VMWARE
Amazon Web Services, Inc. | July 13, 2022
Amazon Web Services, Inc. an Amazon.com, Inc. company announced the general availability of AWS Cloud WAN, a new managed wide area network service that connects on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, branch offices, and cloud resources to simplify operating a global network. Using a central management dashboard built into AWS Cloud WAN, customers can define their network configuration, view the health of their global network, and automate routine configuration and security tasks. With AWS Cloud WAN, enterprises can access the AWS global network to build a single, unified network for their organization to improve network health, performance, and security.
“Many wide area networks used by enterprises today consist of a patchwork of connections between branch offices and data centers that were optimized for applications that run on premises. As the edge of the cloud continues to be pushed outward, and more customers move their applications to AWS to become more agile, reduce complexity, and save money, they need an easier way to evolve their networks to support a modern, distributed model that allows them to reach their customers and end users globally with high performance. With AWS Cloud WAN, enterprises can simplify their operations and leave the time-consuming task of managing complex webs of networks behind.”
David Brown, vice president of Amazon EC2 at AWS
To get started, customers can build their global networks in the AWS Cloud WAN central management dashboard by first selecting the AWS Regions closest to their on-premises locations and adding their Amazon Virtual Private Clouds. After extending their existing WAN to AWS, customers can add and remove remote locations and data centers with just a few clicks in the dashboard or by using the AWS Cloud WAN application programming interface (API). AWS Cloud WAN is available in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), and Middle East (Bahrain). For more details on AWS Cloud WAN, visit aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-cloud-wan-a-managed-wan-service.
Avalara builds cloud-based tax compliance solutions for businesses of all sizes, across industries globally, addressing needs from indirect tax calculation, returns, remittance, and document management, to business licensing, tax answers, insurance premium tax, property tax compliance, and more. “We expect AWS Cloud WAN to provide us the opportunity to transform our network by interconnecting our global AWS presence, while ensuring segmentation of business functions,” said Brian Capps, senior director of network engineering at Avalara. “We expect it to simplify management, routing, and security—consolidating complex configurations to be deployed as infrastructure as code.”
Cisco is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. “In today’s world, organizations need fast, secure, and scalable connectivity across global cloud and on-premises environments. To meet these demands, it’s imperative to provide innovative networking and security solutions that are flexible and easy to use,” said Chris Stori, senior vice president and general manager at Cisco Networking Experiences. “Cisco continues to invest in cloud networking by integrating the Cisco SD-WAN product portfolios with AWS Cloud WAN to securely connect multi-AWS Region workloads, increase application performance, and reduce deployment times.”
Foundation Medicine is a pioneer in molecular profiling for cancer, working to shape the future of clinical care and research by helping physicians make informed treatment decisions for their patients and empowering researchers to develop new medicines. “AWS Cloud WAN simplifies how Foundation Medicine connects our globally distributed labs and cloud resources,” said Karl Langdon, head of cloud infrastructure at Foundation Medicine. “This streamlined system supports efficient collaboration between departments and sites, which enables us to provide doctors and researchers with the insights they need to improve patient access to precision cancer care.”
Slalom is a global consulting firm focused on technology and business transformation that helps organizations innovate and scale for business agility. “With AWS Cloud WAN, we immediately recognized its network segmentation capability as an accelerator that could greatly reduce the effort and complexity of network provisioning and routing automation. It did not disappoint,” said Charlie Christina, platform engineering principal at Slalom. “The ease of defining the core network, segmentation, and attachment policies via a single policy document greatly simplified global network creation. With AWS Cloud WAN our estimate for a recent network transformation project for a leading genomics company that wanted a fully automated, self-servicing high performance computing (HPC) solution was accurately reduced from months to weeks, and it allowed us to focus time and energy on the network-attached HPC design.”
VMware is a leading innovator in enterprise software and cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. “Delivering critical networking, security, and edge compute services to employee devices located anywhere is a top priority for enterprise IT teams,” said Craig Connors, vice president and general manager of VMware's SASE business. “The integration of VMware SD-WAN, a VMware SASE service, and AWS Cloud WAN, provides a networking architecture to deliver compute across the distributed edge, while providing more secure and high-quality application performance of workloads in AWS environments, regardless of user location. Through this partnership, customers can achieve seamless connectivity from users to clouds.”
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 84 Availability Zones within 26 geographic regions, with announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon.
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SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
Cogent | September 12, 2022
Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire T-Mobile's Wireline Business. Cogent's commitment to serving the Wireline Business customers it is acquiring through this transaction will cement the future for this strong legacy business as T-Mobile continues its strategic focus on providing wireless solutions to consumers and enterprises as the core of its future growth.
For Cogent, acquisition of T-Mobile's Wireline Business is expected to be an ideal strategic fit with its existing business. The Wireline Business offers the legacy Sprint U.S. long-haul network that provides an owned network asset to complement and eventually replace Cogent's current leased network and provides the ability to expand its product set, including the sales of optical wave transport services to new and existing customers. It also has a current customer base who are a fit for Cogent's products and services, and a group of experienced employees with the knowledge and capabilities to execute the company's strategy.
As part of the agreement, in addition to the fiber network and related assets and customers, Cogent will acquire certain liabilities associated with the business. In addition, at the closing of the acquisition, the parties will enter into a separate agreement pursuant to which Cogent will offer IP transit services to T-Mobile for 54 months following the closing date and T-Mobile will pay Cogent $700 million for such services, with $350 million due in equal payments over the first 12 months after closing and $350 million due in equal payments over the remaining 42 months.
Cogent expects to offer customers the ability to migrate from their legacy MPLS VPN solutions to modern Ethernet / VPLS or SD-WAN / DIA solutions for their corporate needs. Cogent also expects to facilitate the migration of netcentric internet access customers from the T-Mobile Wireline Business (legacy Sprint) AS1239 to Cogent's AS174.
A newly formed direct subsidiary of Cogent will consummate the acquisition. Cogent does not plan to issue new debt or equity in order to finance the acquisition, and the transaction is not expected to be dilutive to Cogent's existing stockholders. Cogent plans to maintain its current dividend per share, which is expected to continue to increase over time.
Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to T-Mobile and T-Mobile was represented by Joseph Alexander, Nancy Victory, Marc Samuel and Jason Juall from DLA Piper.
Once registered, participants will receive the dial in number along with a unique PIN. Each individual caller will require their own unique PIN. To ensure timely access, participants should register promptly and dial in approximately 5 minutes before the call starts. A listen only webcast is accessible under "Events" in the "About" section of Cogent's
About Cogent
Cogent is a facilities-based provider of low cost, high speed Internet access and private network services to bandwidth intensive businesses. Cogent's facilities-based, all-optical IP network provides services in over 219 markets across 51 countries.
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VMWARE
Incenter Appraisal Management | September 08, 2022
To give appraisers a new advantage as they compete for jobs, start and build their own businesses, and prepare for a digital future, Incenter Appraisal Management is making its RemoteVal™ remote/desktop appraisal technology available on a self-serve basis.
Appraisers will now be able to register for full access to RemoteVal for both desktop and hybrid assignments at remoteval.net. Once they have signed up, they will be able to create job orders, complete virtual inspections, and set their desired fees.
“This is a perfect time for enterprising appraisers to take control of their destinies by offering these digital services, In today’s competitive environment, mortgage lenders are seeking new ways to improve their responsiveness to borrowers, and many want appraisers who use these time-saving technologies. Those early adopters who can meet lenders’ needs now will be well-positioned when the mortgage market heats up again.”
Mark Walser, President, Incenter Appraisal Management
The new self-managed option enables appraisers to save gas and travel time while still fully controlling virtual appraisal inspections from their desks, with no need for third-party data.
Looking remotely through an onsite contact’s (realtor’s or homeowner’s) smartphone camera, appraisers can:
Scan a property live
Remotely capture geographically-verified, time-stamped photos and HD-quality videos for their workfile
Automatically generate detailed, highly accurate floor plans (often in less than 10 minutes)—including wall thickness
Instantly download photos and measurement data to import into their industry standard software
Applications for these self-serve capabilities include home equity lending, mortgage originations and refinancing, disaster inspections, 1004Ds, and loan modifications/foreclosures for applicable lending scenarios in both GSE and private lending.
Appraisers pay a nominal fixed cost per inspection, which they build into their client fees. More information is available at remoteval.net. Incenter Appraisal Management is also reachable by phone at 866-222-6205.
About Incenter Appraisal Management
Incenter Appraisal Management’s goal is to harness its knowledge, skills, experience and profound sense of integrity to consistently exceed client expectations. The company is a national provider of best-in-class valuations, inspections and data products for lenders throughout the country, and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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