VMware takes on mobile networks with vCloud for NFV

VMware has jumped into the hot NFV market with a platform that lets service providers run their network functions as virtualized applications from different vendors. The company launched VMware vCloud for NFV on Monday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where telecommunications and IT vendors and their carrier customers are all promoting NFV (network functions virtualization) as the future of mobile networks. NFV takes back-end functions involved in managing services and subscribers out of dedicated appliances and turns them into virtualized applications that can run on generic hardware. This makes carriers faster and leaner, allowing them to roll out new services more quickly and be more flexible in how they run their networks. It’s also designed to help support the new demands that come with the Internet of Things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brocade acquires mobile SDN company

Brocade has announced plans to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company whose virtualization software maps mobile workloads to clouds.Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:Why SDN All-Stars are heading to Brocade+Connectem’s LTE virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) software for x86 servers is intended to eliminate the constraints of physical equipment while working with traditional node-based EPC architectures, Brocade says.Combined with Brocade’s other software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized network functions (NFV) offerings – many from the acquisitions of Vyatta, Vistapointe, and the SteelApp virtual ADC product line from Riverbed -- Connectem’s software enables service providers and enterprises to connect mobile and IoT devices, data centers, and public and private clouds, Brocade says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brocade acquires mobile SDN company

Brocade has announced plans to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company whose virtualization software maps mobile workloads to clouds.Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:Why SDN All-Stars are heading to Brocade+Connectem’s LTE virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) software for x86 servers is intended to eliminate the constraints of physical equipment while working with traditional node-based EPC architectures, Brocade says.Combined with Brocade’s other software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized network functions (NFV) offerings – many from the acquisitions of Vyatta, Vistapointe, and the SteelApp virtual ADC product line from Riverbed -- Connectem’s software enables service providers and enterprises to connect mobile and IoT devices, data centers, and public and private clouds, Brocade says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Brocade acquires mobile SDN company

Brocade has announced plans to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company whose virtualization software maps mobile workloads to clouds.Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:Why SDN All-Stars are heading to Brocade+Connectem’s LTE virtual evolved packet core (vEPC) software for x86 servers is intended to eliminate the constraints of physical equipment while working with traditional node-based EPC architectures, Brocade says.Combined with Brocade’s other software-defined networking (SDN) and virtualized network functions (NFV) offerings – many from the acquisitions of Vyatta, Vistapointe, and the SteelApp virtual ADC product line from Riverbed -- Connectem’s software enables service providers and enterprises to connect mobile and IoT devices, data centers, and public and private clouds, Brocade says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung Pay could overtake Apple Pay in mobile payments

Apple may have lost its lead in contactless payments yesterday when Samsung introduced its universally accepted Samsung Pay at Mobile World Congress. This may be somewhat surprising considering just last September Apple convinced the mobile industry that it had revolutionized credit and debit card payments with Apple Pay.The combination of Apple Pay's strong security, brand name, and broad support from top banks and merchants impressed Apple fanboys and critics alike. People who never would have trusted contactless smartphone payments were suddenly interested.Samsung also has strong security, brand awareness, and the gravitas to win the support of top banks like Citi and top credit cards like Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Unlike Apple, it doesn't need the cooperation of merchants because of the Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology Samsung got when it acquired Looppay. MST generates a magnetic field that emulates the swipe of a credit card when the Galaxy S6 is positioned within close proximity of a magstripe card reader at an ordinary credit and debit card payment terminal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM rolls out 3 new iOS apps for enterprises

IBM has unveiled a fresh crop of enterprise apps resulting from the partnership it forged with Apple last year.Announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the three new mobile apps for iOS target the banking, retail and airline industries and join the 10 industry-specific IBM MobileFirst apps that arrived in December.Advisor Alerts, for example, is designed for enterprises in banking and financial services and aims to help financial professionals prioritize client-related tasks while away from the office. Powered by customized analytics, the app includes a personalized dashboard that displays recommended next steps and alerts about portfolio-affecting events; it also provides a platform for communication with colleagues back at the office.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM rolls out 3 new iOS apps for enterprises

IBM has unveiled a fresh crop of enterprise apps resulting from the partnership it forged with Apple last year. Announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the three new mobile apps for iOS target the banking, retail and airline industries and join the 10 industry-specific IBM MobileFirst apps that arrived in December.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 + Advisor Alerts, for example, is designed for enterprises in banking and financial services and aims to help financial professionals prioritize client-related tasks while away from the office. Powered by customized analytics, the app includes a personalized dashboard that displays recommended next steps and alerts about portfolio-affecting events; it also provides a platform for communication with colleagues back at the office.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The myth about how Amazon’s Web service started just won’t die

There’s a rumor that goes around cloud circles about how Amazon.com created what is now the multi-billion dollar infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud computing industry in the early 2000s.Some people wrongly assume that Amazon had spare, excess computing capacity from their ecommerce site that was used as the basis for Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud.It’s something that Benjamin Black has heard a lot. But it’s not true. And he would know: Black is widely credited with co-authoring the initial proposal at Amazon that led to the creation of AWS.“Why will that not die?” Black says about the rumor. “It’s totally false.”+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 10 Tips to not get burned by Microsoft and other cloud SLAs +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Managing VMware vSphere guests with Ansible Tower

There are lots of ways to enable self-service VMs within an organisation - what some might call 'a private cloud'. However, these usually require layers and layers of complex software. What if you could leverage your existing hypervisor and 15 lines of code to do the same? And what if those 15 lines became an even simpler single click?

Ansible Core contains a module for managing virtual machines in VMware vSphere environments called vsphere_guest. Using this one module we can talk to an existing vSphere instance to create new VMs, clone VM templates, and control and delete VMs. Couple up a simple playbook with Ansible Tower and we can do some pretty amazing things with very little effort.

Here's our playbook to create a new virtual machine from a template in vSphere:

shot11

The really important bit that's doing the work is the 15 lines associated with the 'Create VM from template' task. Note the extensive use of variables in this play to give us lots of flexibility. We'll make use of this in Tower in just a moment.

Tower 2.1 introduced 'Surveys', which are a great way to create interactive forms for a given play. The form can Continue reading

Jolla’s Sailfish tablet shows promise thanks to upgraded OS

Finnish company Jolla seems to be making good progress on its first tablet, which runs an improved version of its Sailfish operating system.Since its inception in 2011, Jolla has bet on the Sailfish OS to differentiate itself from the competition on smartphones and now tablets. Android and iOS may dominate the tablet market, but Jolla’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has showed there is an appetite, albeit not very big, for products running other OSes. The company has so far sold about 10,000 tablets after two rounds on Indiegogo, the second of which is still running.Development on the tablet has come a long way since the product was first announced back in November. Back then it wasn’t much more than a mock-up, but at an event on Monday the company showed the tablet running an upgraded version of Sailfish without many glitches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Jolla’s Sailfish tablet shows promise thanks to upgraded OS

Finnish company Jolla seems to be making good progress on its first tablet, which runs an improved version of its Sailfish operating system. Since its inception in 2011, Jolla has bet on the Sailfish OS to differentiate itself from the competition on smartphones and now tablets. Android and iOS may dominate the tablet market, but Jolla’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has showed there is an appetite, albeit not very big, for products running other OSes. The company has so far sold about 10,000 tablets after two rounds on Indiegogo, the second of which is still running.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Europe’s political youth organizations demand strict net neutrality rules

European political youth organizations have demanded that European countries draft strict and clear net neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from discriminating against certain Internet traffic.In order to keep the Internet open, all data on the Internet should be treated equally, 51 youth organizations said in a manifest sent to European ministers on Monday.The ministers, gathered in the Council of the EU, are in the process of discussing a new EU telecom law as proposed by the European Commission and the European Parliament that contains clauses on net neutrality and roaming. The Parliament in April last year voted to enshrine net neutrality in EU law, so that all traffic would be treated equally and without discrimination. However, the Council is trying to get some traffic discrimination back into the draft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why small ISPs support net neutrality

In the wake of the FCC's landmark decision last week to classify broadband internet access as a public utility, it was easy to see the battle over net neutrality as a conflict between Democrats and Republicans, between the companies that provide content over the internet and companies that supply the "pipes" that deliver that content.But according to Dane Jasper, CEO and co-founder of California-based ISP Sonic, that would be far too simplistic an analysis. In reality, Jasper says, the warring principles behind net neutrality cut across those lines in surprising ways. As chief executive of a company competing with the big carriers, Jasper clearly has an agenda. But his viewpoint also makes it clear that the carrier industry is not uniformly opposed to net neutrality and Title II regulation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Pichai on Xiaomi, Cyanogen and the Apple Watch

In a wide-ranging discussion on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai offered his views on lots of issues at the heart of the mobile telecommunications industry.He used the time to confirm Google’s plans to launch a mobile carrier in the U.S. and gave an update on progress of its ambitious Project Loon and Project Titan airborne Internet experiments. Here’s what else he said:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Pichai on Xiaomi, Cyanogen and the Apple Watch

In a wide-ranging discussion on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai offered his views on lots of issues at the heart of the mobile telecommunications industry.He used the time to confirm Google’s plans to launch a mobile carrier in the U.S. and gave an update on progress of its ambitious Project Loon and Project Titan airborne Internet experiments. Here’s what else he said:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Pichai on Xiaomi, Cyanogen and the Apple Watch

In a wide-ranging discussion on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai offered his views on lots of issues at the heart of the mobile telecommunications industry.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +He used the time to confirm Google’s plans to launch a mobile carrier in the U.S. and gave an update on progress of its ambitious Project Loon and Project Titan airborne Internet experiments. Here’s what else he said:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Pichai on Xiaomi, Cyanogen and the Apple Watch

In a wide-ranging discussion on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai offered his views on lots of issues at the heart of the mobile telecommunications industry.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +He used the time to confirm Google’s plans to launch a mobile carrier in the U.S. and gave an update on progress of its ambitious Project Loon and Project Titan airborne Internet experiments. Here’s what else he said:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP will buy Aruba to bolster its wireless networking business

Hewlett-Packard will purchase Aruba Networks to boost its wireless networking business, the companies announced Monday.HP will offer $24.67 per share, giving Aruba a $3 billion value. The deal is worth $2.7 billion taking into account Aruba's debt and cash.MORE: 8 ways to celebrate Raspberry Pi's 3rd birthdayBy buying Aruba, HP will be able to help businesses beef up their wireless networks to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce, the companies said.This is HP's first major acquisition since CEO Meg Whitman announced last year that the company would split into two. One half will focus on enterprise products and the other well sell printers and PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP will buy Aruba to bolster its wireless networking business

Hewlett-Packard will purchase Aruba Networks to boost its wireless networking business, the companies announced Monday.HP will offer $24.67 per share, giving Aruba a $3 billion value. The deal is worth $2.7 billion taking into account Aruba's debt and cash.MORE: 8 ways to celebrate Raspberry Pi's 3rd birthdayBy buying Aruba, HP will be able to help businesses beef up their wireless networks to meet the demands of an increasingly mobile workforce, the companies said.This is HP's first major acquisition since CEO Meg Whitman announced last year that the company would split into two. One half will focus on enterprise products and the other well sell printers and PCs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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