Networking and Infrastructure News Roundup: December 18 Edition

Keeping up with today's new technologies and the slew of products and services introduced to support them is a daunting task. Here is a brief list of some networking and infrastructure news of the week to help you navigate the choices.

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IBM and Samsung announced they are enhancing their strategic global partnership that seeks to help businesses develop new 5G, edge, and open hybrid cloud solutions to modernize their operations. They intend to use the power of Samsung’s Galaxy 5G mobile devices with advanced end-to-end enterprise network solutions and IBM’s network management, hybrid cloud, and edge computing offerings – as a platform for innovation with industry solutions that integrate AI and are built on Red Hat’s open architecture. This work builds on recent efforts where the two companies have collaborated on next generation 5G and edge offerings through the IBM Cloud for Telecommunications.

NetApp announced the NetApp StorageGRID SG100, a new service appliance that provides the power of the StorageGRID Admin Node and Gateway Node software. The appliance is designed for businesses that are just getting started with object storage or who are growing their small to midsize environments. The Gateway Node software includes the StorageGRID load balancer, a critical component for operating object storage. Only StorageGRID offers its own load balancer, and customers using this technology gain the benefits of industry-leading performance and QoS features.

Platform9 unveiled what it claims as the industry's only cloud-ready, fully managed bare metal solution: Platform9 Managed Bare Metal. Using it, IT teams can transform their installed physical servers into bare-metal clouds, leveraging the API-driven automation and simplicity of Platform9's SaaS managed experience and bare metal controller. Additionally, with Platform9 Managed Bare Metal, IT teams can efficiently build out private and edge clouds, allowing quick deployment of bare metal clouds, virtualization stacks, and containers with Kubernetes in multiple use cases.

IBM announced a new tape storage milestone bringing together 15 years of work between IBM researchers and FUJIFILM. Specifically, IBM achieved 317 GB/in² (gigabits per square inch) in areal density on a prototype strontium ferrite (SrFe) particulate magnetic tape developed by FUJIFILM. This is approximately 27 times more than the areal density used in current state-of-the-art commercial tape drives. The companies noted that tape still has a role to play in enterprise IT operations. It still offers an economic advantage over disk for long-term storage. And tape is highly effective against ransomware and cyber threats.

Red Hat announced the ability to run and manage Windows Containers through Red Hat OpenShift. With the ability to manage both Linux and Windows-based containerized workloads side-by-side, IT teams can eliminate the need for parallel software stacks in environments across the hybrid cloud.

CommScope announced the launch of the industry’s first 204MHz digital return, enabling cable operators to deploy a high split in their upstream band and deliver new gigabit speeds. The new solution, which leverages a DT4600N transmitter and a DR3600N receiver, enables cable operators to build on an installed base of optical nodes to fully capture the benefits of DOCSIS 3.1.   

CPG announced the appointment of Adam Board to the newly-created position of national safety director. Board joins CPG after five years with JE Dunn Construction, where he managed over $1 billion of data center construction that included ground-up data center builds, as well as operational data center oversight, achieving a zero-incident culture. As a top priority, Board will develop, coordinate, and implement new occupational safety procedures to ensure effective safety operations in the organization.

In brief:

WekaIO (Weka) announced that Weka File System (WekaFS), with its Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) plug-in, has successfully completed interoperability testing with Rancher Labs’ Kubernetes management platform.

Versa Networks announced the dramatic increase globally (100X) of Versa Work-from-Home adoption. Versa Secure SD-WAN for home and Versa SASE for home and anywhere address organizations' needs to maintain business continuity, increase security in perimeter-less environments and extend visibility and analytics from the cloud to users wherever they are.

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