Today’s topics include Intel’s partnerships in China for server chip production, the addition of real-time updates to Microsoft Power BI on iOS, why Verizon joined the ONOS open-source SDN project and Docker’s acquisition of Unikernel.
Intel has arranged two partnerships in China to build data center offerings based on the chip maker’s Xeon server processors that will be used in IT infrastructures in the country.
The chip vendor is working with Tsinghua University and Chinese tech company Montage Technology Global Holdings to develop locally developed, indigenous systems to meet specific requirements for data center infrastructure in China. Officials said the partnerships are Intel’s latest effort to bring its products to the valuable China market.
Power BI, Microsoft’s cloud-based business intelligence platform, can now relay real-time updates to the iOS versions of the application.
New in this round of mobile Power BI updates is the ability to view R-tiles, visualizations based on scripts running on local installations of the R statistical analysis platform, as well as a new Bing content pack data. Microsoft said the updates will soon be applied to the Android app.
Verizon is the latest major service provider to join the ONOS open-source network virtualization initiative, joining other carriers including AT&T, NTT Communications, China Unicom and SK Telecom in the effort.
Verizon officials said Jan. 21 that they joined the ONOS (Open Network Operating System) in hopes of accelerating the development of open-source software-defined networking (SDN) and network-functions virtualization (NFV) offerings that their company and other carriers can use.
Brian Higgins, vice president of network planning at Verizon, said Verizon recognizes the potential of ONOS as an open-source SDN platform and the service provider solutions it enables.
Docker Inc. announced the acquisition of Unikernel Systems in a deal that aligns the emerging world of unikernel purpose-built system development with Docker containers. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been publicly disclosed.
The company has made several acquisitions in recent years, each one adding a new element to Docker to help expand functionality and market reach.
Unikernel Systems was founded by engineers from the open-source Xen hypervisor project. A unikernel provides a minimalist purpose-built set of libraries that enables an application to run.