Hammerhead Systems announced its intention to accelerate European expansion plans to support customers and trials. The company said it is in early discussions with potential partners to support Hammerhead customers who deploy its HSX 6000 Layer 2.5 aggregation switch in Europe and in North America, and to support trials at large European carriers. Neither the North American customers nor the European trials have been disclosed. Hammerhead currently has a North American partnership with Fujitsu Network Communications.
Hammerhead has two large customer wins, including an IP MPLS Multi-service Edge Aggregation application and a Business Ethernet Aggregation application. The company said it is accelerating plans to secure European support for global customers and European trials, based on these wins.
In addition to the two existing customers, Hammerhead is in lab trials with other carriers for a variety of applications. In a typical scenario, Hammerhead's HSX 6000 takes physical handoffs from SDH/SONET transport and/or cross-connect equipment, and performs aggregation, grooming, switching, and interworking functions on the data traffic while feeding Gigabit Ethernet to routers. In other cases, the HSX 6000 is a gateway between ATM and MPLS networks validating Hammerhead's value in network.
http://www.hammerheadsystems.com
- In January 2006, Hammerhead Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, closed $30 million in Series C funding, for its traffic aggregation and switching platform.
- Hammerhead's HSX 6000 is a purpose-built Layer 2.5 Aggregation Switch that features MPLS Pseudowire technology. It provides dense Ethernet aggregation, Pseudowire termination, legacy Frame Relay and ATM support, and Service Interworking. It features a "Layer 2.5" edge aggregation approach designed to integrate access services (wireline, broadband, broadband fixed wireless and 3G) that are typically based on Layer 2 connection-oriented technologies with new services that are based on Layer 3. The platform supports the migration of Frame Relay / ATM services onto MPLS backbones, so that it can be used as an aggregation platform in an Ethernet service architecture, offering native Gigabit Ethernet as well as Ethernet-over-SONET (both GFP and x.86) trunking capabilities. On the subscriber side, the HSX 6000 switch offers high-density fan-in across a range of new and legacy service interfaces, media and speeds, including Ethernet.
