Tuesday Bytes: NFV-ITI, NTT, Huawei Marine, CenturyLink

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the interesting news from the past 24 hours or so:

Four of the world’s biggest vendors have set up the new NFV Interoperability Testing Initiative. Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia said this morning they’ve signed an MoU for the new industry grouping aimed at making virtual network functions in a multivendor environment work the way they should. It’s not the only such initiative out there, but sees itself as complementatry to the others.

NTT Communications announced a multinational enterprise win this week for its ICT services. Collinson Group, which provides loyalty, lifestyle benefits, assistance, and insurance solutions, has picked NTT Communications for an overhaul of its ICT infrastructure spanning 25 locations globally. It will include a hybrid cloud infrastructure, a dedicated private network, and security managed through a ‘single pane of glass’. They started rolling it out last month, and will be continuing throughout 2017.

Ooredoo and Huawei Marine have finished off a submarine cable system. They have formally inaugurated the National Submarine Cable in the Maldives, the archipelago nation off the west coast of India. The new system stretches across 1,200km connecting six islands with up to 3.2Tbps, which will probably be enough for a while for the tiny nation.

And CenturyLink had two bits of news yesterday. The first was the connection of the TerraCom Direct data center in Melbourne, Florida to their network. And the second was a federal contract providing the US Senate with UCaaS for the offices of senators around the country. The deal was awarded by the US Senate Sergeant at Arms, spans three years with four one-year options, covers 450+ locations, and is said to have a worth of $3.8M per year.

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Categories: Cloud Computing · Fiber Networks · NFV · Undersea cables