Displaying items by tag: software

Nokia has announced that its cloud-native Subscriber Data Management (SDM) software has been chosen by Telefónica UK to enhance the security and reliability of the operator’s networks, and to drive 5G services innovation.

As the heart of Telefónica UK’s converged mobile core, Nokia’s SDM will securely oversee pivotal functionality for all Telefónica UK networks and services, including 5G. By controlling network data in a centralized hub and utilizing containerized micro services that have only what is required by an application to efficiently and autonomously manage all subscriber data and services, SDM increases both reliability and operational efficiencies. 

Nokia’s SDM solution serves approximately 4.8 billion subscribers and devices around the world.

Telefónica’s SDM is delivered using Nokia’s core engineered systems program for fast deployment and rapid upgrades.

The deal is supporting subscriber data management for all Telefónica UK’s 3G, 4G, 5G networks, as well as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Voice over LTE (VoLTE), Voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) and Voice over 5G (Vo5G) services; along with the operator’s IoT devices and nationwide Smart Metering. Deployment is expected in the fourth quarter and Nokia will oversee all professional services to complete the migration.

Supporting the modernization of Telefónica UK’s unified database deployment, Nokia will also deploy Shared Data Layer, a cloud-native database accessible via industry standard protocols to enable an open ecosystem and the integration of third party applications.

Brendan O’Reilly, CTO, Telefónica UK, said, “Nokia’s Subscriber Data Management software offers secure, robust connectivity capabilities, while simultaneously streamlining our network services. This allows us to better support our growing 5G networks and capture operational efficiencies. We look forward to developing a new generation of 5G services with Nokia.”

Bhaskar Gorti, President of Nokia Software and Nokia Chief Digital Officer, said, “As we drive cloud-native 5G innovation together, Nokia is pleased to be building on our existing relationship with Telefónica UK by further optimizing and securing the company’s networks with Nokia’s software portfolio, and enriching the customer experience.”

Ten years after Oracle first sued Google over the code used in its Android platform, the two tech giants are finally facing off in the Supreme Court.

The dispute concerns about 11,500 lines of code that Google used to build its popular Android mobile operating system, which were replicated from the Java application programming interface developed by Sun Microsystems – a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle since 2010.

Oracle sued Google shortly afterward, arguing that the company’s use of the code violates its ownership rights. Google, on the other hand, has said the code it copied was purely functional, and that its own engineers authored all of Android’s code that could be said to be creative and subject to copyright protection.

Not only are billions of dollars at stake but also the law of copyright in the internet era, and which types of code will be subject to protection. The blockbuster dispute is sure to capture the attention of Silicon Valley as it could have far-reaching consequences for the future of software innovation.

Where did it all begin?

Oracle v Google is an ongoing legal case dating back to 2010. The dispute centers on the use of parts of the Java programming language's application programming interfaces (APIs), which are owned by Oracle, within early versions of the Android operating system by Google. Google has admitted to using the APIs, and has since transitioned Android to a copyright-unburdened engine, but argues their original use of the APIs was within fair use.

Oracle initiated the suit arguing that the APIs were copyrightable, seeking US$8.8 billion in damages. While two District Court-level jury trials have found in favor of Google, the Federal Circuit court has reversed both decisions, asserting APIs are copyrightable and Google's application of them failed a fair use defense. Google successfully petitioned to the Supreme Court to hear the case in the 2019 term, focusing on the copyrightability of APIs and subsequent fair use. This ruling is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

What’s happening now?

The difficulty of this case is that the world is very different now to what it was when the case was filed a decade ago.

Both companies have changed hands — the lawsuit began while Larry Ellison was still at the helm of Oracle and Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google. Similarly, three Supreme Court seats have been vacated since the last time Google asked the high court to review its case; one justice has retired and two have passed away — most recently, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The trial, held this week via teleconference, intends to explain programming to a non-technical jury who will subsequently set precedent for the future of copyright law.

Google lawyer Thomas Goldstein told the justices that the disputed Java code should not receive copyright protection because it was the “the only way” to create new programs using the programming language. “The language only permits us to use those,” Goldstein said.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Google still should have paid Oracle for a license to Java. “Cracking the safe may be the only way to get the money that you want, but that doesn’t mean you can do it,” Roberts said.

Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned Goldstein on whether Google had simply piggybacked on Oracle’s innovation. Gorsuch asked, “What do we do about the fact that the other competitors, Apple, Microsoft ... have, in fact, been able to come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying?”

Google has said the shortcut commands it copied into Android do not warrant copyright protection because they help developers write programs to work across platforms, a key to software innovation.

Court observers found that while the Justices seemed to side with Oracle on the copyright arguments, they also took deference to the arguments presented by Microsoft, who had taken Google's side on the case. Microsoft argued in an amicus brief that ruling in Oracle's favor could upend the software industry.

Several justices noted how consequential a decision in the case could be. “I’m concerned,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a lawyer for Google, “that, under your argument, all computer code is at risk of losing protection.”

What impact will the outcome have?

The case is of significant interest within the tech and software industries, as numerous computer programs and software libraries, particularly in open source, are developed by recreating the functionality of APIs from commercial or competing products to aid developers in interoperability between different systems or platforms.

If this ruling is allowed to stand, it is believed that companies will be forced to implement deliberately incompatible standards to protect themselves from the risk of complex litigation, moving away from the current trends in software development which have focused on improving interoperability between different services allowing apps to communicate with one another, creating more integrated platforms for end users.

Several of the court’s conservatives, including Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, noted that Google’s allies had warned that the “sky will fall” if Oracle won. 

“We are told if we agree with Oracle we will ruin the tech industry in the United States,” Roberts said at one point to Malcolm Stewart, a Justice Department attorney who represented the United States and argued in favor of Oracle. 

It is clear that the Supreme Court is divided over this landmark case. Some of the eight justices expressed concern that Google simply copied Oracle’s software code instead of innovating and creating its own for mobile devices. Others emphasized that siding with Oracle could give software developers too much power with potentially harmful effects on the technology industry.

A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Nokia today announced the availability of a software based upgrade that will enable its 4G/LTE radios to be migrated seamlessly to 5G/NR.

These features will have a high value to Nokia’s customers as they provide immediate support for approximately one million radios, reaching 3.1 million by the end of the year and over 5 million in 2021. By upgrading existing radio elements via software, Nokia is helping to streamline the process of refarming 4G/LTE spectrum into 5G/NR. The move will also support existing customers and the installed base by offering a seamless and cost-effective upgrade path to 5G/NR.

Most of the 5G/NR deployments to date have been performed with TDD cmWave and TDD mmWave deployment but the next big wave of 5G/NR rollouts will be delivered by refarming existing FDD bands to 5G/NR. TDD spectrum benefits from enlarged coverage and capacity when combined with already deployed FDD network infrastructure and spectrum bands via TDD/FDD Carrier Aggregation.

The ability to upgrade 4G/LTE radios via a software update will significantly smooth out the deployment of 5G/NR FDD, avoiding costly and disruptive site visits. Nokia has a vast customer base of 359 4G/LTE customers with deployed FDD RF units most of which are possible to upgrade. This will provide a new and smoother way for operators to build 5G/NR coverage in lower bands via spectrum refarming. Nokia’s 4G/LTE radios are market leading and outperform all vendors according to independent testing.

Nokia also has Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) already in live networks covering 2G/GSM-3G/WCDMA-4G/LTE and recently introduced DSS for 4G/LTE-5G/NR. This capability completes a DSS solution, covering all access technologies and making the radio frequency refarming to 5G/NR a simple and efficient process.

In a typical case DSS will be introduced to one or few 4G/LTE bands which are then combined with carrier aggregation between other bands running pure 4G/LTE or 5G/NR. Nokia has the market leading DSS solution covering all radio access technologies from 2G/GSM to 5G/NR.

Nokia estimates that this solution will save the telecommunications industry potentially tens of billions of euros in site engineering and re-visit costs as communication service providers are able to upgrade their networks to 5G/NR on FDD with software.  

Chris Nicoll, Principal Analyst at ACG Research, said, "While Open RAN promises software upgradability to ease transitions between ‘Gs’ and add new features, Nokia’s Flexi and AirScale portfolio shows it is ahead of the game by providing a software upgrade to transition over 5 million 4G radios to 5G. Efficient FDD spectrum refarming is critical for fast, broad and deep 5G deployments. With Nokia supplying the majority of the world’s top 4G operators, supporting key advanced features such as DSS helps those operators lead with 5G.”

 “We already provide market- leading LTE radios to hundreds of customers around the world. This is an important solution because it will help our customers, quickly and efficiently upgrade their existing LTE radios so that they are 5G ready saving them time and money.”

Microsoft and Altran, the design and engineering firm recently acquired by Capgemini, have collaborated to develop an AI-based tool to predict the likelihood of bugs in source codes created by developers early in the software development process.

By applying machine learning (ML) to historical data, the tool – called “Code Defect AI” – identifies areas of the code that are potentially buggy and then suggests a set of tests to diagnose and fix the flaws, resulting in higher-quality software and faster development times.

Bugs are a fact of life in software development. The later a defect is found in the development lifecycle, the higher the cost of fixing a bug. This bug-deployment-analysis-fix process is time consuming and costly. Code Defect AI allows earlier discovery of defects, minimizing the cost of fixing them and speeding the development cycle.

“It’s well known that software developers are under constant pressure to release code fast without compromising on quality,” said Walid Negm, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Altran.

“The reality however is that the software release cycle needs more than automation of assembly and delivery activities. It needs algorithms that can help make strategic judgments ‒ especially as code gets more complex. Code Defect AI does exactly that.”

Code Defect AI relies on various ML techniques including random decision forests, support vector machines, multilayer perceptron (MLP) and logistic regression. Historical data is extracted, pre-processed and labelled to train the algorithm and curate a reliable decision model. Developers are given a confidence score that predicts whether the code is compliant or presents the risk of containing bugs.

Code Defect AI supports integration with third-party analysis tools and can itself help identify bugs in a given program code. Additionally, the Code Defect AI tool allows developers to assess which features in the code have higher weightage in terms of bug prediction, i.e., if there are two features in the software that play a role in the assessment of a probable bug, which feature will take precedence.

“Microsoft and Altran have been working together to improve the software development cycle, and Code Defect AI, powered by Microsoft Azure, is an innovative tool that can help software developers through the use of machine learning,” said David Carmona, General Manager of AI Marketing at Microsoft.

Code Defect AI is a scalable solution that can be hosted on premise as well as on cloud computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure. While the solution currently supports GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, it can be integrated with other source-code management tools as needed.

Ericsson has announced that its unique dynamic spectrum sharing solution is commercially available, allowing communications service providers to quickly and cost-effectively launch 5G on a nationwide scale.

Ericsson Spectrum Sharing enables both 4G and 5G to be deployed in the same band and on the same radio through a software upgrade and dynamically allocates spectrum based on user demand on a 1 millisecond basis. Ericsson’s dynamic spectrum sharing is the most economically feasible way to deploy 5G on existing bands – enabling wide 5G coverage from day one – making more efficient use of spectrum and enabling superior user performance.

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks, Ericsson, said, “For the first time, our customers do not have to re-farm spectrum before deploying a new ‘G’ and can quickly get 5G on the same footprint as they have with 4G today. In the next 12 months, more than 80 percent of the commercial 5G networks we support will use our spectrum sharing solution to achieve broad 5G coverage.”
“Spectrum is a scarce and costly resource that should be used efficiently. Ericsson Spectrum Sharing will mean that service providers can rapidly roll out 5G on their FDD bands without the need to re-invest. It means they can use both their new and existing bands for 5G high-speed, high-capacity services. Dynamically allocating spectrum between 4G and 5G is going to be the best way to start deploying 5G,” said Julian Bright, Senior Analyst, Ovum/Omdia.

ESS live with multiple service providers

Swisscom

With Ericsson as its sole mobile network vendor and strategic partner, Swisscom was the first communications service provider in Europe to launch commercial 5G services in April 2019. In December 2019, Swisscom achieved nationwide 5G coverage and is upgrading their network with Ericsson Spectrum Sharing.

Christoph Aeschlimann, Head of IT, Network & Infrastructure Group division, Swisscom, says: "ESS is key for a fast adoption of 5G. It's a win-win approach for customers and operators. Customers benefit from 5G in no time and operators use their precious spectrum in a most efficient manner. We are proud of being part of the ESS journey from the very beginning. In the meantime, we already reached a nationwide coverage with 90 percent of the population with 5G."

Telstra

In May 2019, Telstra launched its commercial 5G network in Australia and has now rolled out 5G coverage in 32 metropolitan and regional cities around the country with the help of Ericsson, its key 5G network partner. 

“Ericsson Spectrum Sharing will continue to play a crucial role in helping Telstra pave the way for a faster rollout of 5G, allowing us to serve the needs of 4G and 5G customers in the same location at the same time. These milestones are especially important for Telstra and the Australian landscape, where expanding 5G coverage over wide areas quickly and efficiently are key to providing more Australians with access to 5G services,” said Channa Seneviratne, Network and Engineering Infrastructure Executive, Telstra.  

Ooredoo Qatar

After going commercially live with 5G on 3.5 GHz band in Doha, Ooredoo is taking the next step to make its ‘Supernet’ fully 5G-enabled across the country with Ericsson Spectrum Sharing.

Waleed Al Sayed, Chief Executive Officer, Ooredoo Qatar, said, “As we take the next leap into being connected, Ericsson Spectrum Sharing comes as a unique innovation that dynamically shares spectrum between 4G and 5G carriers based on traffic demand. This enables us, as mobile operators, to use our spectrum assets efficiently by driving 5G-wide coverage roll-out quickly, smoothly and cost efficiently. This will help us achieve our strategic objectives, enabling us to enhance our customers’ internet experience and enrich their digital lives.”

Play

Polish service provider, Play, has deployed Ericsson Spectrum Sharing on its commercial network.

Jean Marc Harion, CEO of Play, says: "The 5G network in Legionowo is yet another proof of Play’s technological advancement in 5G and an important milestone in our strategy to continuously expand and modernize our network. With Ericsson Spectrum Sharing, we are taking a significant step towards being ready for commercial introduction of 5G when the devices become available.”

ESS ecosystem

Ericsson Spectrum Sharing software can run on any of the five million 5G-ready radios Ericsson has shipped since 2015. Ericsson has been collaborating with ecosystem chipset partners including Qualcomm Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, on advancing dynamic spectrum sharing using mobile devices powered by Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 865 and 765 Mobile Platforms with Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems, and MediaTek (Dimensity 1000) as well as key device makers like Oppo, Sony, Xiaomi, LG, vivo and WNC (Wistron NeWeb Corp.) to scale the solution globally.

US technology behemoth Microsoft is edging nearer a trillion-dollar valuation after its profits soared in the first-quarter of 2019. Microsoft enjoyed the increase in its revenues largely because of its cloud and business services continue to resonate with the market.

Profits’ in the opening quarter climbed by 19% to $8.8bn and that represents an increase of 14% from the same period a year earlier. Microsoft also saw its shares gain 3% on the New York Stock Exchange which pushes it closer to a $1 trillion valuation.

By the close of the bell on Wall Street, Microsoft was valued at $960m, which places them just behind Apple and slightly ahead of Amazon.

The financial results indicate that Microsoft is now becoming increasingly reliant on cloud computing and other business services which now drive its earnings, in contrast to its earlier days when it focused on consumer PC software.

“Leading organizations of every size in every industry trust the Microsoft cloud," chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Commercial cloud revenue rose 41 percent from a year ago to $9.6 billion, which now makes up nearly a third of sales, Microsoft said.

In addition to this, it was disclosed that some $10.2 billion in revenue came from the productivity and business services unit which includes its Office software suite for both consumers and enterprises, and the LinkedIn professional social network.

The more personal computing unit which includes its Windows software, Surface devices and gaming operations generated $10.6 billion in the quarter.

German software behemoth SAP has stunned staff by announcing that it will cut 3,000 jobs as part of a €1bn restructuring plan after profits stagnated in 2018.

However, the upbeat company insists it is still on track to grow revenues and earnings for this year, but that a restructuring of its overall operations and practices are necessary.

SAP’s CFO, Luka Mucic said the company expects a higher number of employees to leave that during its last job cull which occurred in 2015. He said, “We are talking about a completely voluntary program, we expect a number slightly higher than in 2015 of employees to leave.”

In 2015, SAP cut around 2,200 positions in a move that was described at that time as the company’s transition away from traditional software towards cloud computing. SAP plan to spend between 800m and 1bn on restructuring the company in an effort to simplify its structures and processes.

CEO Bill McDermott acknowledged that the job cuts are painful but reiterated that they were necessary in order to pave the way for SAP to make new investments in emerging growth areas within the software ecosystem.

The SAP CEO said, “We are going to move our people and our focus to the areas SAP needs the most, AI (artificial intelligence), blockchain, internet of things, quantum computing.  We currently have 95,000 people in the company, if we talk in a few years it will be more.”

Despite the messaging from SAP that the job cuts are necessary in order to create capital to invest in new areas, it’s clear the stagnation of profits and stunting of growth have heightened the pressure on the German software leader.

SAP announced that its net profits had grown by just 1% last year reaching 4.1bn euros.  In 2018, SAP continued its transformation away from the perception that it’s a traditional one-off sales’ of business software licenses to cloud computing, under which it charges customers a subscription fee to process data on the firm's computers.

Revenue from cloud subscriptions and support grew 32 percent over the year, to almost 3.8 billion euros. Meanwhile software licenses and support revenue shrank one percent, although it remains a far bigger source of income for now at almost 15.8 billion euros.

Amazon’s facial recognition software Rekognition has come under fresh scrutiny after a group of US lawmakers demanded more information into how the tool is tested and audited.

Cisco announced it will acquire publicly-held BroadSoft, Inc., the global communication software and service provider headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD. Cisco will pay $55 per share, in cash, or an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.9 billion net of cash, assuming fully diluted shares including conversion of debt. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company.

"Together, Cisco and BroadSoft will deliver a robust suite of collaboration capabilities across every market segment," said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Applications Business Group. "We believe that our combined offers, from Cisco's collaboration technology for enterprises to BroadSoft's suite for small and medium businesses delivered through Service Providers will give customers more choice and flexibility."

"We are excited about this transaction, which represents the culmination of a robust process undertaken by BroadSoft's Board of Directors to maximize shareholder value," said Michael Tessler, president and CEO, BroadSoft. "As businesses continue to move toward the cloud in search of simplicity and speed, joining Cisco will allow us to deliver best-in-class collaboration tools and services.”

“BroadSoft's hosted offerings, sold through the Service Providers and aimed at small and medium businesses, are highly complementary to Cisco's on-premises and enterprise-centric HCS offerings,” Tessler added. “Together, we can inspire teams to create, collaborate and perform in ways never before imagined."

More and more businesses expect fully featured voice and contact center solutions with the ability to deploy them on premises or in the cloud. By combining BroadSoft's open interface and standards-based cloud voice and contact center solutions delivered via Service Provider partners, with Cisco's leading meetings, hardware and services portfolio, the combined company will offer best-of-breed solutions for businesses of all sizes and deliver a full suite of collaboration capabilities to power the future of work.

The acquisition of BroadSoft reinforces Cisco's commitment to Unified Communications and enhances its ability to address the millions of aging TDM lines poised to transition to IP technology and cloud native solutions over the coming years. 

"Cisco recently marked a significant milestone with our 200th acquisition. Acquisitions continue to be a core part of our innovation strategy and over the past two years have helped Cisco accelerate or enter areas such as IoT, application intelligence, AI, hyperconvergence and SD-WAN," said Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco Corporate Development. "With the addition of BroadSoft, we expect to accelerate the pace of innovation across our entire collaboration portfolio."

The acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of calendar year 2018, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review. Prior to the close, Cisco and BroadSoft will continue to operate as separate companies. Upon completion of the transaction, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group led by Vice President and General Manager Tom Puorro, under the Applications Group led by Trollope.

Google’s aspirations to extend the reach of its innovative drone delivery service has encountered a number of issues and plans to begin a wider launch of the product that have been put on hold. Google’s parent company Alphabet, a leading software company, has revealed its ambitious plan for a marketplace that could order anything from a coffee to toilet paper and have it within minutes.

The drone-delivery service was given the green light from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to begin testing the autonomous aerial vehicles in the United States. However, it has now been revealed from a former employee of Alphabet that the company has suffered a number of issues with the technology itself.

In September, the company successfully delivered its first burrito from Chipotle, to a student in Virginia Tech. In addition to that, Alphabet entered into partnerships with a number of companies such as Starbucks, Whole Foods Market and Domino’s Pizza to carry out a series of tests and trials as part of its Wing Marketplace strategy. However, it emerged that Starbucks exited the negotiations after disagreeing with Alphabet over access to customer data.

Last month, Domino’s Pizza made its first delivery by drone in New Zealand and it plans to expand the service to a bigger area in the forthcoming months. Domino’s boss, Don Meij says the aerial technique could catch on as it beats traffic and cuts waiting time.

“DRU Drone by Flirtey offers the promise of safer, faster deliveries to an expanded delivery area, meaning more customers can expect to receive a freshly-made order within our ultimate target of 10 minutes. They can avoid traffic congestion and traffic lights, and safely reduce the delivery time and distance by travelling directly to customers’ homes. This is the future. Our customers are excited about the possibility of drone deliveries and we are thrilled to be working with local families as we test and expand this technology.”

An article which circulated in the Wall Street Journal reported that Alphabet’s ‘X’ division could experience more turbulence in the coming months following the admission made by a former employee of the firm. The anonymous source made the claim that it was Alphabet’s goal to complete 1,000 flights without incident, but it never made it past 300.

Some of the reasons cited as to what the problems were ranged from repeated power failures, multiple crashes, wandering off course, or attempting to land in trees. Alphabet’s X division is a moon-shot project, so technical issues are expected throughout the process. With the former employee summing it up by saying: “Alphabet is a software company, not an airplane company.”