UK fibre layer, CityFibre, has announced that one of its Gigabit City builds has actually completed after 18 months’ work. The Stirling build, in partnership with Vodafone, now passes more than 17,500 premises across the city.  But wait...  not quite finished yet. CityFibre says it’s committed to extend the network to reach 2,500 to additional premises, bringing its investment in Stirling to over £12m.  

Rakuten has extended the scope of its famed telco platform to recommendations on how to foster human resources. It recently announced that its Rakuten People and Culture Lab research institute has published a set of guidelines entitled “Best Practices for Collective Well-Being” that provide recommendations on sustainable teambuilding tailored to the “new normal” that has resulted from the global COVID-19 pandemic. It claims it’s drawn up the guidelines from “cutting-edge initiatives from around the world” and has combined them with insights and practical experience gained by the Rakuten Group in Japan and globally. An overview of the guidelines is available, Read more...

DASAN Zhone Solutions or “DZS” has appointed Charlie Vogt as president, CEO and director effective August 1. Vogt, a distinguished information technology and communications executive, joins from ATX Networks, where he remains a member of the board. He succeeds Yung Kim, who has retired after a successful 40-year international telecommunications career and nearly four years at the helm of DZS.

Heavy cloud forecast: According to Forbes 32% of IT budgets will be dedicated to ‘the Cloud’ by 2021, which sounds about right.  Other tidbits... a full 13 per cent of enterprises with over 1000 employees have already migrated their entire IT environment to the cloud as of today and in 18 months it predicts that figure will rise to 22 per cent.