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VIVENDI-SEAGRAM
MERGER COMBINES MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS
Vivendi
and The Seagram Company announced plans to form a global media
company with its own widely distributed wire and wireless access
networks. Vivendi Universal would combine the world's largest
music company, second largest film library, major film production
studio and assorted software companies with the cable television
networks of Canal+ and the telecommunications networks of Cegetel
and Vodafone. Canal+
operates in 11 countries and had almost 14 million subscriptions
at the end of 1999. Canal+,
in which Vivendi holds a 49% stake, has more than 14 million
subscribers for its pay television and digital TV service in 11
countries throughout Europe.
France's Cegetel
has over 1 million subscribers to its "7" fixed-line
telephone service. Vivendi's
alliance with Vodafone has 58 million subscribers throughout
Europe. VivendiNet
brings together several web portals, including some that that will
offer access via mobile phones, television and PDAs.
http://www.vivendi.com/
Vivendi,
June 20, 2000
ENRON
AND SAVVIS COOPERATE ON BROADBAND CONTENT DELIVERY
Enron
Broadband Services and SAVVIS Communications agreed to create an
optimal broadband distribution channel for streaming media content
and services. Under
the partnership, Enron servers will be hosted by SAVVIS at its
Private Network Access Points.
SAVVIS will then deliver Enron-distributed content to its
customers in information-intensive industries, including the
financial services industry. The SAVVIS network currently serves
4,700 financial services companies, including 75 of the top 100
worldwide banks and 45 of the top 50 brokerage firms.
Enron also agreed in principle to purchase additional
bandwidth from SAVVIS to enhance the reach of its network. http://www.savvis.net/newsroom/pressrelease/062000c.html
http://www.enron.net/
Enron, June 20, 2000
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In
January, Enron announced plans to purchase up to 18,000 Sun
Netra carrier-grade servers and deploy them to more than 2,000
points of presence worldwide. The
Enron Intelligent Network (EIN) would use a proprietary,
software system to provide forward reservation of bandwidth,
real-time provisioning, dynamic content management and
security features. http://www.enron.net/isp/ein/
STORAGE
VENDORS DEVELOP DIRECT ACCESS FILE SYSTEM (DAFS) PROTOCOL
Network
Appliance, Intel and SeaGate proposed a new Direct Access File
System (DAFS) protocol for direct, memory-to-memory file access in
storage networks. DAFS,
which uses the Virtual Interface (VI) architecture as its
underlying transport mechanism, allows applications to directly
access I/O, resulting in low-latency, low-overhead data sharing.
The companies estimate a 40% performance improvement in
heterogeneous data-sharing environments.
More on the specification, including technical details, is
available online.
http://www.DAFScollaborative.org
Network Appliance, June 20, 2000
INFIBAND
SPECIFICATION EXPECTED BY OCTOBER
The
InfiniBand Trade Association expects to complete version 1.0 of
its InfiniBand Architecture specification by October.
InfiniBand is a switched fabric server I/O architecture
being developed for high-end servers and web servers to address
imbalances in CPU and I/O performance.
The specification will provide a scalable performance range
of 500 MB/s to 6 GB/s per link with a consistent 2.5 GB/s
signaling rate. http://www.infinibandta.org
The InfiniBand Trade Association, June 20, 2000
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The
InfiniBand Trade Association was created by Compaq, Dell,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems to
develop a new common I/O specification to deliver a channel
based, switched fabric technology.
Over 160 companies are now members of The InfiniBand
Trade Association.
IBM
SHOWS INFINIBAND CHIP DESIGNS TO SYSTEM DESIGNERS
IBM
began sharing preliminary specifications of a range of
InfiniBand-based chips with system developers.
IBM expects the first switches and adapters based on
InfiniBand to be available starting in 2001.
http://www.chips.ibm.com/news/2000/000620/index.html
IBM, June 20, 2000
LUCENT'S
ENTERPRISE NETWORKS GROUP FILES FOR SPIN-OFF
Lucent
Technologies' Enterprise Networks Group filed its Form 10
registration statement with the SEC for its previously announced
spin-off. The
spin-off is expected to occur before September 30.
The filing was made under the name Lucent EN Corp.
http://www.lucent.com/
Lucent, June 20, 2000
CORNING
SUPPLIES FIBER FOR CORECOMM'S FTTH NETWORKS
CoreComm
will deploy Corning's InfiniCor and SMF-28(TM) optical fibers for
its fiber-to-the-home projects in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus,
Detroit, New York and Boston.
CoreComm's fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) offering will include
local and long distance telephone service bundled with 10 Mbps
Ethernet access and a full Internet service.
CoreComm expects to offer a bundled price roughly
equivalent to telephone and DSL or cable modem service from
separate vendors. http://www.core.com/
Corning, June 20, 2000
OCEAN
OPTICS INTRODUCES FIGH-PRECISION OPTICAL FILTERS
Ocean
Optics, a manufacturer of spectral instrumentation, precision
optics and optical-sensing systems based in Florida, introduced a
Dichroic Filter Array technology for selectively transmitting
light according to its wavelength. The company said its DFA
technology combines modern optical thin film deposition techniques
with microlithographic procedures -- such as used in semiconductor
processing -- to deliver micron- scale precision patterning of
dichroic coatings on a single substrate. The technology is being
used for various opto-mechanical and opto-electrical devices, as
well as for DWDM applications requiring improved MEMS and
LCD-based optical cross-connect technologies.
http://www.oceanoptics.com/homepage.asp
Ocean Optics, June 20, 2000
TELLABS
ESTABLISHES BOSTON CENTER FOR OPTICAL NETWORKING
Tellabs
announced plans to establish a technology center in the Boston
area for optical networking and next-generation switching.
Last year, Tellabs acquired Wilmington, Mass.-based NetCore
Systems and select assets of DSP Software Engineering in Bedford,
Mass.
http://www.tellabs.com/news/00news/nr062000.shtml
Tellabs, June 20, 2000
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INTEL
INVESTS IN BRAXTON FOR ITS SOFTWARE BASED CALL CENTER
Intel
made an equity investment in Braxtel Communications (formerly
SalesLan), a start-up developing a software-based call center and
customer interaction system with unified messaging, e-Commerce and
Web features under Windows NT.
Braxtel has its R&D operation in Dublin, Ireland and
corporate headquarters in Boxborough, MA.
Intel said the investment would support its strategy to
make the Dialogic CT Media platform the centerpiece for open
communication servers in a converged voice and data network
environment.
http://www.braxtel.com/
Braxtel, June 20, 2000
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