News in Networking: Cisco’s Acquisition, Juniper’s Security M&A, and Elon’s AI

This week’s top story picks from the Kentik team.

Cisco announced plans this week to acquire Cmpute.io, an India-based cloud-cost comparison tool. Juniper Networks may also be moving on cloud-focused M&A. According to Light Reading, the company “has set its sights on being a leading player in the multi-cloud cybersecurity sector.” Beyond the cloud, the hype of AI continued to make headlines this week. According to CNBC, Elon Musk’s Tesla team is working on an AI project that could be “the best in the world.”

Here are those headlines and more:

• Cisco to buy Cmpute.io, acquiring another cloud cost comparison tool (SDxCentral)
  “Cisco announced plans to buy Cmpute.io for its software product that compares workloads and costs across clouds and identifies ways to save money. Cmpute.io is a privately-held company operating in Bangalore, India, and incorporated in Delaware. Cisco won’t disclose the acquisition price,” reported SDxCentral.
• Juniper scouts for multi-cloud cybersecurity M&A targets (Light Reading)
  “Juniper Networks has set its sights on being a leading player in the multi-cloud cybersecurity sector and is ready to make a strategic acquisition to advance that strategy, the vendor’s CEO told industry analysts at a briefing in London Wednesday,” according to Light Reading.
• Verizon says its intelligent edge will reduce network costs (SDxCentral)
  “Speaking at a Barclays investor conference, Ed Chan, SVP of technology, strategy, and planning at Verizon, said the company’s intelligent edge network is basically changing how the service provider is running the network by making software the control point for the network, which means it’s easier to automate services and share different network assets,” noted SDxCentral.
• VMware targets cloud and container networking with latest NSX-T launch (NetworkWorld)
  “VMware today released a new version of its NSX virtual networking software that aims to make it easier to manage network requirements of cloud-native and application-container-based applications. The move represents the latest example of a network vendor evolving its automation tooling to operate in not just traditional data center and campus networks, but increasingly in cloud environments that cater to a faster-pace of application development,” said NetworkWorld.
• Salesforce is latest big tech vendor to join the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (TechCrunch)
  “Salesforce announced today that it was joining the Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF), the open-source organization that manages Kubernetes, the popular open-source container orchestration tool,” noted TechCrunch. “Salesforce is a SaaS vendor, but it too is seeing what so many others are seeing: containerization provides a way to more tightly control the development process. Kubernetes and cloud native computing in general are a big part of that, and Salesforce wants a piece of the action.”
• Elon Musk told party attendees that Tesla is making A.I. hardware that could be ‘the best in the world’ (CNBC)
  “Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked up the company’s work to develop custom hardware for artificial intelligence on Thursday during a talk at a company party for academic and industry researchers,” reported CNBC. “The specialized hardware could one day be used inside Tesla vehicles to do the computing work necessary for autonomous driving. Currently, Tesla’s Autopilot hardware system relies on graphics cards from Nvidia.”
• New Report: 2017 Next-Gen Software-Defined Infrastructure Assurance: Converging Roles of APM & NPM (SDxCentral)
  “With NPM and APM at the core of assurance, capacity planning, scaling and even security of our next-generation technology infrastructure, we’re certain that new technology investments (Big Data, AI/ML, automation) by end-users and vendors alike in performance management will provide a great return on investment for the foreseeable future,” noted SDxCentral in a new report on the topic.
• Gartner says enterprises must embrace digital transformation in 2018 (eWEEK)
  “Gartner executives speaking at its annual Data Center Infrastructure and Operations Conference say enterprises should start implementing digital transformation projects in 2018 or risk falling behind their competition,” according to eWEEK.
• Melting Arctic ice makes high-speed internet a reality (The New York Times)
  “High-speed internet cables snake under the world’s oceans, tying continents together and allowing email and other bits of digital data sent from Japan to arrive quickly in Britain. Until recently, those lines mostly bypassed the Arctic, where the ice blocked access to the ships that lay the cable,” notes The New York Times in a feature on one Alaskan town.
• Wired visualizes the evolution of data leaks (Wired)
  “Based on data from CyberScout and the Identity Theft Resource Center, we created a series of contour lines showing how frequently companies, hospitals, government agencies, and other organizations were compromised by various methods over time,” reported Wired in an infographic on how data leaks have evolved.

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