The Cisco IoT Control Center has also grown from managing 20 million IoT devices in 2016, to more than 160 million connected devices today.

The optical giant says the routers will help network operators achieve the low-latency, high-performance requirements for 5G fronthaul, midhaul, and backhaul transport.

Ericsson is also adding containers on a bare metal cloud infrastructure, which it claims can save operators up to 30% on operational costs compared to virtual machines.

Oracle’s new data science platform marks a continued effort to integrate AI and ML into its cloud infrastructure.

Arista networks buys Big Switch; VMware acquires AIOps vendor Nyansa to bolster SD-WAN; plus the latest VC/M&A news from January.

IBM injects red into its blue executive suite; Nokia cuts 180 jobs with more to come; plus Pt. 1 of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes.

“We are the first telecommunications vendor who is bringing programmability into the operations center,” said Nokia's Miikka Karhuluoma.

SD-WAN has the potential to address many of IoT's security and operational challenges, says Apcela CEO Mark Casey.

The startup plays heavily in the telecom sector — 80% of its existing customers are in the space, and it expects 5G deployments to drive future business.

Masergy wants to make it easier for its SD-WAN customers to identify and address unauthorized use of software-as-a-service apps.

“These technologies are not standalone technologies, they’re actually reinforcing,” Intel CEO Bob Swan said.

While 5G and industrial IoT are still years from maturity, that's not stopping companies from investing big in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Shape boasts that it protects more accounts from fraud than everyone else combined.

Former co-CEO Mark Hurd passed away in October. Safra Catz will take on sole leadership at Oracle.

The VividCortex acquisition better positions SolaWinds against competitors including Cisco, Aruba, Datadog, Dynatrace and New Relic.

IBM Cloud Identity now uses adaptive access capabilities to continually assess employee or consumer user risk levels when accessing applications and services.

The 5G-Drive consortium has its sights set on the development of 5G autonomous drone scouts and industrial IoT.

Users can provision Juniper’s EX Series switches similar to how they control their SD-WAN environment.

Nvidia's GPU-accelerated supercomputers will soon be available for researchers to rent on Microsoft Azure. The company announced support for Arm.

A 5G SA core will allow operators to offer 5G-specific services, including network slicing, mobile edge computing, AI-driven analytics, and ultra-low latency networks.

The software lets customers consolidate their network monitoring and telemetry into a single dashboard and eliminate monitoring tools like Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, or SolarWinds.

This provides a consistent operational security model for customers running applications on Azure.

The blending of 5G and other technology breakthroughs will drive innovation on a scale the world hasn’t experienced since electricity, Huawei's Guo Ping said.

“The gap that distinguishes leaders from the rest of the pack is very small,” GlobalData analyst Glen Hunt said.