Microsoft Corp. and Lenovo have announced a new deal that will see Lenovo will load Microsoft’s productivity apps — including Microsoft Office, OneDrive and Skype — on select Lenovo devices that use the Android operating system. Lenovo expects to ship millions of these Android-based devices worldwide over the next several years. This expanded collaboration between Microsoft and Lenovo also includes a patent cross-licensing agreement that covers Lenovo and Motorola devices.
The U.S. Department of Commerce has granted ZTE extended relief from U.S. trade restrictions levied earlier this year in response to alleged export control violations from the Chinese device manufacturer. The restrictions were temporarily lifted in March; the new order will extend the reprieve through November 28.
AT&T is now offering its customers the ability to purchase Samsung Connect auto, a new device that turns vehicles (1996 models or newer) into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and more. AT&T said it is the first wireless provider of the solution in the U.S.
Samsung Connect auto enables drivers to equip their vehicle with a variety of smart-car technologies through a single device. With AT&T’s 4G LTE network, users can turn a car into a Wi-Fi hotspot and connect up to 10 devices. The smartphone app, available for most Android and iOS operating systems, also lets owners track their car’s location and receive maintenance notifications.
The device is currently available for purchase online and will be available in stores starting Sept. 9. AT&T said the device can be added to a Mobile Share Value or Mobile Share Advantage plan for $10 per month. The device costs $109.99 retail or $0 down with a two-year agreement, AT&T said.
GigaSpaces, a provider of software for cloud application orchestration and scaling of mission-critical applications on cloud environments, has hired telecommunications industry veteran Michael Brenner as chief architect for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
Brenner’s role at GigaSpaces will be to lead the standardization strategy for NFV and Software Defined Networking (SDN) and accordingly influence the product strategy for Cloudify and the ARIA project. Cloudify is an open source, TOSCA-based cloud orchestration framework that provides full lifecycle automation (provisioning, deployment, monitoring and remediation) of enterprise and NFV applications. ARIA is an open-governance reference implementation of TOSCA and is used as the engine behind Cloudify.
Until recently, Brenner served as vice-chair of the Network Functions Virtualization Industry Specification Group (NFV-ISG) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and previously spent 25 years at Alcatel-Lucent.
