Spirent Launches NFV Cloud Test Platform

Express Computer | May 24, 2019

Spirent Communications announced the release of Spirent CloudSure, a test solution for assuring NFV performance as specified in ETSI GS NFV-TST 001. Spirent CloudSure is designed to benchmark and validate performance and allow service providers to confidently rollout NFV deployments and reap the benefits of service flexibility and agility, without sacrificing performance. NFV is a complex and difficult set of technologies to navigate, with deployment of network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) and the functionality of virtual network functions (VNFs) providing many challenges. Spirent CloudSure delivers value in the form of test packages, consisting of a set of templates that can be easily configured and customized to match service providers’ unique NFV deployments. Configuration is possible via both a graphical user interface (GUI) and an application programming interface (API) for automation users, with Spirent TestCenter Virtual ports and Spirent CloudStress agents generating realistic, multi-dimensional workloads to assess cloud performance.

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6G requires setting achievable goals and continuous communication with the market and consumers.  Efforts of all participants in the new 6G ecosystem are required, such as expanding of 6G usage scenarios, selecting candidate spectrums, vitalizing open interfaces, e.g., Open RAN, and simple architecture options, etc.


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Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Management

StackPath Introduces Larger Edge Compute Instances

prnewswire | August 16, 2023

StackPath, the industry-leading edge computing platform, today announced new, larger StackPath Edge Compute Virtual Machine and Container instances featuring higher virtual CPU (vCPU) core counts and included RAM. These larger instances give businesses the computing power that data-intensive workloads require, deployed at the edge of the internet for the lowest latency between processing and data sources and destinations. "Enterprises increasingly need to leverage real-time data for a myriad of reasons, from improving end-user experiences to gaining deeper business insights. But real-time data applications require high processing power, and getting cloud computing with that level of power has historically come with the cost of latency, centralization, and excessive bandwidth charges," said Tom Reyes, Chief Product Officer for StackPath. "These new, larger compute instances deliver the best of both worlds, pairing cloud computing power with the speed, scalability, and control that makes edge computing an essential facet of any latency-sensitive, distributed workload's deployment strategy." StackPath provides virtual machines and computing containers on demand, with full orchestration for rapidly provisioning distributed resources. Unlike most hyper-scale cloud computing providers, StackPath deploys its facilities within the metropolitan areas of major markets around the world, placing its instances physically closer to businesses' premises and their end users. This reduces latency by minimizing the distance data has to travel. Private network connections between StackPath locations provide even more speed advantages for workload data commuting between geographic regions. The new virtual machine instances sizes are: 16 vCPUs x 64GiB RAM x 25GiB Root Disk 32 vCPUs x 128GiB RAM x 25GiB Root Disk 48 vCPUs x 256GiB RAM x 25GiB Root Disk The new container instances sizes are: 16 vCPUs x 64GiB RAM x 40GiB Root Disk 32 vCPUs x 128GiB RAM x 40GiB Root Disk 48 vCPUs x 256GiB RAM x 40GiB Root Disk StackPath Edge Compute instances are provisioned on demand through the StackPath Customer Portal or API. Instances are billed by the hour and by the volume of data transferred. Additional options include forming virtual private clouds and leveraging built-in L3-L4 DDoS protection, persistent storage, image capture and deployment, private IP addresses, and more. To learn more or get started, visit http://www.stackpath.com. About StackPath StackPath is a cloud platform built at the internet's edge, providing infrastructure and services physically closer to the source or destination of data than hyperscale cloud service providers. StackPath Edge Compute (including virtual machines and containers), Edge Delivery (including CDN and serverless scripting), and Edge Security (including WAF and L3-L4, L7 DDoS Protection) solutions run in edge locations strategically deployed in high-density markets and united by a secure global network and a single management system. Customers ranging from Fortune 50 enterprises to one-person startups trust StackPath to give their latency-sensitive workloads and real-time applications the speed, security, and efficiency they require.

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Server Virtualization, Virtual Server Infrastructure

Impero Software Adds AI, Machine Learning to Holistic Classroom Tool for Student Safety

globenewswire | June 27, 2023

Impero Software, a leading provider of online student safety, classroom management and secure remote access software, today announced during ISTELive 2023 that it has incorporated AI and machine learning into its newly debuted “Impero Wellbeing” student safety software, dramatically elevating its capabilities of safeguarding learners. When installed on student devices, Impero Wellbeing actively and automatically monitors for harmful keywords – such as those having to do with self-harm, bullying, violence, drugs, weapons, pornography or radicalization. If the software detects a student typing potentially dangerous keywords, it then records the incident by snapping a series of screenshots and flagging them in real-time for teacher and administrator review. The AI component is able to sort through the potentially thousands of flags and intelligently cut through false positives to give teachers immediate visibility to any concerning student behavior. “The launch of machine learning for Impero Wellbeing is taking our goal of ensuring the safety of every learner to the next level,” said Justin Reilly, CEO of Impero Software. “Even the most intricate, nuanced filtering solution can have potentially thousands of false positives. We recently had a great example - perhaps a student is typing to their friend that they’re excited to go to the theater and see the new ‘Suicide Squad’ movie. That’s obviously a very different situation than looking up information on suicide. Our AI-powered solution is able to achieve a dramatic reduction in these false positives that would take up valuable staff time and alert teachers to only the truly dangerous phrases and searches – saving precious time that can make all the difference for a student in crisis.” In addition to this active online monitoring, Impero Wellbeing can be paired with Impero Safeguard, a digital toolbox allowing teachers to record observed, “offline” events. If a student comes in without a jacket during a harsh winter or has visible bruises, teachers can log these concerns into a student profile for further investigation. Impero Wellbeing & Safeguard are unique in that they combine the “offline” and “online” flags into a single holistic view that gives teachers and school staff a full picture of a student’s physical and mental wellbeing. “It’s impossible to overstate how much of a difference having this technology at their back makes for teachers in today’s classrooms,” said Impero’s Product Engagement Manager Channing Anderson, who has previous experience as a teacher and school IT director. “Teachers today are being asked to fight against a mental health crisis while half their students are only visible through a screen. They can’t always see what’s happening, and these software solutions are transformative in catching red flags and taking proactive action well before any real danger presents itself.” Other key features of Impero Wellbeing include: Granular permission levels for school staff to protect confidential student information. A constantly reviewed database of over 7,000 concerning keywords and phrases covering mental health, sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation and more. Integration with Impero Safeguard, enabling the online captures to be included in student-specific chronologies. These chronologies can be securely shared, making it easier than ever to support referrals and aid specialist intervention. Intuitive reporting that paints a picture of individual student behavior, as well as trends across a class, year group and whole school - giving you valuable context to plan appropriate intervention tactics. Full GDPR compliance with a firm commitment to student data privacy and security. Full compatibility with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and ChromeOS. About Impero Software Impero is a global leader in digital solutions for safe and efficient studying and working environments, keeping students on-task and safe, and providing secure and efficient platforms for employees working remote. In 2022, Impero acquired ContentKeeper, considered one of K-12's best web filtering solutions. Today we work directly with technical teams, schools, MATs, and Fortune 500 companies in more than 90 countries.

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Server Hypervisors, Security

ePlus Achieves VMware Cross-Cloud Managed Service Provider Designation

prnewswire | August 23, 2023

ePlus inc. (NASDAQ NGS: PLUS–news)today announced that it has achieved the VMware Cross-Cloud Managed Service provider status. To attain this designation, ePlus passed a thorough independent audit of its VMware Cloud managed services technical expertise and operational excellence. Complementing this recognition and after a comprehensive service offering review, ePlus Cloud Disaster Recovery powered by VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery has also been recognized by VMware as a Validated Service Offering (VSO). VMware Cross-Cloud managed services are a set of prescriptive offers with enhanced partner and customer benefits that enable highly skilled partners to expand their managed services practices. The VMware Cross-Cloud Managed Service Provider designation signifies partners' experience with delivering VMware-validated managed services offerings and the achievement of the VMware Managed Services Specialization (MSS). "We are proud to be a launch partner for VMware Cross-Cloud managed services, as well as having our Cloud Managed Disaster Recovery offering validated by VMware," saidJustin Mescher, vice president of cloud and data center solutions at ePlus. "ePlus has been providing Cloud Hosted Infrastructure and Cloud Disaster Recovery for more than 10 years, and since migrating these services to VMware Cloud on AWS we have seen significantly increased customer interest and adoption. The capability for on-demand recovery with integrated ransomware detection and response, combined with ePlus' design expertise and failover services, are helping our clients increase confidence in their ability to recover in a cost-effective fashion." "ePlus has been at the forefront of delivering VMware-based managed services that help meet customers' most pressing challenges," saidAbhay Kumar, VP for Hyperscalers and Technology Partners, VMware. "With ePlus Cloud Disaster Recovery, ePlus is delivering an on-demand, easy-to-use service with cloud economicsthat enables business resiliency at scale. This will help deliver on the promise of VMware Cross-Cloud managed services." About ePlusinc. ePlus has an unwavering and relentless focus on leveraging technology to create inspired and transformative business outcomes for its customers. Offering a robust portfolio of solutions, as well as a broad range of consultative and managed services across the technology spectrum, ePlus has proudly achieved more than 30 years of success, carrying customers forward through adversity, rapidly changing environments, and other obstacles. ePlus is a trusted advisor, bringing expertise, credentials, talent and a thorough understanding of innovative technologies, spanning security, cloud, data center, networking, collaboration and emerging solutions, to organizations across all industry segments. With complete lifecycle management services and flexible payment solutions, ePlus' more than 1,850associates are focused on cultivating positive customer experiences and are dedicated to their craft, harnessing new knowledge while applying decades of proven experience. ePlus is headquartered inVirginia, with locations inthe United States, UK,Europe, and Asia‐Pacific.

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Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Management

LogicMonitor Expands Observability Intelligence to New Environments

businesswire | August 18, 2023

LogicMonitor, a leading SaaS-based unified observability platform for hybrid IT infrastructure, today announced expanded integrations, insights and workflows to the LM Envision Platform. LogicMonitor is also introducing Dexda, an event management solution that filters through the noise of thousands of daily alerts by using advanced machine learning (ML) techniques, contextual enrichment capabilities and deduplication efforts. Together, these additions allow customers to reach a significantly lower mean time to resolution and lower risks to the business. “Every business is under tremendous pressure to seamlessly deliver exceptional digital performance,” states Christina Kosmowski, CEO, LogicMonitor. “To efficiently do that, our customers look to us to contextualize the overwhelming amount of data within their complex IT environments.“ The core of LogicMonitor’s platform has been built with advanced machine learning, intelligence and automation, combined to abstract complexity and deliver business impact through IT data collaboration. The company has focused its product roadmap in the areas of intelligence, experience and extensibility. Intelligence and Automation Dexda is the next evolution of AI Ops. It is built on top of LogicMonitor’s extensive data set and integrated into its platform, so users can effortlessly move from alerting to automating actions. Key attributes of Dexda include: Adaptive Correlation- Alerts are automatically re-clustered when a more optimal option is detected. ServiceNow Ready- Automatically enriches Dexda alerts with ServiceNow CMDB data to drive additional context for ML correlations. User-defined Correlation- Dexda admins can now fine-tune the ML models to meet their unique needs or build new ML models. In addition to Dexda, LogicMonitor has also delivered: Event-Driven Ansible Integration- This jointly developed solution with Red Hat assists with auto-remediation and auto-troubleshooting. This integration lets customers trigger remediation workflows in Ansible and act in accordance with predefined rules. Datapoint Analysis- Leverages machine learning techniques to find related metrics and patterns across different resources, which in turn reduces MTTR and increases productivity. Unified Platform Experience A unified platform experience is critical for consistency, adaptability and scalability while reducing tool sprawl and data complexity. Troubleshooting in hybrid modern environments requires a contextual and intuitive UX across devices, services and networks. This modernization and unification effort is the key to continually delivering new capabilities to users and keeping time to value short for new customers. UI Modernization- Optimized to present information in complex hybrid environments. Components for all parts of the LM Envision platform now include bulk actions, better search and filtering and new editors for LogicModules. Expanded Cloud Support- 20 new out-of-the-box dashboards for AWS and Azure, accelerating time to value while providing service-specific views for more insight into health, performance and availability. Log Ingest and Filter Simplification- Introduced declarative UI to simplify log collection and configuration. Users can also add custom LM Properties to the logs which allows for more flexible searching and potentially faster MTTR. Digital Experience Monitoring- Synthetic tests now support multi-factor authentication (MFA) and automated alerts for latency and error conditions. Extensibility As a trusted partner in the advancement of monitoring across on-prem, hybrid and cloud environments, LogicMonitor continues to invest in new ways to manage and monitor network equipment through integrations woven tightly into its overall platform experience. Improved VMware vSphere Support- Support for vSphere 8 and automation for the discovery and monitoring of new ESXi Hosts and mission-critical Virtual Machines, eliminating manual processes – reducing the time, resources and risk involved in repeatable remediation processes. Cisco Meraki and Catalyst SD-WAN- These new integrations make it easier than ever to monitor Cisco environments in the broader context of one's heterogenous hybrid infrastructure. Customers can now get alerted about anomalous events, visualize network traffic usage and see how Cisco vEdge/cEdge (formerly Viptela), SD-WAN Controllers, Meraki Security Appliances, Switches, Wireless Access Points and Smart Cameras connect to their network and where alert conditions exist. Improved Kubernetes Monitoring- Greater coverage and deeper visibility into frequently changing cloud environments with new support and coverage for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) Anywhere and enhanced Kubernetes helm and scheduler monitoring. SaaS Monitoring-M365 and Okta logs allow users to clearly understand why problems happen, pinpoint the root cause and quickly troubleshoot alongside alerts. By advancing many key features of its platform, LogicMonitor customers can harness the full potential of their data to make informed decisions with confidence and efficiency. This approach not only streamlines operations, but also provides clarity and precision to the complexities of their IT landscape. About LogicMonitor LogicMonitor’s SaaS-based observability intelligence platform, LM Envision, helps ITOps, CloudOps, DevOps, CIOs, and business leaders gain operational visibility into and predictability across the technologies that modern organizations depend on to deliver extraordinary employee and customer experiences. LogicMonitor seamlessly enables unified observability across infrastructure, networks, clouds, containers and applications, empowering companies to focus less on troubleshooting and more on innovation.

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Spotlight

6G requires setting achievable goals and continuous communication with the market and consumers.  Efforts of all participants in the new 6G ecosystem are required, such as expanding of 6G usage scenarios, selecting candidate spectrums, vitalizing open interfaces, e.g., Open RAN, and simple architecture options, etc.

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