Application Infrastructure

Zain Kuwait resolute 5G investment delivers business success

Zain Kuwait | December 24, 2021

Zain Kuwait's 5G traffic currently accounts for more than 40% of its total wireless traffic, ranking the operator as number one in GCC countries in terms of 5G offload ratio. Zain Kuwait is one of the leading telecom operators in MENA and has been at the forefront of innovation for years as the first operator to launch commercial 5G services in the Middle East.

From the 5G service development and business achievements of Zain Kuwait, it is clear that the focus on 5G development brings business success to operators. Zain Kuwait started deployment of 5G networks in 2018. After two years of continuous development, 5G services have entered a period of high growth. Users are continuing to develop rapidly, and the proportion of 5G traffic has also been increasing continuously. This has resulted in positive revenue and profit growth for the operator.

Zain Kuwait has achieved the 5G subscriber penetration ratio of 23%, and the average DOU of its 5G subscribers is five times higher than that of its 4G subscribers. Zain Kuwait's mobile network also recorded revenue and profit growth of 4% and 13% year-over-year in Q2 2021. This is an outstanding achievement especially when there is no population dividend and the expatriate population in country has been continuously decreasing. Zain's 5G development leads the Kuwait telecom market, and its business success has been a result of its overall strategic objective to provide first-class 5G services for users in Kuwait.

Zain Kuwait has firmly invested in 5G for the fastest network construction with the widest coverage, building a foundation for user experience

Network coverage is the basis for user experience. Zain started 5G C-band construction in 2018. In Q3 2019, it completed coverage of major urban areas. By early 2020, it achieved 1:1 construction ratio with its LTE network.

Focusing on fast and value-based network construction, Zain Kuwait was able to quickly exploit the benefits of enhanced 5G network coverage. Leading the network construction lays the foundation for creating 5G business advantages. For instance, Zain was the first operator to commercialize 5G networks in Kuwait. In the commercial release phase, Zain provided the most extensive 5G coverage and best services owing to its focus on network construction. Within six months of the commercial launch, Zain reached 100% coverage, forming the first-mover advantage of 5G networks for itself.

User experience is the key In leading 5G experience targets to drive network experience leadership

With the goal of providing a first-class 5G network experience, Zain insists on higher standards of 5G network construction to ensure high-speed and reliable services for all the users. As a result, the investment in network planning and network construction was increased, which enabled Zain Kuwait to win Ookla's Fastest Fixed Wireless Network Provider Award in 2020 and to lead the Open signal Global Experience Test reports as well. A great network experience enhanced Zain's brand and helped it achieve greater commercial competitiveness.

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Digital transformation was a critical step in Citizens Bank's journey toward resilience. They wanted to reduce costs and generate new revenue by bringing new offerings to customers. Citizens Financial Group, a.k.a Citizens Bank, is the 13th largest retail bank in the U.S., with roughly 1,000 branches across 11 states. The bank p


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DevOps

Panduit Launches SmartZone™ Uninterruptible Power Supply

PRnewswire | July 05, 2023

Panduit Singapore releases SmartZone™ Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), delivering highly efficient and reliable power that provides protection and backup power for your computer IT equipment. SmartZone offers excellent electrical performance, intelligent battery management and long lifespan (lithium-ion units), enhanced intelligent monitoring, and network functions. Compliant with ENERGY STAR® 2.0, EMC, and safety standards, SmartZone UPS meets the continually growing power demands of data center, enterprise, and Edge IT equipment. The rack-mounted SmartZone UPS portfolio focuses on high reliability, density, efficiency, and secure manageability, backed by an experienced global support team. This UPS range offers models with varying power ratings, configurations, and batteries to meet your specific needs. The offerings include 1-3 kVA line interactive and double conversion with lithium-ion battery, 1-3 kVA, 5-10 kVA, and 10/15/20 kVA double conversion with lead acid battery. The SmartZone Intelligent UPS system interfaces with Panduit's SmartZone Cloud Next Generation DCIM solution to manage, monitor, and control power, environmental, security, connectivity, and IT assets. SmartZone Cloud collects and processes real-time data to closely oversee these channels and sends alerts for potential failures to reduce the risk of costly outages. To learn more about SmartZone Cloud Next Generation DCIM please visit https://pages.panduit.com/apac-smartzone-cloud.html. Panduit also offers many SmartZone™ UPS accessories including external battery packs, battery cartridges, intelligent network management cards, environmental and security sensors, and a relay card. "SmartZone UPS provides the global market with intelligent, reliable, and efficient infrastructure solutions for IT equipment and applications", says SmartZone UPS Product Manager Alan Burkel. "Panduit is excited to deliver this new offering of uninterruptible power supply hardware to an expanding industry with growing trends of distributed compute and enterprise data center modernization. It allows Panduit to be a one-stop-shop for customers interested in infrastructure solutions." The new Panduit SmartZone™ UPS product family rings in a new era of intelligent power. About Panduit Since 1955, Panduit's culture of curiosity and passion for problem-solving have enabled more meaningful connections between companies' business goals and their marketplace success. Panduit creates innovative electrical and network infrastructure solutions for enterprise-wide environments, from the data center to the telecom room, from the desktop to the plant floor. Headquartered in Tinley Park, IL, USA, and operating in112 global locations, Panduit's proven reputation for quality and technology leadership, coupled with a robust partner ecosystem, helps support, sustain, and empower business growth in a connected world.

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Application Infrastructure

Fermaca Networks Partners with Gold Data to provide Networks Services to US and Mexican Customers

Businesswire | July 06, 2023

Fermaca Networks (FN), a purpose built Infrastructure provider seeking to utilize the most unique right of way for purposes of being a leading provider of Long Haul Dark Fiber infrastructure in Mexico, announces its Partnership with Gold Data that will allow both companies to leverage complementary strengths in the marketplace. In addition, Gold Data is acquiring an undisclosed number of Fiber Pairs in Fermaca Networks phase 1 route (FN-1) which originates in El Paso, Texas and traverses multiple cities in Mexico and reaches as far South as Queretaro and Guadalajara. “FN’s core strengths complement those of Gold Data perfectly and we are excited about the opportunity to align our values,” stated Edgar Mosti, CRO, Fermaca Networks. “The skillsets and experiences of the two companies work synergistically and clients originating from either partner can expect a smooth and successful joint solution for fiber requirements throughout the areas they serve. We are sharply focused on our clients’ success, and we believe this partnership will benefit our mutual and prospective customers.” We are excited to also welcome Gold Data into the Fermaca Fiber Partners (FFP) program in which Gold Data will play a key role. We are excited to acquire fiber pairs in Fermaca's network, Gold Data complements its state-of-the-art topology network that is revolutionizing Mexico's demanding connectivity market. We are supporting this market with an offer from several international networks. "With this new underground route, it allows us to increase Gold Data's reliable footprint in addition to our 'Gold Data 1' backbone submarine cable. Also, we are very happy to join Fermaca Fiber Partners, who will provide extended networks to all Fermaca customers," says Renato Tradardi, CEO, Gold Data Group. About Gold Data Gold Data is a multinational award-wining technology company, which focuses on telecommunications infrastructure and services. We provide direct connectivity through the Americas and the Caribbean, interconnecting more than 156 PoPs, 76 data centers with presence in 35 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Gold Data relies on its strategic PoPs, diverse subsea capacity and its fully-owned network to deliver the complete end-to-end solution to and from Latin America and the Caribbean for MNCs, global carriers, OTT and content provider customers. About Fermaca With roots going back 60 years, Fermaca Dreams is a conglomerate of companies focused on developing and executing key infrastructure projects in Mexico. With proven track record, a successful history of partnerships, and a strong and professional management team, Fermaca Dreams companies are committed to the highest standards in project development, execution and operation.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Windows Systems and Network

Solidigm Introduces the World’s Highest Capacity PCIe SSD for Massive Data Storage From Core to Edge

businesswire | July 24, 2023

Solidigm, a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, is proud to announce another industry-first quad-level cell (QLC) solid-state storage drive (SSD) for the data center — the Solidigm™ D5-P5336. Offered in capacities from 7.68TB to 61.44TB, the Solidigm D5-P5336 makes it possible to store up to 6X more data in the same space compared to an all hard disk drive (HDD) array.1 "Modern workloads like AI and capabilities like 5G are rapidly reshaping the storage landscape,” said Greg Matson, VP of Strategic Planning and Marketing at Solidigm. “Businesses need storage in more places that is inexpensive, able to store massive data sets efficiently and access the data at speed. The D5-P5336 delivers on all three -- value, density and performance. With QLC, the economics are compelling -- imagine storing 6X more data than HDDs and 2X more data than TLC SSDs, all in the same space at TLC speed." Built to handle massive amounts of data from the core to the edge, the read performance of the Solidigm D5-P5336 exceeds some of the latest cost-optimized triple-level cell (TLC) SSDs on the market today.2 Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), content delivery networks, scale-out network attached storage (NAS), and object storage are all read-intensive workloads that continue to drive enormous volumes of data, regardless of where they reside. Massive scalability and improved TCO across a range of configurations With its high capacity enabling smaller storage footprints, Solidigm’s D5-P5336 enables a lower total cost of ownership and more sustainable infrastructure than all-TLC arrays, SAS HDD arrays, or hybrid arrays. Consider the following, based on a 100PB object “For years there has been debate about endurance and reliability of SSDs, QLC in particular, but Solidigm might have ended that debate with the D5-P5336,” noted Avery Pham, VP Operations, VAST Data. “Any number of applications will see notable benefits from these drives from AI and machine learning to object storage.” "Today, it is clear that the primary constraint for edge workloads is the limitation of bandwidth rather than latency,” said Doug Emby, VP of Sales and Business Development at Cheetah RAID Storage. “Solidigm’s D5-P5336 QLC SSDs offer an impressive combination of capacity, performance, and reliability as a solution to overcome this challenge. The seamless integration of these Solidigm QLC SSDs with Cheetah's high-performance servers makes them highly suitable for the efficient deployment of edge solutions." The D5-P5336 is shipping now in E1.L form factor with up to 30.72TB, with subsequent availability extending to 61.44TB in both U.2 and E1.L later this year. In the first half of 2024, Solidigm will be shipping E3.S form factor with up to 30.72TB. 1 All-HDD capacity based on 12x 3.5” front load bays x 20TB = 240TB. HDD capacity does not factor in any over-provisioning required to meet storage performance needs. All-QLC capacity based on 24x U.2 front load bays x 61.44TB D5-P5336 = 1474TB. Max 2U U.2 based on HPE Proliant DL385 Gen 11 configuration. Max 2U 3.5” HDD bays based on Supermicro 2U SuperServer design. 2 Up to 34% higher throughput than entry TLC SSDs and 20% higher than mainstream TLC SSDs for CDN workload. Comparing 15.36TB Solidigm™ D5-P5336 with read BW of 7.5GB/sec to15.36TB Kioxia CD8-R with 5.6 GB/sec as entry TLC SSD and to 15.36TB Micron 7450 with 6.2GB/sec as mainstream TLC SSD. Workload based on representative customer profile. Test Configuration: Supermicro SYS-120U-TNR, Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6354. Number of CPUs: 2, Cores per CPU: 18 (total 36), DRAM: DDR4 – 64GB, OS: Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS Linux 5.15.0-67-generic. FIO 3.16. ABOUT SOLIDIGM Solidigm is a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions. Solidigm technology unlocks data’s unlimited potential for customers, enabling them to fuel human advancement. Originating from the sale of Intel’s NAND and SSD business, Solidigm became a standalone U.S. subsidiary of semiconductor leader SK hynix in December 2021. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, Solidigm is powered by the inventiveness of more than 2,000 employees in 13 locations worldwide. For more information, please visit solidigm.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. “Solidigm” is a trademark of SK hynix NAND Product Solutions Corp. (d/b/a Solidigm).

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Windows Systems and Network, Windows Server Management

Pure Storage Expands Strategic Partnership with Microsoft to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Adoption

prnewswire | August 23, 2023

Pure Storage®,an IT pioneer that delivers advanced data storage technology and services, today announced an expanded, multi-year strategic product and go-to-market partnership with Microsoft, that brings Pure Storage's industry leading storage capabilities to native Microsoft Azure services by leveraging Azure's new Premium SSD v2 and introducing them toAzure VMware Solution (AVS)in Preview. News Highlights: Now in Preview in 16 Azure regions globally, Pure Cloud Block Store™ for Azure VMware Solution enables customers to: Optimize AVS Costs.With Pure Storage's compression and deduplication technology, organizations can achieve a high data reduction ratio on VMware workloads in Azure. Combined with Pure Storage's ability to decouple block storage costs from compute costs, customers can achieve sizable savings off their baselines for storage heavy workloads. Take Advantage of Evergreen®Innovation in Azure.Pure Storage will continue to innovate and leverage the best technology available in Azure. By integrating Azure's latest storage solution,Premium SSD v2disk, in partnership with the Azure Storage team, Pure Storage is helping mutual customers achieve up to one-third of the infrastructure cost than Pure's previous platform without sacrificing performance or capabilities. These savings can now be extended to AVS customers. Accelerate and De-Risk Cloud Migrations.Organizations can migrate their applications to the cloud without any capability trade-offs, with the ability to scale storage and compute independently based on need. Leverage Pure Storage Safemode® Ransomware Data Protection: Pure Storage delivers an always-on, policy-driven snapshot creation and protection mechanism called Safemode which provides the ability to leverage Pure Storage snapshots to instantly restore protected data sets. Customers enjoy and rely on this protection with their on-premises VMware environments with FlashArray, and can now also leverage this functionality with Azure VMware Solution and Pure Cloud Block Store. Implement Flexible Disaster Recovery: Organizations can take advantage of data protection capabilities in Purity such as zero-RPO ActiveCluster, near-zero RPO ActiveDR, and Purity CloudSnap™ to ensure the right data is protected in the right way, to the right place, at the right time. Right-Sizing Disaster Recovery:Pure Storage's high availability and cloud replication capabilities enable disaster recovery targets on AVS that can be configured with minimal compute and storage that can scale on-demand. This brings additional cost savings to the customer's Disaster Recovery strategy. Simplify and Unify Storage Strategy. By using the same data management platform both on-premises and in the cloud, organizations can more easily track, manage, deploy, and provide consistent multi-cloud governance for their data. Executive and Customer Insight: "This expanded partnership between Pure Storage and Microsoft creates a significant milestone, ushering in a new age of cloud migration, and ultimately driving faster, more cost effective adoption of cloud services. Pure Cloud Block Store™ for Azure VMware Solution is just the beginning. By optimizing performance and cost at scale, we look forward to unlocking the number of mission-critical use cases that we can serve in the coming years."–Ajay Singh, Chief Product Officer, Pure Storage "Our commitment to advancing Microsoft Azure VMware Solution, and the Microsoft Azure platform more broadly, with best-of-breed partnerships with vendors like Pure Storage underscores our mission to meet customers where they are today, particularly in a new world of business where speed, simplicity, and cost efficiency are critical. We're thrilled to continue working through the next phases of our partnership to provide a fast path to the cloud with Pure Storage."–Jurgen Willis, Vice President, Azure Specialized Workloads and Storage, Microsoft "VMware Cloud provides consistent and modern infrastructure for all applications, across any cloud, with low TCO. We're pleased that Pure Storage is joining the Azure VMware Solution partner ecosystem. With Pure Cloud Block Store for Azure VMware Solution, existing VMware and Pure Storage on-prem customers can now migrate and modernize to Azure VMware Solution while preserving their investments in VMware and Pure Storage processes, skills, and enterprise capabilities." –Narayan Bharadwaj, Vice President, Cloud Solutions, VMware Industry Significance: Gartner forecasts that in 2023, worldwide public cloud spending will grow 20.7% to total$591.8 billion, up from$490.3 billionin 20221. As cloud adoption accelerates, enterprises aspire to migrate all or portions of their VMware environments - the majority of which consume block-based storage - to the cloud but are met by challenges of inconsistent storage layer management in comparison to their on-premises deployment, and an unmet need to scale compute and storage independently to match data growth. The expanded partnership between Pure Storage and Microsoft eliminates this barrier. By integrating Pure Cloud Block Store with Azure VMware Solution, organizations gain access to Pure's robust feature set, as well as the ability to de-risk deployments while perfectly right-sizing and scaling storage and compute independently as workload demands change About Pure Storage Pure Storageuncomplicates data storage, forever. Pure delivers a cloud experience that empowers every organization to get the most from their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it. Pure's commitment to providing true storage as-a-service gives customers the agility to meet changing data needs at speed and scale, whether they are deploying traditional workloads, modern applications, containers, or more. Pure believes it can make a significant impact in reducing data center emissions worldwide through its environmental sustainability efforts, including designing products and solutions that enable customers to reduce their carbon and energy footprint. And with a certified customer satisfaction score in the top one percent of B2B companies, Pure's ever-expanding list of customers are among the happiest in the world.

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Spotlight

Digital transformation was a critical step in Citizens Bank's journey toward resilience. They wanted to reduce costs and generate new revenue by bringing new offerings to customers. Citizens Financial Group, a.k.a Citizens Bank, is the 13th largest retail bank in the U.S., with roughly 1,000 branches across 11 states. The bank p

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