network-as-as-service to help deal with these challenges, NTT emphasized the specific factors companies should consider:
“Businesses should consider security, skills competency, ability to scale, private 5G and software-defined networking when selecting a network service provider,” Dhingra said. “In the long term, blockchain, further AI and automation, AR and VR, quantum networking, 6G and photonic computing will affect how networks are delivered.”
NTT’s report is good news for tech workers, as it shows there are plenty of opportunities for advancement in the industry, and such opportunities show no sign of abating.
Cisco was hacked by a ransomware gang in May, with the criminals reportedly stealing 2.75GB of data and trying to extort the company.
According to BleepingComputer, Cisco confirmed the Yanluowang gang compromised the company’s network but said the bad actors only made off with non-sensitive data. The data was from an employee’s Box folder.
“Cisco experienced a security incident on our corporate network in late May 2022, and we immediately took action to contain and eradicate the bad actors,” a Cisco spokesperson told BleepingComputer.
The company said the breach did not impact its business.
“Cisco did not identify any impact to our business as a result of this incident, including Cisco products or services, sensitive customer data or sensitive employee information, intellectual property, or supply chain operations,” the spokesperson continued.
“On August 10 the bad actors published a list of files from this security incident to the dark web. We have also implemented additional measures to safeguard our systems and are sharing technical details to help protect the wider security community.”
The company also found no evidence of encrypted files that could be used in a traditional ransomware scheme, although it appears that was likely a prime goal.
“While we did not observe ransomware deployment in this attack, the TTPs used were consistent with ‘pre-ransomware activity,’ activity commonly observed leading up to the deployment of ransomware in victim environments,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“We are really seeing the impact of this hybrid work model,” says Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. “We are seeing the preparation for hybrid work and the return to the office. Customers are absolutely believing this is going to occur and they’re investing in it. Customers are turning to us to help them create the trusted workplace of the future.”
Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, discusses on CNBC and in their quarterly earnings call how customers absolutely believe that the hybrid work model is in their future:
Customers Are Preparing For Hybrid Work Environment
Over the last couple of quarters, we’ve seen significant investment in next-generation wireless infrastructure to be ready for their employees to come to the office. As you load these wireless networks they are going to need campus refresh underneath them, and we’ve seen exactly that. The Catalyst 9000 platform has had four consecutive quarters of increasing growth sequentially.
We are really seeing the impact of this hybrid work model. We are seeing the preparation for hybrid work and the return to the office. Customers are absolutely believing this is going to occur and they’re investing in it.
Trusted Workplace of the Future
Let me now touch on Infrastructure Platforms. We saw strong demand across a majority of our portfolio, led by our next-generation Enterprise Networking and Service Provider solutions, as companies accelerate the modernization of their infrastructure. This modern infrastructure delivers higher performance and faster access to data while offering the best user experience in an increasingly distributed environment.
Customers are turning to us to help them create the trusted workplace of the future, with Wi-Fi access points, video endpoints, cameras and IoT sensors feeding data into DNA Center and DNA spaces. We’re enabling operations teams to remotely monitor workplace conditions for a safe return to office.
We’re also working to provide visibility beyond corporate networks, which is increasingly critical as our customers accelerate their adoption of SaaS and cloud solutions for hybrid work. At Cisco Live, we launched the industry’s first enterprise-wide full stack observability offering by integrating ThousandEyes cloud intelligence with our Catalyst switching portfolio and AppDynamics. This provides IT with visibility and actionable insights across both external and internal networks to provide a seamless digital experience for users. And with users more distributed than ever, it is vital that they have the most efficient and secure connection to the cloud.
Building the Internet of the Future
Our deep partnerships with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft allow native connectivity from our SD-WAN fabric to each of these cloud offerings. With our technology, customers can reduce deployment times and connect branch offices to cloud workloads in minutes. In our Webscale business, we delivered our sixth consecutive quarter of strong order growth, which increased over 25% in the quarter, and over 50% on a trailing 12-month basis.
Our Webscale customers are starting their 400 gig upgrade cycles and aggressively pursuing long-haul build-outs while our Carrier customers are exploring new architectures to realize the full potential of 5G. We are building the internet for the future by creating breakthrough innovation with our routing, optical and automation technologies to deliver significant economic benefits.
Customers Consuming Cisco Technology In New Ways
Recently, we launched a new routed optical networking solution, integrating our scalable, high-performance routers and Acacia’s pluggable optics, which offers significant cost savings. Last week, we announced our intent to acquire Sedona Systems to extend our cross-work automation platform to build on these capabilities. We also expanded our Silicon One platform, from a routing-focused solution to one which addresses the Webscale switching market, offering 10 networking chips ranging from 3.2 terabits to 25.6 terabits per second, making it the highest performance programmable routing and switching silicon on the market. We know our customers increasingly want to consume Cisco’s technology in new and more flexible ways.
At Cisco Live, we launched our new As a Service portfolio, Cisco Plus, and our first offer, Cisco Plus Hybrid Cloud, combining our data center compute, networking and storage portfolio. Cisco Plus includes our plans to deliver networking as a service, which will unify networking, Security, and observability across Access, WAN and Cloud domains to deliver an unparalleled experience for our customers.
Turning to Security, we had a record quarter, surpassing $875 million in revenue, up 13% as we expanded our reach with customers around the world. Our Security strategy is focused on delivering a simple and secure experience. We have an unrivaled ability to provide end-to-end Security capabilities across users, devices, applications and data, on any network or any cloud.
Powering Business Transformation
Wellbeing is top of mind for so many right now as we face a new way of working. This is why we launched People Insights to help people monitor and manage their wellbeing. These new features, devices and capabilities combined with Cloud Calling and Cloud Contact Center provide our customers with the most comprehensive and inclusive hybrid work platform.
Last week, we announced our intent to acquire Socio Labs. By integrating Slido and Socio Labs into our WebEx platform, we will also be able to provide the most comprehensive internal and external event management solution on the market. In summary, we had a very good quarter. I’m so proud of the continued success of the business transformation our teams are driving.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins: Customers Preparing For Hybrid Work Model
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its own internet speed test app in an effort improve its data on the state of US broadband.
The FCC has made eliminating the digital divide a major priority. For decades, there has been a huge disparity between the speed and quality of internet options available in urban vs rural areas. With the pandemic leading to record numbers of people working and learning from home, the real-world impact of the digital divide is more apparent than ever.
A major step in close the gap is understanding where the gap is, identifying communities and regions with subpar broadband service. The FCC’s new app will help the agency gain a clearer picture of the issues, and what is needed to address them.
“To close the gap between digital haves and have nots, we are working to build a comprehensive, user-friendly dataset on broadband availability. Expanding the base of consumers who use the FCC Speed Test app will enable us to provide improved coverage information to the public and add to the measurement tools we’re developing to show where broadband is truly available throughout the United States,” said Acting Chairwoman Rosenworcel.
More information is available on the FCC website, and the app is available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
“Our competitors just spent a combined $80 billion trying to catch up and match us and they fell short,” says T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert. “We didn’t just leave this auction with the most mid-band spectrum, we left the auction with the best mid-band spectrum. Our two and a half gigahertz spectrum is more than 50 percent better in most use cases and we have more of it than anybody else. It’s going to make us famous for network in the 5G era.”
Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile, says that despite AT&T and Verizon spending $80 billion in the c-band auction trying to catch up and match them, they fell short:
Our Competitors Spent $80 Billion To Catch Up and They Fell Short
What the c-band auction shows is the extraordinary value of what T-Mobile has. Our competitors just spent a combined $80 billion trying to catch up and match us and they fell short. They spent $80 billion dollars and are still falling short. We didn’t just leave this auction with the most mid-band spectrum, we left the auction with the best mid-band spectrum. Our two and a half gigahertz spectrum is more than 50 percent better in most use cases. Yet we have more of it than anybody else. It’s really terrific because we’ve taken it and run ahead by about two years with the best asset base in the industry. It’s going to make us famous for network in the 5G era.
As we sit here today we’re more than a million square miles ahead of AT&T and Verizon on deployment. We have more 5G geographic coverage out there than AT&T and Verizon combined. We’re also adding coverage at a record pace, at a pace no one company in this industry has ever done. We started ramping up this engine two years ago and now it’s running at pace. While our competitors just seized some assets, they didn’t catch up, but they just seized some assets that they’re going to get after, but they’re way behind.
We Will Unlock Massive Cashflow From This Business
Yesterday we announced a business plan where we demonstrated massive cash flow potential from this business with very reasonable assumptions. These are assumptions that don’t require us to catch any unicorns. We just have to go do what we’ve already demonstrated we know how to do and we’ll unlock massive cash flow potential in this business. We have everything we need to deliver that business plan right now.
Last week we announced our Work From Home solution. We just started our rollout of home broadband for business home office workers. That’s across more than 50 million of the US population and it will rapidly expand to nationwide. It’s such an exciting thing. Now, work from home workers no longer have to share the WiFiwith their kids. That’s so important.
They also don’t have to worry about security if they are enterprises, they can get their home office workers a secure connection. Later this month, as we unveiled yesterday, we’ll be announcing our consumer launch plans across a wide swath of this country with rate plans, go to market plans. etc. We’re really excited about what’s ahead in home broadband. From a timing standpoint, we’re way ahead of the other new entrants.
Starlink Is Not A Broadband Competitor
SpaceX Starlink Constellation (and other satellite broadband provider) could be a compliment or a future collaborator. Ultimately, for the core mainstream broadband connection, it’s going to come down to capacity. Those emerging technologies won’t be able to match on capacity but they’ll be really great augments for places that macro networks don’t reach. Capacity will be the game. Nobody has the ability to deliver more capacity to more places than T-Mobile.
That’s just so great. This is a company that used to be a scrappy upstart and now we’re the number two provider but with demonstrably the best asset base in this industry.
T-Mobile CEO: Our Competitors Spent $80 Billion To Catch Up and They Fell Short
AWS has unveiled the AWS Network Firewall in an effort to help customers protect their cloud-based virtual networks.
AWS is currently the top cloud platform, with 31% of the cloud computing market. One of AWS’ biggest strengths is the breadth and depth of services the platform offers.
The company is building on that with its latest announcement, AWS Network Firewall, “a high availability, managed network firewall service” for virtual private clouds (VPC). The new service complements the other firewall capabilities AWS currently provides, such as “Security Groups to protect Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, Network ACLs to protect Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) subnets, AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect web applications running on Amazon CloudFront, Application Load Balancer (ALB) or Amazon API Gateway, and AWS Shield to protect against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.”
The AWS Network Firewall can be setup with just a few clicks, and the company touts its ability to scale as needed, eliminating the need to manage additional infrastructure.
“With AWS Network Firewall, you can implement customized rules to prevent your VPCs from accessing unauthorized domains, to block thousands of known-bad IP addresses, or identify malicious activity using signature-based detection,” writes Channy Yun is a Principal Developer Advocate for AWS. “AWS Network Firewall makes firewall activity visible in real-time via CloudWatch metrics and offers increased visibility of network traffic by sending logs to S3, CloudWatch and Kinesis Firehose. Network Firewall is integrated with AWS Firewall Manager, giving customers who use AWS Organizations a single place to enable and monitor firewall activity across all your VPCs and AWS accounts. Network Firewall is interoperable with your existing security ecosystem, including AWS partners such as CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk. You can also import existing rules from community maintained Suricata rulesets.”
The news is a welcome addition to AWS’ cybersecurity services and will help customers keep their VPCs even safer.
The 5G rollout is actually faster than the 4G rollout if you just look at the number of networks launching in the first year and a half to two years of the launch. Also, just look at the degree to which the new technology is existing in the portfolios of handset manufacturers and how deep they go in terms of the price tiers. The other thing that is really important is that the handset market has actually already made the switch to that technology even before you start to see the deployment.
When we look at it with the eyes of seeing many of these transitions we’re quite pleased with the way the 5G rollout is occurring.
5G Handsets Grew 150% Year-Over-Year
5G handsets grew by 150% year-over-year. What gives us confidence is if you look this year the real question was how would the market react to the COVID pandemic? Obviously, a couple of quarters ago, there was a lot of concern about how different industries would react. What’s happened in the handset industry is it’s probably come back a little stronger than people expected. One of the reasons that we had such a good print this quarter was because the handset market in total was a little stronger than we thought.
We thought it might be down about 15% due to COVID but it ended up being about 5% down. We’ve used that as an assumption moving forward. So we have a lot of confidence actually in our 5G forecast and the handset forecast overall. I think our visibility into the way that the market is performing even in this pandemic environment has increased over the last several quarters.
Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf: 5G Rollout Faster Than 4G
T-Mobile President Neville Ray says that Verizon’s speeds on 5G and LTE are about to hit a massive speed bump.He adds, “You can’t enjoy 5G if you can’t get 5G.” Ouch!
In a snarky blog post, T-Mobile says that new data released today from Ookla proves that T-Mobile customers get a 5G signal more often than anyone else. T-Mobile says that Verizon customers only connected to 5G a paltry 0.6% of the time.
“You can’t enjoy 5G if you can’t get 5G. I can’t believe I have to say this, but apparently, some providers think 5G you can’t find is perfectly OK. T-Mobile has America’s largest 5G network, and Ookla’s report shows T-Mobile customers get the benefits of 5G more often,” said Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “We’re building 5G for All on dedicated airwaves to deliver both coverage and speed … while Verizon and AT&T force 5G and LTE customers to share already-crowded bandwidth.”
The Un-carrier’s 5G network is the largest by far, covering 260 million people in more than 7,500 cities and towns. And thanks to the merger with Sprint, T-Mobile is rolling out the best spectrum for 5G — mid-band 2.5 GHz 5G — across the country. It’s already live today in 210 cities and towns and will be in thousands of cities and towns by the end of the year. Where mid-band is deployed, it can deliver average download speeds around 300 Mbps — that’s 7.5x faster than our LTE today — with peak speeds up to 1 Gbps. Verizon’s “Ultra Wideband” can only deliver fast speeds outdoors on specific street corners near base stations. T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G is the sweet spot, it can give customers fast speeds across broad geographies.
T-Mobile has dedicated spectrum for 5G across low, mid and high bands. And that’s important because 5G devices will use a lot of capacity. Verizon and AT&T are stealing LTE spectrum from their existing customers to broaden their 5G coverage. Using Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), Verizon and AT&T force 5G and LTE customers to share bandwidth, splitting up the capacity so each technology only gets part of it. DSS is an important network feature and should be used in limited scenarios — not to provide an entire nationwide footprint. So, what’s the problem with Verizon’s broad use of DSS? Well, they are already spectrum-constrained and have limited sub-6 GHz spectrum. And now, they’re forced to share that limited resource with their 5G customers too. More traffic, same roads – sounds like a slowdown ahead.
“The physics are simple. When you force more devices to share crowded airwaves, speeds decrease. I predict Verizon’s speeds on 5G and LTE are about to hit a massive speed bump,” added Ray.
“By contrast,” says Ray, T-Mobile is building 5G on free and clear dedicated spectrum in all bands with its “layer cake” multi-band strategy. With all three major bands dedicated to 5G, only T-Mobile has wide open freeways ready to take on massive amounts of 5G traffic. And with more low and mid-band spectrum than anyone else, T-Mobile is building an even wider and faster freeway.”
“Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever,” said Microsoft Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander in a blog announcement. “We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.”
Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure, announces new collaborations with the telecommunications industry that will unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever:
The increasing demand for always-on connectivity, immersive experiences, secure collaboration, and remote human relationships is pushing networks to their limits, while the market is driving down price. The network infrastructure must ensure operators are able to optimize costs and gain efficiencies, while enabling the development of personalized and differentiated services. To address the requirements of rolling out 5G, operators will face strong challenges, including high capital expenditure (CapEx) investments, an increased need for scale, automation, and secure management of the massive volume of data it will generate.
Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever. We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.
In Microsoft, operators get a trusted partner who will empower them to unlock the potential of 5G. Enabling them to offer a range of new services such as ultra-reliable low-latency connectivity, mixed reality communications services, network slicing, and highly scalable IoT applications to transform entire industries and communities.
By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, on their edge, or in the cloud, operators can transition to a more flexible and scalable model, drive down infrastructure cost, use AI and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and create service differentiation. Furthermore, a hybrid and hyper-scale infrastructure will provide operators with the agility they need to rapidly innovate and experiment with new 5G services on a programmable network.
More specifically, we will further support operators as they evolve their infrastructure and operations using technologies such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and service-based architectures. We are bringing to market a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud to support the operator’s goals to future proof their infrastructure with disaggregated, and containerized network architectures. Recognizing that not everything will move to the public cloud, we will meet operators where they are—whether at the enterprise edge, the network edge, or in the cloud.
Our approach is built on the acquisitions of industry leaders in cloud-native network functions—Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch and on the development of Azure Edge Zones. By bringing together hundreds of engineers with deep experience in the telecommunications space, we are ensuring that our product development process is catering to the most relevant networking needs of the operators. We will leverage the strengths of Microsoft to extend and enhance the current capabilities of industry-leading products such as Affirmed’s 5G core and Metaswitch’s UC portfolio. These capabilities, combined with Microsoft’s broad developer ecosystem and deep business to business partnership programs, provide Microsoft with a unique ability to support the operators as they seek to monetize the capabilities of their networks.
Your customer, your service, powered by our technology
As we build out our partnerships with different operators, it is clear to us that there will be different approaches to technology adoption based on business needs. Some operators may choose to adopt the Azure platform and select a varied mix of virtualized or containerized network function providers. We also have operators that have requested complete end-to-end services as components for their offers. As a part of these discussions, many operators have identified points of control that are important to them, for example:
Control over where a slice, network API, or function is presented to the customer.
Definition of where and how traffic enters and exits their network.
Visibility and control over where key functions are executed for a given customer scenario.
Configuration and performance parameters of core network functions.
As we build out Azure for Operators, we recognize the importance of ensuring operators have the control and visibility they require to manage their unique industry requirements. To that end, here is how our assets come together to provide operators with the platform they need.
Communication Service Providers
Interconnect
It starts with the ability to interconnect deeply with the operator’s network around the globe. We have one of the largest networks that connect with operators at more than 170 points of presence and over 20,000 peering connections around the globe, putting direct connectivity within 25 miles of 85 percent of the world’s GDP. More than 200 operators have already chosen to integrate with the Azure network through our ExpressRoute service, enabling enterprises and partners to link their corporate networks privately and securely to Azure services. We also provide additional routes to connect to the service through options as varied as satellite connectivity and TV White Space spectrum.
Edge platform
This reach helps us to supply operators with cloud computing options that meet the customer wherever those capabilities are needed: at the enterprise edge, the network edge, the network core, or in the cloud. The various form factors, optimized to support the location in which they are deployed, are supported by the Azure platform—providing virtual machine and container services with a common management framework, DevOps support, and security control.
Network functions
We believe in an open platform that leverages the strengths of our partners. Our solutions are a combination of virtualized and containerized services as composable functions, developed by us and by our Network Equipment Provider partners, to support operators’ services such as the Radio Access Network, Mobile Packet Core, Voice and Interconnect services, and other network functions.
Technology from Affirmed and Metaswitch Networks will provide services for Mobile Packet Core, Voice, and Interconnect services.
Cloud solutions and Azure IoT for operators
By exposing these services through the Azure platform, we can combine them with other Azure capabilities such as Azure Cognitive Services (used by more than 1 million developers processing more than 10 billion transaction per day), Azure Machine Learning, and Azure IoT, to bring the power of AI and automation to the delivery of network services. These capabilities, in concert with our partnerships with OSS and BSS providers, enables us to help operators streamline and simplify operations, create new services to monetize the network, and gain greater insights into customer behavior.
In IoT our primary focus is simplifying our solutions to accelerate what we can do together from the edge to the cloud. We’ve done so by creating a platform that provides simple and secure provisioning of applications and devices to Azure cloud solutions through Azure IoT Central, which is the fastest and easiest way to build IoT solutions at scale. IoT Central enables customers to provision an IoT app in seconds, customize it in hours, and go to production the same day. IoT Plug and Play dramatically simplifies all aspects of IoT device support and provides devices that “just work” with any solution and is the perfect complement to achieve speed and simplicity through IoT Central. Azure IoT Central also gives the Mobile Operator the opportunity to monetize more of the IoT solution and puts them in a position to be a re-seller of the IoT Central application platform through their own solutions. Learn more about using Azure IoT for operators here.
Cellular connectivity is increasingly important for IoT solutions and represents a vast and generational shift for mobile operators as the share of devices in market shifts towards the enterprise. We will continue our deep partnership with operators to enable fast and efficient app development and deployment, which is critical to success at the edge. This will help support scenarios such as asset tracking across industries, manufacturing and distribution of smart products, and responsive supply chains. It will also help support scenarios where things are geographically dispersed, such as smart city automation, utility monitoring, and precision agriculture.
Where we go next
Our early engagement with partners such as Telstra and Etisalat helped us shape this path. We joined the 5G Open Innovation Lab as the founding public cloud partner to accelerate enterprise startups and launch new innovations to foster new 5G use cases with even greater access to leading-edge networks. The Lab will create long-term, sustainable developer and commercial ecosystems that will accelerate the delivery of exciting new capabilities at the edge, including pervasive IoT intelligence and immersive mixed reality. And this is just the beginning. I invite you to learn more about our solutions and watch the series of videos we have curated for you.
Verizon has announced that it is buying TracFone, the country’s largest prepaid wireless reseller, for $7 billion in cash and stock. Over 13 million TracFone subscribers currently use the Verizon cell network via a reseller deal. The acquisition expands Verizon’s offerings in the low-priced market segment, enabling it to upsell its premium products and services to a new set of customers. Verizon says that the “portfolio of Tracfone brands creates a platform for growth and innovation in Verizon’s support of the value and low-income segments. “
Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg tweeted: “We are excited about the opportunity to bring Tracfone and its brands into the Verizon family where we can put the full support of Verizon behind this business and provide exciting and compelling products into this attractive segment of the market.” Tracfone is the largest reseller of wireless services in the US, serving 21 million subscribers through a network of over 90,000 retail locations nationwide.
“This transaction is aligned with what we do best: providing reliable wireless service alongside a best-in-class customer experience,” said Vestberg. “We are excited about the opportunity to bring Tracfone and its brands into the Verizon family where we can put the full support of Verizon behind this business and provide exciting and compelling products into this attractive segment of the market. We are pursuing this important strategic acquisition from a position of strength given our very strong and prudent financial profile.”
Ronan Dunne, Executive Vice President and Group CEO, Verizon Consumer Group added: “Since its launch, Tracfone has developed strong consumer brands and has established itself as a clear leader in the value mobile segment. This transaction firmly establishes Verizon, through the Tracfone brands, as the provider of choice in the value segment, which complements our clear leadership in the premium segment.”
“We’re looking forward to welcoming all of Tracfone’s customers and each of Tracfone’s nearly 850 valuable employees. We are excited to expand our relationship with Tracfone’s distribution partners, and when Tracfone’s customers become part of our family, they will get the best of both worlds – more choices, better services, and new features thanks to Verizon’s investment–but with the flexibility and control that they have come to value with its prepaid plans. Being connected is now more important than ever, and Tracfone customers will benefit from Verizon’s innovations–both now and in the future,” Dunne added.
Verizon is paying $3.125 billion in cash and $3.125 billion in Verizon common stock. The company will also pay up to an additional $650 million in future cash consideration related to the achievement of certain performance measures.
According to the Wall Street Journal Microsoft is partnering with tech startups as part of its fierce battle to win the cloud war against Amazon, Google, and others. Microsoft just announced today a global strategic alliance with cloud security startup Abnormal Security. The deal is straight forward. The fast-growing startup moves its platform to Azure and Microsoft will offer Abnormal Security to its huge list of enterprise customers. Amazon has been employing this tactic as well per WSJ.
In the latest deal with Abnormal Security, Azure customers can purchase Abnormal Security directly via Microsoft co-sell and through the Azure Marketplace. Microsoft says that all purchases count towards enterprise Azure commitments.
“Microsoft for Startups is committed to helping B2B startups use the Microsoft platform to scale their business quickly and deliver innovative AI-powered solutions to enterprise customers,” said Jeffrey Ma, VP Microsoft for Startups. “Abnormal has hit the ground running, seeing success with Fortune 1000 companies in a short time, and we’re looking forward to joining forces to further accelerate their security solution to our global customers.”
Evan Reiser, Co-founder and CEO at Abnormal Security said, “When considering the right cloud infrastructure, startups need to look at both the technology platform and the business opportunity. As a cybersecurity company, we were very intrigued with Azure’s inherent security, privacy and AI offerings and as a startup, Microsoft’s go-to-market support and access to the largest enterprises is unmatched. We decided that to be a high-growth company selling to the Fortune 1000, it made business sense to partner with Microsoft and move our business to Azure.”
“Abnormal’s unparalleled market traction is a testament to incredible value being delivered to their customers and the ability to protect organizations from these cyberattacks that have cost them over $2b. I couldn’t be any more excited to see the accelerated growth with Microsoft co-selling the solution,” said Saam Motamedi, General Partner at Greylock Partners.
It’s definitely a win-win for Microsoft and startups like Abnormal Security. Microsoft gets a fast growing startup exclusively on its platform and Abnormal Security gets access to Microsoft’s massive connections with enterprise companies.
Intel launched their 10nm Tiger Lake CPU today increasing product performance by 20 percent. “Our 10-nanometer process that our Tiger Lake product will run on today is a step function improvement from the 10-nanometer process we launched just last year,” says Intel CEO Bob Swan. “Its process will deliver 15 to 20 percent more performance in the products that we are launching. At the end of the day, product performance is what matters most to our customers.”
Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, discusses the launch of their 10nm Tiger Lake CPU which provides a significant improvement in product performance:
Product Performance Is What Matters
The PC is a more and more an essential ingredient of our everyday lives. Whether you are studying from home, working from home, and trying to stay connected from home, it’s just more important. The Tiger Lake product that we are launching today, in essence, addresses those activities that we are doing. Whether it’s content creation, inherent productivity, or connectivity, it addresses those key things that are becoming more relevant in terms of how we engage with our PC and how we engage with each other.
At the end of the day, product performance is what matters most to our customers. Under that umbrella, there are multiple things that have evolved over time. Process continues to be very important. Packaging becomes more relevant as we pull different technologies together. Software plays an increasingly important role. The technologies required to build a computer today are much different than they used to be. With Tiger Lake, it’s not just about the CPU or the microprocessor, it’s about the WiFi. Connectivity is so important, upgrading WiFi, and upgrading graphics capabilities, The nature of the PC today and how it’s evolved incorporates more technology. Where process continues to be important, it’s not relatively as important as it once was.
Tiger Lake Will Deliver 20 Percent More Performance
The naming convention over time has lost its relevance. It’s become less of a technical articulation of capabilities and a little bit more of a marketing articulation. Our 10-nanometer process that our Tiger Lake product will run on today is a step function improvement from the 10-nanometer process we launched just last year. Its process will deliver 15 to 20 percent more performance in the products that we are launching. It’s a very exciting time not just because of the Tiger Lake product (the CPU) but how we’ve coupled it with other technologies to address the most top of mind experiences with advanced processing technology that we refer to as SuperFin.
The relative importance of graphics and the role that it plays, not just in gaming but in communications today is so much higher. That’s why with this product launch the enhanced capabilities of our integrated graphics is a real big bump in overall performance. It’s also an increasingly relevant technology and capability in today’s PC. In essence, the use of the PC and what the graphics technology we’ve built into this product does is rising the role that the PC will play as it become more and more an essential ingredient in our everyday lives.
There Will Be Significant Demand For Tiger Lake
Over the last several years we’ve added $20 billion in revenue to the size of the company. From our PC, our internet of things, our communication, and from our cloud businesses, we’ve experienced dramatic growth. It was critical for us to keep pace in ensuring that we have the capacity and the supply to deal with that growth. We’ve made tremendous progress at the end of last year and through the first six months of this year getting that capacity in place.
For both 14-nanometer, which today is the lion’s share of the products we are shipping, but increasingly we are adding capacity. We expect there will be significant demand for the new product that we announced today but also the new products that we have coming in the second half of this year, particularly in the server Xeon chip.
https://youtu.be/PMAi5lXMkXA
Intel CEO Bob Swan: Tiger Lake Will Deliver 20% More Performance
“We have a significant business that is related to corporate headquarter facilities and there are no people in those headquarters right now,” says Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins. “So there is a lot of discussion around what does corporate real estate look like? I personally believe that once we get through the vaccine period that people will want to get back to the offices in general. It’s going to be fine.”
Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco Systems discusses the impact of COVID on their business strategy considering Q4 earnings and how this will impact their future:
There Are No People In Headquarters Right Now
It doesn’t feel much different today than it did 90 days ago. We have a significant business that is related to corporate headquarter facilities and there are no people in those headquarters right now. So there is a lot of discussion around what does corporate real estate look like? I personally believe that once we get through the vaccine period that people will want to get back to the offices in general. It’s going to be fine.
We are going to use this opportunity to actually shift our investments and prepare for that moment. I think that when we get to the other side of this thing that with the strategy and the portfolio we have we are going to be fine.
Why Webex Didn’t Carry The Day For Us
I heard several comments that are questioning why Webex didn’t carry the day for us today. Webex grew double digits so we had good success with it. But in the context of our almost $50 business, it’s a small percentage. It’s a very small number in that context. We had success, it’s still growing and the teams are doing a great job.
There is a whole lot of innovation that is planned over the coming months for that platform. We’re excited about what’s going on. As we’ve talked about, it is secure and enterprise-grade and that’s where it shines.
There Are No People In Headquarters Right Now, Says Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins
“What’s important is that we are building a transformative 5G,” says Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg. “It will have the ultra-wideband that nobody else has with the highest speeds in the world on 5G. Then we are going to have 5G nationwide in the second half. We are also going to have the best 4G network. Our customers are going to feel how transformative our 5G is. It is not an incremental improvement from our 4G, it is transformative.”
Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon, discusses their planned nationwide launch of their “transformative” Verizon 5G in the second half of 2020:
We Are Building A Transformative 5G
I’m really excited because we have so many launches coming in the second half of 2020. We are on-plan or ahead of all the things we have committed to. What’s important is that we are building a transformative 5G. It will have the ultra-wideband that nobody else has with the highest speeds in the world on 5G. Then we are going to have 5G nationwide in the second half. We are also going to have the best 4G network. Our customers are going to get a great opportunity here.
We will also have a high penetration with IoS (Apple) and the Verizon customer base. Of course, it is going to be more important even when Apple comes out with a 5G phone. We have a great network all the way to the ultra-wideband to 5G nationwide on top of having the best 4G network. Our customers are going to feel how transformative our 5G is. It is not an incremental improvement from our 4G, it is transformative.
Everyone Wants To Beat Us But We Will Not Let Them
We are well-positioned in terms of the competitive landscape. We have worked on our network for three years now to put us in the best position for 5G now. We also have worked on our mix and match that are customers have asked for. In this quarter, we had a record uptake on our premium unlimited. Our customers are moving up the ladder to be part of our services.
Ronan Dunne, who runs the Verizon Consumer Group has a really good plan on how we are going to compete. This is nothing new for us. We have been leading this market for a long time and of course, everyone wants to beat us. We will not let them beat us. We will just execute on the plans we have.
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg: We Are Building A Transformative 5G
“You have got to have a subscription business model just like Netflix, just like Adobe and just like Microsoft,” says Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey. Customers subscribe and we stream innovation. We’ve been streaming a lot to our customers. We talked about Home Depot recently. They’re seeing a record demand in the pandemic and we really helped them consolidate their infrastructure.”
Tech Companies Must Have A Subscription Business Model
As a company, we started almost ten years ago in a recession. The first killer workload for hyper-convergence was virtual desktops. People said Windows is dead. We said long live Windows. We went after federal customers and did an amazing job of building a very reliable company. Just taking a step back, we’re in the business of building cloud software. A lot of this comes down to the word software and cloud. We’re really thinking hard about being amorphous, being everywhere, being in the private data centers at the edge, and in the public cloud.
Cloud is hard and you really need to make it simple, seamless, and secure. But most importantly, you have got to have a subscription business model just like Netflix, just like Adobe and just like Microsoft. Customers subscribe and we stream innovation. We’ve been streaming a lot to our customers. We talked about Home Depot recently. They’re seeing a record demand in the pandemic and we really helped them consolidate their infrastructure.
Cloud Is About Consuming Smaller Things
The best way to measure our performance is a cloud subscription currency. We started talking about it as of last quarter and we grew really well with annual contract value. If you think about it cloud is about consuming smaller things. Hardware was about seven-year entitlement and software is still five to seven years. We’re saying let’s go do three-year terms and one-year terms. You’ve got to start small.
The recession is also the best time to go back with bite-size of what the customer really wants to buy. Annual contract value is the way of measuring our growth. It is also going to make this whole transition. I talked about Netflix and others and this whole transition unlocks amazing operational efficiencies for the company as well.
Tech Companies Must Have A Subscription Business Model: Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey
“We’ve had 5G here for over a year and not only has it not unveiled anything that caused us concern but as this pandemic has happened it’s actually shown its importance to the nation even more so than before,” says Peachtree Corners, GA. City Manager Brian Johnson. “The need for greater speed, lower latency, and greater capacity or bandwidth has (been apparent) as we’ve been forced to distance ourselves from each other and needed to communicate.”
Brian Johnson, City Manager of Peachtree Corners, Georgia, says that the coronavirus pandemic illustrates the importance of 5G to the United States in an interview on OAN:
No Indication of Any 5G Health Risk
We are a metro Atlanta municipality and we were one of the first cities in the country to have 5G unveiled here. We launched 5G as part of not just a network for our citizens to use but our city has opened itself up to be a smart city living laboratory for technology in general. As part of the unveiling of our laboratory was the 5G rollout which we’ve had for a little over a year.
When it comes to any indication of there being any negative effects of 5G, as city manager of this municipality, there’s nothing more important to me than the health and welfare of the city’s residents. My staff, the mayor, and the city council are always reading and monitoring the agencies out there in the world whose job it is to study this kind of stuff. Whether it’s the World Health Organization or US Department of Health none of them have indicated that there’s any health risk.
5G Shows Importance To Nation During Pandemic
We’ve had 5G here for over a year and not only has it not unveiled anything that caused us concern but as this pandemic has happened it’s actually shown its importance to the nation even more so than before. The need for greater speed, lower latency, and greater capacity or bandwidth has (been apparent) as we’ve been forced to distance ourselves from each other and needed to communicate.
This is especially true within the healthcare community with 5G where we’re seeing companies continuing to test their cutting-edge technology here in our city. We’re seeing a greater need for 5G as we move forward into this new normal than before.
5G Shows Its Importance To Nation During Pandemic: GA. City Manager
“The fact is as much as 5G is going to be tremendous, and it’s going to bring an amazing architectural shift to our economy and to our markets and economy, it’s still not here,” says Skyworks Solutions CEO Liam Griffin. “It is here in certain areas but the rollout has been somewhat delayed due to the pandemic.”
Liam Griffin, CEO of Skyworks Solutions, discusses on CNBC how thepandemic has temporarily delayed 5G but ultimately it will be a big part of a whole new world.
It’s a Stay At Home World Right Now
It’s a stay at home world right now (due to the pandemic). I talked about the digital traffic jam three or four years ago. At that time we talked about the networks being compressed and taxed and digitally clogged and we’re seeing this today. I mean it’s great that we’re seeing the network interfaces and the data traffic and the ability to do what we’re doing but we’re nowhere near where we’re headed.
We’ve got a long way to go in 5G. We’ve also got incredible Wi-Fi technologies coming. I think this pandemic situation is very difficult. It is a challenge and a big deal. But I think the technologies that we’re working on in our ecosystem with partners like Verizon and infrastructure players and even the Chinese⎯we’re all coming together to make this work. It’s a real indication of how necessary these applications are to the economy.
5G Delayed Due To The Pandemic
The fact is as much as 5G is going to be tremendous, and it’s going to bring an amazing architectural shift to our economy and to our markets and economy, it’s still not here. It is here in certain areas but the rollout has been somewhat delayed due to the pandemic. However, we’re going to see a bigger uptick in the second half.
We’re working with the marquee companies largely in the US, China, and Europe and we’re seeing some great technologies. They’re going to launch, it’s just delayed right now. That’s where we’re going to see the quality, the experience, the bandwidth upside that we’ve been talking about. That will happen.
5G Is a Multi-Year Thematic Move
5G is a multi-year thematic move. The interesting thing is that people today are clamoring to get the technology. The issue that we have and in what manifests in the demand weakness has really come about by a supply shock. It’s the supply chain in Asia and other parts of the world where folks couldn’t go to their factories and work. It creates a delay but we don’t think it’s perishable.
We think this 5G technology is absolutely going to launch. Some of that demand that did not get executed in our Q1 or Q2 will move forward into the back half of 2020 and certainly into 2021. We see this as a pause more than a complete deep dive.
Interesting Applications Are Really Emerging Through 5G
I saw the Verizon CEO talking about a 20 percent upside in data traffic and Vodafone also just announced a 50 percent increase in data traffic. So if you look at how this works, the smartphone⎯that’s your quarterback. They’re doing a lot of the work. But think about the IOT space, machine to machine, autonomous driving, and security. All of these interesting applications are really emerging through 4G, 5G and higher speed Wi-Fi. It’s creating a new experience.
If we look at what we’re doing with the young people today, the Millennials, I got three kids, they’re all face-timing. It’s just a whole new world. In a way, I think there are some real positive thematic changes that we can capitalize on once we get through this challenge with the pandemic.
5G is Delayed, But a Whole New World is Coming, Says Skyworks Solutions CEO Liam Griffin
Touch an ad on Instagram and instantly play the game.
“5G is going to be a real tailwind for growth in mobile,” says Zynga CEO Frank Gibeau. “It’s going to enable much higher performance games. They’re going to be able to bring more people into a gaming experience. You’ll be able to have games that are zero downloads where you can play them right over the air and never have them installed on your phone. If you’re looking at an ad on Instagram you’ll be able to touch that ad and quickly be able to play the game without having to go to the App Store.”
“It’ll also enable new forms of innovation in terms of distribution, the funnel of how you manage players, will be a lot more efficient and strong,” says Gibeau. “As infrastructure around 5G rolls out globally over these next several years it’s going to be a huge boost for us.”
5G To Enable Much Higher Performance Games, Says Zynga CEO
“We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage,” says Equinix CEO Charles Meyers. “The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds.”
Charles Meyers, CEO of Equinix, discusses their huge under the radar role in facilitating the massive digital transformation in progress with companies worldwide. Meyers was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:
There’s A Very Deep Demand Pool For Data Centers
We continue to see a really strong set of underlying secular demand drivers for the business. We’re seeing real strength in the business globally right now. Broadly, we’ve seen the sector respond very well. We think there’s a very deep demand pool for data centers. I do think that Equinix plays a very unique role in the market and our differentiated position is allowing us to even outperform relative to our peers. Public cloud adoption is a major catalyst for our business. As enterprises are adopting public cloud and looking at hybrid and multi-cloud as their architecture of choice we’re seeing really strong demand.
We may not be a household name but I think it’s pretty safe to say we’re probably impacting the lives of millions of consumers on a day to day basis working with (many big-name companies such as Salesforce and Netflix). We play a very important role in terms of interconnecting our customers sometimes to public cloud providers, sometimes to SAAS providers like Salesforce, sometimes to other members of their supply chain, and sometimes to networks. A really big part of our legacy and history has been interconnecting people to networks. The interconnection story is a really central piece of the Equinix story.
Equinix Is The Best Representation Of The Digital Edge
Equinix is in fact the best representation of the digital edge today. That is the point at which people are interconnecting their private infrastructure with public cloud infrastructure, with networks, and with other members of their supply chain. When you hear about edge, oftentimes that edge is in fact within an Equinix facility and being interconnected over private interconnection facilities that are facilitated by Equinix.
Typically, when inside one of our facilities, we’re unlike some wholesalers which might have one or a very small number of customers, we tend to have a larger number of customers in any individual facility. They are distributed across the site typically in private cages or sometimes in shared caged environments or shared rack environments and they have their equipment. They’re all obviously very secured and something that’s available just for them to access. But they’re all across the facility. You typically wouldn’t be able to see who the customer is because they are very sensitive about that from a security standpoint.
Firms Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage
We’re seeing right now continued strength across our business because people are prioritizing digital transformation as a way to gain competitive advantage. The reality is people who are responding well to that are thriving and people that are not are being left behind. So we’re seeing strong demand. I think the trade tensions, etc. probably affects some level of sentiment but we have not seen that impact the demand profile for our business.
What companies (like Walmart) are doing essentially is using a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy. They have private infrastructure that they may house in a significant caged environment at Equinix but they interface it then with the public clouds. They’re using a variety of public clouds to house some of their workloads. So that hybrid multi-cloud environment is really the architecture of choice for enterprise customers of all sorts. Retail is actually an incredibly strong segment for us. That architecture of choice, hybrid and multi-cloud, is a major driver for Equinix’s business.
Business Prioritizing Digital Transformation For Competitive Advantage – Equinix CEO Charles Meyers
“We’re seeing an increased interest in how people take teams, work with their engineers, build towards these automation and software skill sets, and create the engineer of the future,” says Mandy Whaley, Sr. Director, DevNet & Certifications at Cisco. “What we see at Cisco is that the most successful teams and the most successful companies are building teams with this combined skill set of infrastructure skills and software and automation skills.”
“I lead our DevNet and technical community and certifications team for Cisco,” says Whaley. “This includes everything about helping developers use our APIs. We do a lot of work on the paths that you can take to build the skills to learn about Cisco technology, to learn about software skills, to learn about automation, and then prove and test those skills by earning some certifications.”
Mandy Whaley, Sr. Director, DevNet & Certifications at Cisco, says that the engineer of the future combines infrastructure, software, and automation skills:
How To Be An Engineer Of The Future
I come from a software development background. I’m working with a lot of DevOps, network engineering teams, infrastructure engineering teams, and we’re really looking at how all these skill sets have been evolving over time. What we see at Cisco is that the most successful teams and the most successful companies are building teams with this combined skill set of infrastructure skills and software and automation skills. Whether those skill sets are combined in one person or combined within a team of engineers who have specialties, that’s what it really takes to succeed with the scale, the speed, the agility, and the distributed nature of applications that we’re seeing today.
We’ve really seen this come into effect with COVID and the way that companies have had to respond really quickly. Automation came to the forefront as being very important. Companies that had at least a start on those skill sets have been able to respond more quickly. Now we’re seeing an increased interest in how people take teams, work with their engineers, build towards these automation and software skill sets, and create the engineer of the future.
New Job Roles Are Emerging
Part of that has a lot to do with new job roles that are coming out of that. These business drivers of speed and agility and scale are driving things like the need for CI/CD pipeline for more than just your software, even for your networks, for your infrastructure. Out of that are these new job roles emerging, things like a Network Automation Engineer or DevSecOps Engineer, bringing security strongly into your DevOps flow.
That’s part of what we’re learning from the DevNet community and what we’re working with the DevNet community on is how people are building the skills to go after those new job roles. There are a lot of opportunities and a lot of fun stuff to learn.
Cisco’s Mandy Whaley Explains How To Be An Engineer Of The Future
“What we see is the 5G penetration is rapidly gaining momentum,” says Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm. “Just over the last two years, it’s been accelerated by more than a year. We see a very drastic acceleration of the demand for 5G. So far it’s primarily driven by North America where all the operators have the worst 5G as well as Korea where you see also all the operators. Those two markets are really driving the 5G demand right now.”
Borje Ekholm, CEO of Ericsson, discusses the dramatic acceleration in the growth of 5G and how that is positively impacting their business in an interview on Bloomberg:
5G Penetration Is Rapidly Gaining Momentum
What we see is the 5G penetration is rapidly gaining momentum. Just over the last two years, it’s been accelerated by more than a year. We see a very drastic acceleration of the demand for 5G. So far it’s primarily driven by North America where all the operators have the worst 5G as well as Korea where you see also all the operators. Those two markets are really driving the 5G demand right now.
We have upgraded our guidance today for a couple of reasons. One is the increased pace of 5G take up in the world. We’re of course seeing big demand in the early launch markets. But we’re also seeing 5G demand developing in other parts of the world as well. We are talking the Middle East and other parts of Asia. We see a slow pickup in Europe but we expect that to pick up as well. We’ve been quite bullish on the 5G development and see a number of opportunities for us there. Then we have also made an acquisition of Kathrein which adds sales to us. We see a tailwind from the currency as well.
Focused On Continued Investment In Market Share
We cannot see any impact on our order books as of today (due to concern about Huawei). If anything the geopolitical situation has caused more uncertainty. I would be honest to say more uncertainty normally leads to lower investments. That’s more what we’re seeing than actually anything else. We are we’re not seeing any positive news from this.
As part of our strategy we laid out in 2017, an important part was to gain market share and gain footprint. We are already investing in taking contracts and new market share. That’s quite clearly the case. What we try to do is to be disciplined and actually take contracts where we have a clear competitive advantage and clear technological advantage. We’ve seen that we continue to gain contracts. They are margin dilutive in the short term but very positive in the long term. They have impacted the third quarter. It’s a very marginal impact but nevertheless it, of course, impacts us. Going forward, we see no dramatic changes compared to the third quarter but we will continue to take those contracts.
5G Penetration Is Rapidly Gaining Momentum, Says Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm
