NTT Docomo Cites Progress in Multivendor NFV Trials

NTT DOCOMO has now tested NFV implementations from six leading vendors: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, and Nokia Networks.

The carrier said its PoC trials focused on LTE virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC).  Its testing successfully verified the interoperability of each vendor's EPC software with a different vendor's equipment, such as scalable data processing capability for congested data traffic and immediate network recovery in the event of hardware failure. This opens the door for communication software designed originally for dedicated hardware to run on multipurpose hardware. In the future, such technologies will allow mobile operators to combine network hardware and software components of any vendor for deployment of network systems.

"Thanks to collaborative efforts in the mobile network industry, NFV is soundly moving toward practical realization, rather than just ending up as a pie-in-the-sky dream," said Seizo Onoe, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at NTT DOCOMO. "I am delighted that we have confirmed the feasibility of NFV through multi-vendor initiatives with many of the top ICT players."

https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2014/1014_00.html

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Huawei Develops its OpenStack-based FusionSphere Cloud Operating System

Huawei cited progress in developing its FusionSphere platform for NFV and SDN based on OpenStack.

Huawei is creating a distributed cloud data center solution (SD-DC2) based on FusionSphere.  The idea is to enable centralized resources scheduling and unified cloud services provisioning by integrating multiple data centers of various vendors' and service providers' into a single resource pool through the standard Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This would create large-scale resource pools, flexible management, and openness.

Huawei also confirmed that its FusionSphere will be capable of supporting third-party devices and products across hardware and applications.

Huawei will work with major carriers, telecom vendors, IT vendors, and Over the Top (OTT) companies to encourage NFV innovation and best practice identification.

In a keynote address at the Layer123 SDN & OpenFlow World Congress in Düsseldorf, Germany, Justin Dustzadeh, Huawei's CTO & VP Technology Strategy, said SDN requires a new way of thinking from carriers as well as from the network vendors and that Huawei is striving to implement openness across all its platforms. He noted that that do date Huawei has carried out more than 60 joint NFV and Software Defined Network (SDN) innovation projects with over 20 telecom carriers, including Telefonica, Vodafone and China Telecom. Huawei also accomplished several successful commercial deployments in 2014, including the SDN-based Wo cloud project in cooperation with China Unicom, and a NFV-based vIMS joint project with a leading European operator.

This week Huawei is hosting a Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Open Cloud Forum at its European Innovation and Experience Center in Düsseldorf.

http://www.huawei.com

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Juniper and Akamai Demo Elastic CDN based on NFV

At the SDN & OpenFlow World Congress  in Dusseldorf, Juniper Networks and Akamai Technologies are showing an Elastic Content Delivery Network (CDN) that could prove to be a more flexible solution for scaling video delivery.

The proof-of-concept demonstration uses Akamai’s virtualized Aura Licensed CDN (LCDN) software and Juniper's Contrail Controller for SDN and network function virtualization (NFV) to dynamically scale up and down network resources to support content spikes resulting from the broadcast of large events. The technology is also designed to accelerate service creation for service providers utilizing CDNs to launch innovative multiscreen video services that help drive subscriber acquisition and loyalty.

“Content delivery networks are evolving to meet the needs of increasingly real-time, distributed applications and users. Overlay networks have proven to simplify and automate the delivery of application and user-centric services without the administrative overhead of traditional infrastructure approaches. By combining Akamai’s virtualized caching components with Contrail’s scale-out network service automation, the companies have created a truly elastic CDN solution to meet the emerging needs of telco clouds,” stated Jennifer Lin, senior director product management, Juniper Networks.

http://www.juniper.net
http://www.akamai.com

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Procera's NFV Software Solution Hits 40 Gbps on COTS

Procera Networks' PacketLogic/V Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) software solution has been benchmarked by the European Advanced Network Test Center (EANTC) at 40Gbps with fully active Internet Intelligence functionality, running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment.

Specifically, the EANTC testing measured the performance of the PacketLogic/V solutions running on a dual socket Intel Xeon E5-2699v3 CPUs clocked at 2.30 Ghz and 18 cores with 64 Gigabytes of memory (RAM). The software environment for the test was Debian 7.6 and Qemu 1.6.2, as well as version 15.0.4.5 of PacketLogic software. The tests measured the performance and latency of PacketLogic/V running in a NFV configuration with full Internet Intelligence capabilities being exercised. In the tests where PacketLogic/V was achieving 40Gbps of performance, the CPU usage never exceeded 45%, demonstrating that the performance could go higher if the platform supported more interfaces.

“A lack of proven NFV performance capabilities in the industry has been blocking many NFV deployment scenarios by operators over the past year,” said Peter Alm, chief product architect at Procera. “Achieving the same performance with COTS NFV as we do on our PacketLogic™ hardware platforms is a significant technical accomplishment that delivers economic and technological value to network operators.”

The test results can be viewed at http://ow.ly/CA5uX

http://www.proceranetworks.com

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Brocade Expands Alliance with VMware

Brocade announced an alliance with VMware to advance solutions that support the New IP by allowing enterprises to more easily transition to software-defined data centers (SDDCs) and adopt network virtualization. Specifically, Brocade Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabrics will be interoperable with VMware vRealize Operations 6.0 (formerly the VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite). The collaboration will enable better analytics capabilities for both Fibre Channel SAN and IP networks. Previous work on Fibre Channel integration into VMware vRealize Operations is now being leveraged by next-generation data centers.

"Our collaboration with Brocade on vRealize Suite 6 has resulted in an interoperable solution that delivers an agile, scalable network infrastructure and enables a seamless migration to cloud architectures," said Sanjay Katyal, Vice President, Strategic Alliances and OEM Partnerships at VMware. "Working with companies such as Brocade allows for the creation of better hybrid cloud architectures for the evolving software-defined data center. This includes delivering a more unified and comprehensive management experience, and helping customers integrate physical and virtual infrastructures that can be viewed and managed as a single unified infrastructure."

"Leveraging both Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabric technologies to support The New IP, Brocade shares VMware's vision for a simplified and automated data center environment that allows our mutual customers to say goodbye to the status quo of inflexible, legacy network and data center designs," said Jason Nolet, vice president, Data Center and Campus Networking, at Brocade. "Our partnership continues to expand in uniting the best aspects of virtual and physical networking across a cloud orchestration framework to enable SDDCs that deliver greater simplicity, higher scalability and more efficient resource utilization."

http://www.brocade.com
http://www.vmware.com

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SAP Designates IBM as a Premier Provider of Cloud Infrastructure

SAP has designated IBM as a premier strategic provider of Cloud infrastructure services for its business critical applications – accelerating customers' ability to run core business in the cloud.

The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud offering is now available through IBM's highly scalable, open and secure cloud.

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will expand to major markets with the addition of the IBM cloud data centers.

"We look forward to extending one of the longest and most successful partnerships in the IT industry," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. "The demand for SAP HANA and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA in the cloud is tremendous and this global agreement with IBM heralds a new era of cloud collaboration. We anticipate customers will benefit from this collaboration and expansion of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud."

"This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud," said IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty. "It builds on our two companies' long history of bringing innovation to business, and extends IBM's position as the premier global cloud platform. Our secure, open, hybrid enterprise cloud platform will enable SAP clients to support new ways to work in an era shaped by Big Data, mobile and social."

http://www.sap.com
http://www.ibm.com

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Dell'Oro: SDN Market Starts to Take Off in 2014

The SDN market arket is forecast to grow more than 65% in 2014, versus 2013, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The majority of sales will be for network security appliances and Ethernet switches as SDN starts to gain a foothold outside of the major cloud providers.

"The Ethernet Switch market is undergoing a technological transformation in the data center, driven by changes in data center networking.  It is clear that, by 2020, data centers will look significantly different from today's," said Alan Weckel, Vice President at Dell'Oro Group.  "How users access data centers will be forever changed, as will the way enterprises deploy and manage them, and the vendors that operate in this market.  The evolution towards 10 GE in the Enterprise and 25 GE in the Cloud is an opportunity for data center vendors and providers to garner an increased amount of IT spending, with vendors and providers that understand and embrace the technology change to virtualized data centers running at 10 GE or higher speeds having the opportunity to see their shares of IT spending increase and their market positions improve in the next several years," Weckel stated.

Dell'Oro Group's Data Center Disruptors Advanced Research Report evaluates the data center network and identifies the equipment that will likely be impacted by SDN in the next several years, including Ethernet Switch, Application Delivery Controllers and Network Security Appliances.  The Report also outlines the disruptive elements to the Ethernet Switch market in the data center, including SDN, Cloud, Virtualization, and the impact of White Box Switching.

The report also reveals first half 2014 vendor placement in the data center Ethernet Switch market and how Arista, Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Extreme, Huawei, and Juniper place in this increasingly important segment.

http://www.delloro.com

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NEC Offers Pay as you Go Pricing for SDN Controller

NEC will offer pay-as-you-go pricing for its SDN ProgrammableFlow Controller.  Pricing increases in step with network capacity.

NEC introduces a ProgrammableFlow SDN Starter Pack, which is priced starting at $3,000 and provides the features of the ProgrammableFlow Controller software, but is designed for smaller SDN deployments, including departmental or lab deployments. The network easily scales up as capacity requirements grow.

"The new pricing enables customers to deploy networks of any size to seize the operational and performance benefits of Open Networking," said Don Clark, director, business development, NEC Corporation of America. "We are confident that once our customers experience the benefits of SDN, they will make it a part of their IT infrastructure."

NEC is also adding new capabilities to Version 6 that lets wide-area Ethernet fabrics stretch across the campus or metro area. Combined with network virtualization, these new capabilities enable network operators to deploy converged network fabrics across remote sites, reducing the need for the costly network hardware required by most traditional networks. SDN for campus networks improves service agility through simplified operations and greater traffic visibility, as compared to traditional networks.

http://www.necam.com/press/read.cfm?ID=DCBA9EE6-C4A8-4561-8B3E-AC864A4C64CC

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