Networking – Digital IT News

Arista Etherlink AI Platforms Unveiled

Taylor Graham — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:00:56 +0000

Powered by new AI-optimized Arista EOS features, the Arista Etherlink AI portfolio supports AI cluster sizes ranging from thousands to 100,000s of XPUs with highly efficient one and 2-tier network topologies that deliver superior application performance compared to more complex multi-tier networks while offering advanced monitoring capabilities including flow-level visibility.

“The network is core to successful job completion outcomes in AI clusters,” said Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst for 650 Group. “The Arista Etherlink AI platforms offer customers the ability to have a single 800G end-to-end technology platform across front-end, training, inference, and storage networks. Customers benefit from leveraging the same well-proven Ethernet tooling, security, and expertise they have relied on for decades while easily scaling up for any AI application.”

Arista’s Etherlink AI Platforms

The 7060X6 AI Leaf switch family employs Broadcom Tomahawk 5^® silicon, with a capacity of 51.2 Tbps and support for 64 800G or 128 400G Ethernet ports.

The 7800R4 AI Spine is the 4th generation of Arista’s flagship 7800 modular systems. It implements the latest Broadcom Jericho3-AI processors with an AI-optimized packet pipeline and offers non-blocking throughput with the proven virtual output queuing architecture. The 7800R4-AI supports up to 460 Tbps in a single chassis, which corresponds to 576 800G or 1152 400G Ethernet ports.

The 7700R4 AI Distributed Etherlink Switch (DES) supports the largest AI clusters, offering customers massively parallel distributed scheduling and congestion-free traffic spraying based on the Jericho3-AI architecture. The 7700 represents the first in a new series of ultra-scalable, intelligent distributed systems that can deliver the highest consistent throughput for very large AI clusters.

A single-tier network topology with Etherlink platforms can support over 10,000 XPUs. With a 2-tier network, Etherlink can support more than 100,000 XPUs. Minimizing the number of network tiers is essential for optimizing AI application performance, reducing the number of optical transceivers, lowering cost and improving reliability.

All Etherlink switches support the emerging Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) standards, which are expected to provide additional performance benefits when UEC NICs become available in the near future.

“Broadcom is a firm believer in the versatility, performance, and robustness of Ethernet, which makes it the technology of choice for AI workloads,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. “By leveraging industry-leading Ethernet chips such as Tomahawk 5 and Jericho3-AI, Arista provides the ideal accelerator-agnostic solution for AI clusters of any shape or size, outperforming proprietary technologies and providing flexible options for fixed, modular, and distributed switching platforms.”

Arista EOS Smart AI Suite

The rich features of Arista EOS and CloudVision complement these new networking-for-AI platforms. The innovative software suite for AI-for-networking, security, segmentation, visibility, and telemetry features brings AI-grade robustness and protection to high-value AI clusters and workloads. For example, Arista EOS’s Smart AI suite of innovative enhancements now integrates with SmartNIC providers to deliver advanced RDMA-aware load balancing and QoS. Arista AI Analyzer powered by Arista AVA automates configuration and improves visibility and intelligent performance analysis of AI workloads.

“Arista’s competitive advantage consistently comes down to our rich operating system and broad product portfolio to address AI networks of all sizes,” said Hugh Holbrook, Chief Development Officer, Arista Networks. “Innovative AI-optimized EOS features enable faster deployment, reduce configuration issues and deliver flow-level performance analysis, and improve AI job completion times for any size AI cluster.”

Availability

The 7060X6 is available now. The 7800R4-AI and 7700R4 DES are in customer testing and will be available 2H 2024.

To learn more about the Arista Etherlink AI portfolio, visit the website here.

Unified Observability Experiences Offer Customers Cohesive Experiences

The post Arista Etherlink AI Platforms Unveiled appeared first on Digital IT News.

Unified Observability Experiences Offer Customers Cohesive Experiences

Taylor Graham — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:30:11 +0000

Cisco has introduced its initial innovative integrations with Splunk, a company owned by Cisco. These collaborations merge their top-notch observability technologies to expedite full-stack observability for enterprises, helping customers in providing more efficient and secure digital experiences. Throughout this journey of full-stack observability, organizations can achieve unified visibility across any environment, whether on-premises, hybrid, or multi-cloud, and across any stack. This enables them to utilize potent real-time analytics for faster, more precise detection, investigation, and response.

Building on the recent landmark acquisition, Cisco and Spunk announced new integrations including a unified observability experience for joint customers, and the introduction of Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics and Cisco AppDynamics integration with Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI). Now with Cisco’s unparalleled visibility into the network and any environment, coupled with Splunk’s industry-defining log analytics and cloud native observability capabilities, customers can instrument their entire business and reduce blind spots.

New full-stack observability innovations were also announced, including a new AI Assistant for AppDynamics which delivers meaningful guidance and insights, and empowers users to make informed decisions faster and more accurately than ever before, as well as expanded AppDynamics Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting on Microsoft Azure. In addition, new Advanced AI in Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) was unveiled, which leverages advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to provide IT teams more precise alerting and a more accurate view into IT health.

Through Cisco and Splunk’s new integrations and innovations, customers gain unified visibility across their entire digital footprint, including both owned and unowned networks. The observability experience helps meet customers’ unique IT environment needs by providing support for on-premises, hybrid and multi cloud environments.

“By bringing together Splunk and Cisco observability solutions, customers now have unified visibility across their entire digital footprint so they can detect, investigate and resolve problems faster to create a reliable, resilient experience for their users,” said Tom Casey, SVP and GM, Products & Technology, Splunk. “Having full control over their data helps them make more targeted, effective and smarter investments in their digital systems and services, allowing them to better leverage their entire digital footprint to attract more business and grow the company.”

Key announcements include:

A Foundation for a Unified Observability Journey

New unified experiences across Cisco and Splunk observability products enable better efficiency and accuracy in troubleshooting hybrid environments that span traditional and modern applications, as well as owned and unowned networks. The new single sign-on (SSO) credentials help simplify and streamline shared workflows between Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk, enabling customers to better access the right data. The introduction of context-aware deep linking enables Cisco AppDynamics customers to seamlessly transition to relevant logs in the Splunk Platform as part of their troubleshooting workflow, leading to heightened productivity and faster Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) across solutions.

Support for any environment

Cisco and Splunk are delivering a standardized approach for customers to help ensure reliability across their digital estate, whether traditional applications or modern cloud-native environments. Combining Cisco AppDynamics for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) for three-tier and hybrid applications with the Splunk Observability Cloud for microservices environments, underpinned by Splunk Platform and event correlation capabilities from Splunk ITSI, customers unlock visibility across any environment and any stack. This integration includes:

Splunk Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics: Combines the power of Splunk Platform with Cisco AppDynamics APM to drive faster, in-context troubleshooting across on-prem and hybrid environments. This integration enables both SaaS and on-premises customers to seamlessly analyze relevant logs when troubleshooting application performance issues, for increased accuracy, efficiency and faster MTTR.

Cisco AppDynamics integration with Splunk Enterprise / Splunk Cloud and Splunk ITSI: Reduce alert noise, improve troubleshooting and gain exec-level visibility via integration across Cisco AppDynamics, Splunk Enterprise / Splunk Cloud and Splunk ITSI. Correlate application metrics and events from AppDynamics with other data about systems and services in Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud. Group related alerts to eliminate alert storms and leverage business service monitoring to understand how IT issues impact business KPIs. With updates to the technical add-on (TA) and content pack with support for AppDynamics, Splunk customers will have access to application performance and business transaction metrics and alerts from Cisco AppDynamics to have more actionable alerts, additional application context and end-to-end visibility of IT health.

Cisco AppDynamics on Microsoft Azure: Expansion of cloud-hosted observability offerings now brings Cisco AppDynamics APM services to SaaS-hosted Microsoft Azure, fostering the support of multi-cloud strategies across new regions. The new offering enables organizations to streamline workflows, minimize cloud vendor lock-in and observe what’s most important — while maintaining compliance with industry-specific regulatory requirements.

Meaningful AI-driven insights for more informed decisions

Cisco AI Assistant for Cisco AppDynamics: Integrated into the AppDynamics Help Center, the new AI Assistant uses generative AI technology with selectable personalities that tailor responses to diverse levels of knowledge or skill sets. Users are empowered with meaningful guidance and insights to make informed, intelligent decisions faster and more accurately than ever before.

Advanced AI in Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI): Leverages advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to help teams quickly and easily configure and implement dynamic, adaptive thresholds, manage and optimize configurations, and proactively surface insights into the health of ITSI knowledge objects, such as KPIs, services and entities. The Configuration Assistant in Splunk ITSI provides a centralized console that helps IT administrators maintain accurate alerting by providing insights into outdated threshold models and optimizing those with a guided remediation, helping to reduce false positive alerts.

“Now, with Cisco and Splunk, you get the strength of Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk Observability, powered by Generative AI, offering customers a comprehensive opportunity to achieve Observability for the whole enterprise,” said Stephen Elliot, Group Vice President & Analyst, IDC.

“We are proud to have Cisco as our digital partner in our comprehensive observability framework. This collaboration continues to propel our efforts to improve customer satisfaction and foster long-term loyalty,” said Dan Field, Director, Platform and Network Engineering, United Airlines.

Availability

Single Sign-on and Log Observer Connect for Cisco AppDynamics, part of the preview of the Unified Observability Experience, will be generally available in Q3CY24.
The updated Splunk TA for AppDynamics and Splunk ITSI App for Content Packs (with support for Cisco AppDynamics) will be generally available on June 14, CY24.
Cisco AI Assistant for Cisco AppDynamics will be generally available Q3CY24.
Cisco AppDynamics will be SaaS hosted on Microsoft Azure in Q3CY24.
The Configuration Assistant, which is a part of Advanced AI for Splunk ITSI, is generally available.

To learn more about how we are delivering a unified observability experience between Cisco AppDynamics and Splunk, read the executive blog here.

Citrix and IGEL Announce New Innovations From IGEL DISRUPT 24

The post Unified Observability Experiences Offer Customers Cohesive Experiences appeared first on Digital IT News.

Forward Networks’ Digital Twin Platform Creates $14.2 Million Annual Benefits

Taylor Graham — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 17:00:37 +0000

Networks are becoming increasingly complex, critical, and costly to maintain. Ensuring reliable network service levels and integrity, while also accommodating rapid growth in traffic, connections, endpoint exchanges, threat mitigation, and digital innovation presents major challenges for organizations of all sizes and across all regions and industries. As a result, IT departments need data-driven solutions that provide actionable, prioritized insights and drive ROI.

An IDC Business Value Study has concluded that Forward Networks’ customers reap significant financial and operational benefits from its advanced digital twin technology. Among several critical findings, IDC’s research has determined that the average Forward customer gains $14.2 million in benefits annually, derived from measurable improvements to network stability and reliability ($7.7M), team productivity ($2.9M), and additional operational efficiencies ($3.6M).

IDC found that the average Forward customer gains 95.8 full-time equivalents (FTEs), which translates to $6.7M, from increased productivity made possible by reduced unplanned downtime and faster remediation.

Additional key findings include:

Members of the Incident Response and Troubleshooting team increased their efficiency by 34.2%. This represents a staff time gain of 35.8 FTE valued at $2.5M.
IT team members completed network deployments 71% faster, identified and resolved network-related problems 44% faster, and planned, designed, and tested within network environments 36% faster.
Compliance teams were 10.4% more efficient, translating to a benefit of 4 FTEs.
With a better understanding of their network environment and its components, customers experienced 33% fewer downtime incidents, and if an incident occurred, it was resolved 55% faster.
Productivity loss caused by unplanned downtime per organization was reduced from 216,240 hours to 36,045 hours, saving the average organization 180,195 hours of productivity annually.
Organizations attributed another $1.25M annually in productivity gains after implementing Forward’s technology.

Study participants shared numerous benefits gained by implementing Forward, including efficiency and accuracy of budgeting and licensing efforts, security and risk benefits, and a more stable and reliable network environment associated with improved visibility and MTTR.

To develop this study, IDC spoke with Forward Networks’ customers who leverage its digital twin technology to manage, administer, and track their IT networks. The research focused on network administration, incident response and troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, and associated staff efficiency. IDC also researched Forward’s effect on network stability and business enablement.

Forward Networks is revolutionizing how large networks are secured and managed by providing actionable, accessible, and insightful data that puts people back in control of the network. Forward Enterprise identifies exactly which vulnerabilities are present in the network and their severity. The platform then delivers a prioritized remediation plan. Forward Enterprise’s secure, agentless collection method gathers current device and state information and combines it with Forward’s proprietary mathematical model to create a digital twin of the network.

To learn more about the benefits IDC found or to access the IDC Business Value Study, click here.

Digital Twins Poised To Change the Way Enterprise Networks are Managed

The post Forward Networks’ Digital Twin Platform Creates $14.2 Million Annual Benefits appeared first on Digital IT News.

HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G Launched

Taylor Graham — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 17:00:02 +0000

Hewlett Packard Enterprise launched HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G to assist customers in swiftly and easily deploying and managing private 5G networks. This solution ensures reliable wireless coverage over extensive campus and industrial areas, unlocking new potential use cases for private cellular networks.

With this expansion of its secure edge-to-cloud portfolio, HPE Aruba Networking becomes the only global enterprise infrastructure vendor to provide comprehensive Wi-Fi and private 5G solutions, helping customers in industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, public venues, and education solve complex connectivity challenges across large and remote sites. HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G also helps customers make productivity and innovation gains as a complement to the cost-effective, high-capacity connectivity provided by Wi-Fi, in addition to expanding AI data capture and delivery capabilities for building AI data lakes and activating inference solutions.

“Enterprise and industrial customers are increasingly seeking to deliver wireless coverage in demanding environments, including large outdoor areas, serving fast-moving clients, and providing deterministic access in dedicated spectrum,” said Stuart Strickland, wireless chief technology officer, HPE Aruba Networking. “The complexity of conventional approaches to private cellular networks has held them back. Building on HPE Aruba Networking’s history of wireless innovation and leadership, we have uniquely positioned ourselves to enable new applications for private cellular by integrating Athonet core cellular solutions with our traditional strengths in enterprise networking.”

HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G also enables communications service providers (CSPs) to quickly deploy private 5G networks for their customers. This integrated private 5G solution complements existing Wi-Fi-based managed services and will help telco customers service the growing private cellular market and generate new revenue from their existing enterprise customers.

With the debut of HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G, enterprises can increase reliable, secure, high-performance connectivity with a fully integrated private 5G network that features:

An end-to-end offering that includes a 4G/5G core, HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, SIM/eSIM cards, 4G/5G small cells, and dashboard.
New 4G/5G small cell radios from HPE that provide indoor/outdoor coverage, eliminating the need to integrate and use a separate management tool from a third-party vendor.
Simplified cloud-native management and automation for subscriber management, deployment management, core monitoring and radio monitoring, with future plans for integration with HPE Aruba Networking Central.
Expanded AI data capture and delivery for building AI data lakes and activating inference solutions.
Interoperability with shared spectrum for private enterprise use: Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum in the US, and globally, where regulatory frameworks allow, beginning in 2025.
Simplified configuration with pre-integrated, tested solution including everything needed to deploy an enterprise private 4G/5G network.
Ability to deploy solutions in under 30 minutes with zero touch provisioning and configuration wizards that mask the 3GPP cellular complexity.

This integration follows the 2023 acquisition of private cellular technology provider Athonet, which brings 15 years of leadership in private cellular networks, completing 500 enterprise deployments of private cellular solutions. Athonet is an award-winning technology pioneer with successful customer deployments in various industries, including leading mobile operators, hospitals, airports, transportation ports, utilities, government and public safety organizations.

“HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G is a significant step forward to solve for the complexity, cost, control, and management challenges associated with many private network deployments today,” said Patrick Filkins, Senior Research Manager, IoT and Telecommunications, IDC. “HPE Aruba Networking takes a grounded approach focusing on how to most efficiently integrate a private cellular network within an enterprise’s existing IT framework, streamlining network and device management through the use of familiar tools, as well as dynamically assigning and preserving device policy across 4G/5G, Wi-Fi, and wired LAN networks.”

“‘Many private network solutions are too complex, even for large enterprises with internal network expertise,” said Tom Rebbeck, Partner, Analysys Mason. “We expect customers to embrace solutions that can make private networks easier to deploy and manage.”

“For IronYun’s Vaidio Platform to be able to provide AI inferencing at the edge and drive accurate AI video search results, we needed an infrastructure that provided fast, available and reliable bandwidth without any complexity,” said Paul Sun, IronYun CEO. “We found it with HPE Aruba Networking, which provides us with all the components needed to deliver an end-to-end private 5G network for AI. HPE Aruba Networking’s private 5G network is the technical foundation for all Vaidio functions for real-time video analysis and AI inferencing that deliver AI insights to help improve security outcomes.”

“Private cellular, with its wide area, deterministic coverage, is the ideal fit for Disc Golf Network’s global live competition coverage of the Disc Golf Pro Tour,” said Baker Helton, DGPT Vice President of Business Administration. “The new HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G offering will make it that much easier for companies to do what we’ve done and meet their requirements for pervasive coverage with an integrated offering using CBRS.”

HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G will be on display at HPE Discover, the company’s flagship event, taking place June 17-19 in Las Vegas, which will be co-located with HPE Aruba Networking’s Atmosphere user event.

To learn more, read “5 Reasons to adopt HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G” blog here.

UScellular’s Wireless Operations to be Acquired by T-Mobile

The post HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G Launched appeared first on Digital IT News.

AT&T and Cisco Simplify 5G FWA Deployment for Businesses

Taylor Graham — Thu, 30 May 2024 19:00:22 +0000

Cisco and AT&T have unveiled a sophisticated digital purchasing platform designed to streamline and expedite the process for businesses to leverage 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). This initiative enhances operational efficiency and provides seamless access to advanced 5G FWA capabilities, empowering businesses to rapidly integrate cutting-edge wireless technology into their infrastructure.

For businesses looking to quickly extend connectivity across diverse campus and branch office environments, Cisco’s newest line of cellular gateways, the Meraki MG52 and MG52E, are the first true-5G, Standalone (SA) capable, discreet FWA devices to offer cloud-managed eSIM technology powered by Cisco IoT Control Center. Available this summer, the new devices are paired exclusively with an integrated wireless WAN service experience and zero-touch, instant-on provisioning from AT&T, customers can simply plug the device into power and provision AT&T’s 5G connectivity through the Cisco Meraki dashboard.

The new Cisco cloud-managed FWA devices can scale robust, always-on, highly secure 5G connected experiences nationwide* making it simpler for businesses to take advantage of:

Increased operational efficiency with scalable and flexible management
Minimized downtime and disruptions with seamless, resilient network performance
Greater return on investment with long-lasting, durably designed FWA devices
Flexibility to deploy in difficult-to-reach locations
Ability to deploy branch sites within minutes with instant-on, built-in AT&T 5G connectivity

With a complimentary 30-day introductory period, businesses can reduce deployment times for branch connectivity through self-service purchasing of AT&T data plans directly from the Cisco Meraki dashboard. Instant-on data from AT&T will also allow for immediate provisioning of full-stack Cisco networks to accelerate “day zero” operations.

“Together with Cisco, we are making it faster and easier than ever for companies to reimagine their networks and conduct business with next-level connectivity,” said Mike Troiano, Senior Vice President, Product and Pricing, AT&T Business. “This offer is yet another way we are demonstrating our commitment to simplifying business challenges and enhancing the end user experience.”

“As businesses continue to digitize their operations and connect more people, places, and things to the network, digital resiliency will continue to rise in importance,” said Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking. “AT&T and Cisco share a vision to help businesses simplify operations so they can spend less time worrying about connectivity and security and focus on delivering unified experiences their customers can rely on.”

AT&T FWA is available nationwide. Instant-on, zero-touch provisioning is limited to USA and select countries. To learn more about Cisco 5G FWA, visit the website here.

Cisco Hypershield Reimagines Data Centers and Cloud Security

The post AT&T and Cisco Simplify 5G FWA Deployment for Businesses appeared first on Digital IT News.

UScellular’s Wireless Operations to be Acquired by T-Mobile

Taylor Graham — Tue, 28 May 2024 17:30:11 +0000

T-Mobile and UScellular announced that T-Mobile will acquire most of UScellular’s wireless operations, including its wireless customers, stores, and specific spectrum assets.

Upon closing, T-Mobile’s leading 5G network will expand to provide millions of UScellular’s wireless customers, particularly those in underserved rural areas, a superior connectivity experience, moving from a roaming experience outside of the UScellular coverage area to full nationwide access on the country’s largest and fastest 5G network. Additionally, UScellular customers will have the ability to fully participate in the Un-carrier’s industry-leading value-packed plans filled with benefits and perks, and best-in-class customer support with the opportunity to save UScellular customers hundreds of millions of dollars. T-Mobile customers will also get access to UScellular’s network in areas that previously had limited coverage and the benefit of enhanced performance throughout UScellular’s footprint from the addition of the acquired UScellular spectrum to T-Mobile’s network. And wireless consumers across the country will benefit from the enhanced choice and competition that this proposed transaction will create.

“With this deal T-Mobile can extend the superior Un-carrier value and experiences that we’re famous for to millions of UScellular customers and deliver them lower-priced, value-packed plans and better connectivity on our best-in-class nationwide 5G network,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “As customers from both companies will get more coverage and more capacity from our combined footprint, our competitors will be forced to keep up – and even more consumers will benefit. The Un-carrier is all about shaking up wireless for the good of consumers and this deal is another way for us to continue doing even more of that.”

“T-Mobile’s purchase and integration of UScellular’s wireless operations will provide best-in-class connectivity to rural Americans through enhanced nationwide coverage and service offerings at more compelling price points,” said Laurent Therivel, CEO of UScellular. “The transaction provides our customers access to better coverage and speeds, as well as unlimited texting in more than 215 countries, content offers, device upgrades and other T-Mobile benefits.”

Best-in-Class Network Experience

The combination of both companies’ spectrum and assets will provide UScellular customers a superior connected experience on T-Mobile’s industry-leading nationwide 5G network that offers best-in-class performance, coverage, and speed. Customers of both companies, particularly those in underserved rural areas, will receive access to faster and more reliable 5G service they would not otherwise have.

Value-Packed Plans

UScellular customers will have the option to stay on their current plans or move to an unlimited T-Mobile plan of their choosing with no switching costs, which include beloved Un-carrier benefits such as streaming and free international data roaming. If UScellular customers choose to switch to T-Mobile, they could save hundreds of millions of dollars combined annually. Some will also have access to plans with increased savings previously not available to them, including T-Mobile’s 5G Unlimited 55+ plans. All customers will be able to take advantage of T-Mobile’s award-winning customer service team, and have better, more accessible in-person and digital retail support.

More Choice and Increased Competition

This transaction will create a much-needed choice for wireless in areas with expensive and limited plans from AT&T and Verizon, and for those that have been limited to one or no options for home broadband connectivity. By tapping into the additional capacity and coverage created through the combined spectrum and wireless assets, T-Mobile will spur competition and expand its fast-growing home broadband offering and fixed wireless products to communities without competitive broadband options, further bridging the digital divide for hundreds of thousands of customers in UScellular’s footprint.

Proven Un-carrier Playbook

T-Mobile has a proven industry-leading track record of bringing companies together in the name of enhanced connectivity, choice, and value for consumers. The integrations of MetroPCS in 2013 and Sprint in 2020 have been noted as two of the most successful merger combinations in wireless history that resulted in competition-enhancing shifts benefiting millions of consumers. Leveraging its tried-and-true playbook for successful integrations, T-Mobile will continue to deliver exceptional value and experiences to more people across the country, while forcing others to follow suit, for the good of customers.

Transaction Details and Financial Profile

T-Mobile will pay approximately $4.4 billion for the assets being acquired from UScellular in the transaction in a combination of cash and up to $2.0 billion of debt to be assumed by T-Mobile through an exchange offer to be made to certain UScellular debtholders prior to closing. To the extent any debtholders do not participate in the exchange, their bonds will continue as obligations of UScellular and the cash portion of the purchase price will be correspondingly increased. Following the closing of the transaction, UScellular will retain ownership of its other spectrum as well as its towers, with T-Mobile entering into a long-term arrangement to lease space on at least 2,100 additional towers being retained. T-Mobile does not expect the transaction to impact the company’s 2024 guidance or 2024 authorized shareholder return program. T-Mobile expects this transaction will yield approximately $1.0 billion in effective total opex and capex annual run rate cost synergies upon integration, with total cost to achieve the integration currently estimated at between $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion. The company plans to reinvest a portion of synergies toward enhancing consumer choice, quality and competition in the wireless industry.

The transaction, which is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and receipt of certain regulatory approvals, is expected to close in mid-2025.

To learn more about T-Mobile’s integration of UScellular’s wireless operations, visit the website here.

T-Mobile SASE Solution with Industry-First Capabilities Unveiled

The post UScellular’s Wireless Operations to be Acquired by T-Mobile appeared first on Digital IT News.

ACSI Data Shows Samsung Ties Apple Atop Cell Phone Market

Taylor Graham — Tue, 14 May 2024 17:00:18 +0000

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Wireless Phone Service and Cell Phone Study 2023-2024, overall customer satisfaction with wireless service experiences a 3% increase, reaching a score of 76 out of 100.

Mobile network operators (MNOs) and full-service mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) improve 3% to 76 each, while value MVNOs increase their lead over the other wireless categories after rising 4% to an ACSI score of 80. Customer satisfaction with cell phones jumps 3% to 81.

“As 5G networks expand nationwide and new affordable 5G devices become available, consumers are finding even more reasons to reevaluate their mobile options,” says Forrest Morgeson, Associate Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University and Director of Research Emeritus at the ACSI. “Customers want providers that can deliver on the promise of next-generation connectivity through competitive plans and excellent service — not just empty hype about speculative 5G speeds. Traditional carriers must reassess how they can better meet these needs or risk losing consumers to competitors that can give them more bang for their buck.”

Samsung catches Apple in cell phone manufacturer lead, takes top spot among 5G phones

The arms race continues between Apple (up 1%) and Samsung (up 3%) as both up their game to tie for highest overall satisfaction at 82.
Motorola moves up 3% to meet Google at 77 after the latter dips 1% year over year. The smaller cell phone manufacturers finish last despite improving 1% to an ACSI score of 72.
Industrywide ACSI improvement reflects the increasing popularity of 5G phones, which outpace legacy technology for customer satisfaction by nearly 10 points (82 to 73). Among 5G customers, Samsung pulls ahead of Apple by a score of 83 to 82. Google and Motorola are each at 78.

AT&T maintains stranglehold over MNOs

AT&T stays in first place in the MNO category after surging 4% to an ACSI score of 78. T-Mobile is a close second, up 4% to 77.
Despite making the category’s biggest leap at 6%, U.S. Cellular and Verizon (up 1%) share the bottom at 74. The latter’s position in last place should not be surprising as it has lost subscribers in four of the last five quarters. Verizon hopes to rectify this by adding more customization to its wireless plans.
While MNOs see year-over-year improvements in each customer experience benchmark, ACSI data show they fall behind when it comes to customer perceptions of value and have the lowest level of price tolerance in the industry.

AT&T earns top marks for call quality and network capability

In addition to measuring customer satisfaction for MNOs, the ACSI also measures call quality and network capability.
AT&T leads the way in both, scoring 82 for call quality and 83 for network capability. T-Mobile scores 80 in each category, while Verizon notches 80 for call quality and 79 for network capability. U.S. Cellular finishes last in both categories, scoring 77 for call quality and 76 for network capability.

Consumer Cellular, once again, outperforms value MVNOs and all other carriers

Across the three wireless categories, value MVNO Consumer Cellular is the customer satisfaction leader after gaining 4% to match its previous record-high score of 85. The carrier continues to serve customers well by consistently adding affordable offerings to its burgeoning product lineup.
Mint Mobile (recently acquired by T-Mobile) is next, up 5% to 83, followed by Tracfone (up 5% to 80) and Straight Talk (up 3% to 79). Google Fi sits in last place despite increasing 1% to an ACSI score of 77.
For value MVNOs, all aspects of the customer experience improve, including notable gains in call quality, call reliability, network coverage, and data speed. The enhanced network capabilities now available to value MVNO customers, combined with aggressive pricing, is proving to be a winning combination, particularly against the backdrop of recent inflationary pressures.

Spectrum Mobile leads full-service MVNOs

Spectrum Mobile moves to the top of the full-service MVNO category after soaring 5% to an ACSI score of 79. Xfinity Mobile, which also improves 5%, is next at 78. After sharing the lead in 2023, Cricket Wireless finishes third (up 1% to 77).
Last year’s co-leader Metro by T-Mobile (unchanged) and Boost Mobile (up 4%) are at 76 and 74, respectively.
Customers feel that full-service MVNOs have boosted their overall quality and value. However, unlike for MNOs and value MVNOs, certain aspects of the full-service MVNO customer experience decline, including courtesy and helpfulness of store/service center staff, speed of store/service center transaction, and call center satisfaction.

The Wireless Phone Service and Cell Phone Study 2023-2024 is based on interviews with 12,414 customers, chosen at random and contacted via email between April 2023 and March 2024. Download the ACSI study here.

Mobile Phone Numbers Become the Primary Source of Identity

The post ACSI Data Shows Samsung Ties Apple Atop Cell Phone Market appeared first on Digital IT News.

Exposing the Exploited Uncovers a Host of Exploited Vulnerabilities

Taylor Graham — Thu, 09 May 2024 15:00:37 +0000

During the RSA Conference 2024, Forescout Technologies Inc. presented new findings titled “Exposing the Exploited.” This research delves into a range of vulnerabilities that have been exploited but were not included in the CISA KEV catalog, which is widely relied upon as a primary source of information on actively exploited vulnerabilities. “Exposing the Exploited” illustrates how depending too heavily on outdated information repositories and standard guidelines significantly diminishes the comprehensive understanding of the worldwide threat landscape. The investigation was carried out by Forescout Research – Vedere Labs, a distinguished international team dedicated to identifying vulnerabilities and threats targeting critical infrastructure.

“Vulnerabilities are being found, weaponized, and exploited in the wild faster than ever before, with 97 0-days exploited in 2023 and already 27 this year,” said Elisa Costante, VP of Research, Forescout Research – Vedere Labs. “Current methodologies for cataloging issues such as MITRE’s Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system and NIST’s National Vulnerability Database (NVD) are critical tools but have significant limitations. This research shows that even FIRST’s Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) and CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) should not be used exclusively.”

Forescout researchers found a significant increase in unrecognized exploited vulnerabilities in the wild with no CVE identifiers and CVSS scores. The top findings include:

Vulnerabilities without a CVE are growing. Forescout recently found 90,000 vulnerabilities without a CVE ID and this number is increasing every year. 44% of the vulnerabilities without a CVE ID can be used to gain access to a system and 37% have either high or critical severity.
No database captured everything. 2,087 distinct exploited vulnerabilities were identified across four databases, but no database alone contained all the information. CISA-KEV had 1,055 (50%) of the total. 968 exploited vulnerabilities (47%) are seen in only one database and only 90 (4%) are seen in all four.
Customer networks showed thousands of affected devices. The devices were affected by 28 vulnerabilities in our catalog (VL-KEV) and were not tracked by the CISA KEV list. Most of these devices were uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), computers, printers, infusion pumps, and network equipment.
Most exploited vulnerabilities had either high (44%) or critical (39%) severity. The most common root causes of exploited vulnerabilities were OS command injections, path traversals, improper input validation and out-of-bounds write.
The most common targets were web applications, operating systems and routers. OT and IoT devices were the fifth most common target. The most exploited OT and IoT devices were Network Attached Storage (NAS), IP cameras, building automation devices, and VoIP equipment.

The rapid increase in vulnerabilities being discovered and exploited by malicious actors underscores the need for a new approach to prioritization. While the CISA KEV list is a valuable resource and the most recognized catalog for exploited vulnerabilities, it does have certain limitations. Our analysis reveals that the CISA KEV catalog is not exhaustive — we have observed exploited vulnerabilities in the wild that are absent from this catalog. Additionally, crucial details on how these vulnerabilities are exploited, such as modus operandi, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and associated indicators of compromise (IoCs), are often missing. Therefore, organizations should rely on multiple sources to enhance their preparedness.

To learn more about the uncovering the hosts of exploited vulnerabilities by Forescout research released in “Exposing the Exploited” here.

ManageEngine Launches Security and Risk Posture Management

How Forescout Research Works

Forescout Research employs its Adversary Engagement Environment (AEE) to conduct analysis, leveraging a blend of real and simulated connected devices. This dynamic environment functions as a robust tool, enabling the pinpointing of incidents and the identification of intricate threat actor patterns at a granular level. The overarching objective is to elevate responses to complex critical infrastructure attacks by leveraging the detailed insights and understanding derived from this specialized deception environment. The AEE is maintained by Vedere Labs, a leading global team dedicated to uncovering vulnerabilities in and threats to critical infrastructure. Forescout products directly leverage this research, which is also shared openly with vendors, agencies, and other researchers.

The post Exposing the Exploited Uncovers a Host of Exploited Vulnerabilities appeared first on Digital IT News.

Verinext Named Fortinet EPSP; Engaged Preferred Services Partner

Taylor Graham — Wed, 08 May 2024 13:30:44 +0000

Verinext proudly revealed its selection as a Fortinet Engaged Preferred Services Partner (EPSP). This exclusive recognition within the Fortinet Engage Partner Program is reserved for top-tier partners who achieve high levels of engagement and training in meeting the advanced security requirements of shared clientele.

“The Engage Preferred Services Partner (EPSP) Program with Fortinet is a cornerstone in our strategy to elevate cybersecurity defenses for our clients,” said Mike O’Nan, Director of Networking Architecture, Verinext. “This exclusive collaboration signifies more than a partnership; it represents a shared commitment towards innovation and a proactive approach to evolving cybersecurity threats. Through our EPSP designation, we gain unparalleled access to advanced training, support, and Fortinet’s expertise, enhancing our ability to deliver comprehensive security solutions. This program enables us to protect our clients’ investments more effectively and solidify our role as trusted advisors. We’re thrilled to leverage EPSP to its full potential, ensuring our services remain at the cutting edge of security architecture and technology while continually exceeding our clients’ expectations in safeguarding their digital assets.”

“Verinext is a highly trusted and preferred partner for Fortinet, opening doors to new business prospects and delivering increased credibility with their competitive edge in the market,” said Ken McCray, Vice President of Channel Sales, US, Fortinet. “They have shown exceptional capability in the areas of SD-WAN, LAN-Edge and Operational Technology and we are pleased to name them among this distinguished list of EPSP partners.”

As an Engage Preferred Services Partner, Verinext receives access to specialized training and direct assistance from Fortinet experts to build new skills in providing advanced security support or services for their customers, including those with rapidly evolving and expanding hybrid network infrastructures. Verinext can also collaborate directly with Fortinet Professional Support experts on implementations to leverage Fortinet best practices, resulting in increased expertise and visibility while developing a more robust services portfolio.

A Program Focused on Enabling Opportunities for Partners

Fortinet is committed to helping partners meet new and evolving customer challenges created by work-from-anywhere models, hybrid IT environments, and the evolving threat landscape through Fortinet’s Engage Partner Program and enablement tools for partners. The program is focused on enabling growth opportunities that are unique with Fortinet’s expansive portfolio built around the Fortinet Security Fabric, designed to secure customers’ entire infrastructure from the data center to the cloud.

In addition, Fortinet is committed to helping partners grow productive, predictable, and rewarding relationships to differentiate from competitors. The Fortinet Engage Partner program helps partners acquire the industry knowledge they need to increase business opportunities, deliver digital acceleration for customers with customizable programs, and accelerate partner growth.

Fortinet solutions that support the convergence of networking and security are available as part of the Verinext suite of security and networking solutions. Verinext offers a complete range of security and networking solutions that are designed to solve business challenges through the intelligent application of next-generation technology. To learn more about Fortinet’s EPSP, Engaged Preferred Services Partner, visit the website here.

Cloud PAM Essentials Solution Offered by Partners Verinext and One Identity

The post Verinext Named Fortinet EPSP; Engaged Preferred Services Partner appeared first on Digital IT News.

HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 Raises the Security Bar in Application Delivery

Taylor Graham — Mon, 06 May 2024 17:00:04 +0000

HAProxy Technologies unveiled HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 during the RSA Conference 2024. This significant release marks a new benchmark in application delivery security.

The world’s leading companies and cloud providers trust HAProxy Technologies to protect their applications and APIs. HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 advances its security solution with next-generation WAF and bot management capabilities. This release also extends HAProxy Enterprise’s legendary performance and flexibility to support real-time applications that use the UDP transport protocol that powers much of the modern web. Supported by industry-leading benchmark results, these landmark features offer customers a powerful solution to security, latency, and scale challenges.

“The application delivery market is poised for disruption, and we’re eager to play that role,” said Dujko Radovnikovic, CEO, HAProxy Technologies. “Too often, application teams are forced to compromise between security, performance, and simplicity. With the launch of HAProxy Enterprise 2.9, we’re delivering secure application delivery without compromise. This is the fastest, simplest, and most secure solution on the market.”

Early Adopters Highlight Incredible Value

Customers who participated in an early adopter preview of HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 shared their feedback on the new features, highlighting the value of low-latency security and load balancing at scale.

“The next-generation HAProxy Enterprise WAF protects our public APIs and user portal and makes a valuable improvement to our overall application security posture,” said Andro Galinović, Chief Information Security Officer at Infobip. “Other on-premises solutions didn’t scale well with our global scope and huge API traffic load, but the new HAProxy Enterprise WAF keeps latency and resource use low, while having a very low false positive rate.”

“HAProxy Technologies demonstrated great commitment and support throughout our rigorous vendor selection process, including a successful proof of concept, functional and non-functional performance testing, and optimizing security rules for our unique use case,” said Juraj Ban, Security Architect, Infobip. “The stability and maturity of the product and the support gives us confidence in our ability to scale and secure our services.”

“The new HAProxy Enterprise UDP Module works efficiently and quickly to load balance our RADIUS servers with minimal latency overhead,” said Mikel Cranfill, IT Server Administrator II, Hendrick Health. “Enabling high availability on our authentication servers is a great relief to our network team. Additionally, with HAProxy Fusion Control Plane integrating centralized monitoring with Grafana, we have experienced a substantial increase in observability and easier troubleshooting. HAProxy Enterprise has considerably improved our load balancing infrastructure. Great customer support (with quick response and thorough resolution), easy maintenance, and robust security allow us to focus on serving our customers instead of our load balancers.”

Key Features and Performance of HAProxy Enterprise 2.9

HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 simplifies application delivery, enhances security, and boosts scalability. Key features include a next-generation WAF, bot management, and UDP load balancing for time-sensitive applications.

Web Application Firewall

A web application firewall is crucial for protecting applications from attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and remote file inclusion (RFI) that can cause downtime, data loss, fraud, and more.
The next-generation HAProxy Enterprise WAF powered by the unique Intelligent WAF Engine brings industry-leading efficacy and performance, helping customers protect their business and reputation, simplify security, and reduce the impact on application performance and user experience. The Intelligent WAF Engine is a single low-latency process based on the company’s unique data science, security analytics, and real-world datasets. It identifies security threats using a non-signature-based detection system capable of blocking emerging and zero-day threats without requiring users to create and manage long or complex lists of rules.
HAProxy Enterprise WAF protects application traffic, provides optional OWASP Core Rule Set compatibility, reduces false positives, and minimizes latency. In testing based on open source WAF benchmark data, it scores a balanced accuracy of 98.53% (compared to the industry average which is below 90%) with latency below measurable thresholds for the majority of attack payloads. The OWASP CRS compatibility mode provides an incredibly low false positive rate of 1.78% at paranoia level 2 (compared with 28.36% for the ModSecurity WAF at the same paranoia level).

Bot Management

Organizations with websites and web applications must protect against the effects of malicious bots, which can include DDoS attacks, ad fraud, content scraping, vulnerability scanning, and API abuse.
The HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module brings fast, reliable, and flexible management of automated traffic. It empowers customers to protect their business and reduce the resource cost of serving requests from unwanted bots.
The HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module identifies bot traffic reliably and with low latency. Detection, processing, and enforcement are done locally on each HAProxy Enterprise instance, with no reliance on an external connection. This keeps customers’ data local and secure, enabling compliance with privacy and data protection regulations.
Flexible integration with HAProxy Enterprise’s suite of other powerful security layers (including the next-generation HAProxy Enterprise WAF and Global Rate Limiting) allows customers to tailor their protection and enforcement options based on the context provided by the HAProxy Enterprise Bot Management Module and the other security signals available in HAProxy Enterprise.

UDP Proxying and Load Balancing

UDP is a connectionless protocol used for time-sensitive applications such as DNS lookups, streaming video, playing online games, and transporting log data. Load balancing is critical to providing reliable and performant application delivery.
HAProxy Enterprise provides unified load balancing with support for a broad range of protocols. HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 extends HAProxy Enterprise’s performance and reliability to UDP applications (such as those using DNS, NTP, RADIUS, or Syslog).
The HAProxy Enterprise UDP Module provides best-in-class UDP performance, enabling customers to scale higher, eliminate performance bottlenecks, reduce resource utilization on servers and cloud compute, and decrease overall costs.
In a performance benchmark of Syslog throughput with a log line message size of 1,472 Bytes, a single instance of HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 processed 3.8 million Syslog messages per second (46Gb/s) – 4.6X faster than the nearest enterprise competitor. When sending Syslog messages to log servers with a bandwidth of 40Gb/s, HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 achieved a very high delivery rate of 99.2% – 4X more reliable message delivery than the nearest enterprise competitor. UDP does not perform error correction, so reliable message delivery is critical to providing high quality of service.

An Enterprise Platform with Robust Open Source Foundations

HAProxy Technologies provides the world’s most trusted load balancing solution, leading G2’s Grid Reports with a Satisfaction Score of 97. This is a testament to HAProxy Technologies’ powerful enterprise platform and robust open source foundations.

The release of HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 reinforces HAProxy Technologies’ position as the industry leader in application delivery and security. It significantly advances the company’s flagship enterprise product with even better performance, flexibility, and security. The enterprise suite, which includes HAProxy Fusion for centralized management, monitoring, and automation of the proxy layer, provides a secure application delivery platform for modern enterprises and applications.

Customers continue to benefit from the combination of HAProxy’s open source core and robust peer review with HAProxy Technologies’ authoritative support and high-performance modules focused on the needs of today’s enterprises. HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 incorporates the features and enhancements previously announced in version 2.9 of the community version, which further extends HAProxy’s performance, flexibility, and observability.

HAProxy Technologies is setting the new security standard for application delivery. High-performing teams delivering mission-critical applications and APIs need the most secure, reliable, and efficient application delivery engine available. HAProxy Enterprise’s no-compromise approach to secure application delivery empowers organizations to deliver next-level enterprise scale and innovation.

See HAProxy Technologies and HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 at RSA Conference 2024

HAProxy Technologies is a sponsor at RSA Conference 2024. Attendees can learn more about HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 by joining the session “Don’t let bots get you down: better bot management for stronger enterprise security” presented by Nenad Merdanovic, Principal Solutions Architect and by watching the on-demand session “Beating the Top 3 Challenges Facing the Critical WAF Security Layer” presented by Jakub Suchy, Director, Solutions Engineering.

Upgrade to HAProxy Enterprise 2.9

Existing customers can upgrade to HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 at the website.

Application teams using another load balancer or application delivery controller can request a free trial that includes all features of the HAProxy Enterprise suite with no performance limitations. Our experts will guide users through the trial process and seamless upgrade to the full license at the end of the trial period with no traffic interruptions.

Bugcrowd AI Pen Tests Introduced to Improve Confidence in AI Adoption

The post HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 Raises the Security Bar in Application Delivery appeared first on Digital IT News.

Networking – Digital IT News

Arista Etherlink AI Platforms Unveiled

Arista Networks unveiled the Arista Etherlink AI platforms, engineered to provide optimal network performance for the most demanding AI workloads, such as training and inferencing.

Unified Observability Experiences Offer Customers Cohesive Experiences

Forward Networks’ Digital Twin Platform Creates $14.2 Million Annual Benefits

HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G Launched

AT&T and Cisco Simplify 5G FWA Deployment for Businesses

UScellular’s Wireless Operations to be Acquired by T-Mobile

ACSI Data Shows Samsung Ties Apple Atop Cell Phone Market

Exposing the Exploited Uncovers a Host of Exploited Vulnerabilities

Verinext Named Fortinet EPSP; Engaged Preferred Services Partner

HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 Raises the Security Bar in Application Delivery

HAProxy Technologies unveiled HAProxy Enterprise 2.9 during the RSA Conference 2024. This significant release marks a new benchmark in application delivery security.