Juniper Virtualizes its Flagship MX Edge Router

Juniper Networks introduced a virtualized version of its flagship MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routing platform, enabling it to operate as software on x86 servers.  The move brings the full feature set and functionality of the company's edge routers to cloud infrastructure.

Juniper said it expects customers will combine the new vMX with its existing physical router portfolio in a common operations model. The virtualized MX implementations bring agility in deployment, scalability and service flexibility, while the physical version powered by the company's proprietary chipsets will deliver highest performance. In particular, the vMX enables new service creation and delivery models by reducing the risks and costs associated with a hardware-centric service roll-out.  Service providers with MX edge routers deployed in their networks can more cost effectively expand the reach of the network by leveraging x86. With the vMX, carrier-grade routing can be deployed in the time it takes to spin up a virtual machine, scaled elastically with virtual capacity, and if the need arises, migrated to the high-performance physical MX Series platforms for high-volume workloads.

"Juniper Networks' heritage is rooted in its willingness to challenge the status quo. Today, Juniper is once again redefining the industry by giving customers the freedom to leverage the benefits of both physical and virtual networking. How committed are we? We've virtualized our number-one selling routing platform so that our customers can increase service satisfaction, improve brand value and protect their profit margins. That's how much we believe in our customer's success," said Rami Rahim, executive vice president of Juniper Development and Innovation, Juniper Networks.

"AT&T is testing vMX for use in its software-defined network architecture. With the rapid pace of innovation required to meet increasing customer demands, our industry needs to shift network infrastructures from hardware-centric to software-centric such that the network behaves as flexibly as the cloud. AT&T's Domain 2.0 initiative embodies this shift," stated Susan Johnson, senior vice president of Global Supply Chain, AT&T.

http://newsroom.juniper.net/press-releases/juniper-networks-redefines-networking-industry-with-first-carrier-grade-virtual--nyse-jnpr-1153458

• Juniper first launched its MX platform in 2006.
  
• In October 2013, Juniper announced line-card enhancements and a new switch fabric for its SDN-ready, MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router portfolio.  The upgrades significantly expand system capacity, subscriber bandwidth and service performance. 
  The new line cards increase per-slot bandwidth up to 520 Gbps and offer hardware support for as many as 128,000 subscribers, enabling cost-effective subscriber concentration. The new switch fabric module more than doubles the capacity of several key MX 3D platforms, including the widely deployed MX960 and enhanced service cards for the entire MX Series portfolio. These new service cards enable up to three times the per-slot capacity and up to four times the service density of similar modules offered by other vendors.
  The enhancements are compatible with tens of thousands of MX Series 3D Universal Edge platforms deployed by service provider, cable and enterprise networks globally. The upgrade path supports SDN capabilities, including those powered by Juniper’s Contrail SDN controller.

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Juniper Intros OpenStack-based Contrail Cloud

Juniper Networks introduced Contrail Cloud, a new OpenStack-based software platform for cloud resource orchestration and lifecycle management that brings together compute, network, storage and virtualization.

Contrail Cloud works with Contrail Networking, formerly known as Juniper Networks Contrail SDN Controller, to provide the foundation, framework and ecosystem that enables the delivery of a turnkey NFV solution. It delivers virtual network functions (VNFs) such as Juniper Networks Firefly Perimeter, a fully virtualized security solution that includes firewall, antivirus, antispam and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS).

Juniper's Contrail Cloud is supported by a broad set of technology partners, including Amdocs, Akamai and Canonical.

Juniper is also introducing new Junos DevOps capabilities for all of its routing platforms.

The new Junos Continuity is a feature enhancement designed to allow new hardware features or upgrades to be inserted without having to update the OS version, avoiding costly qualification testing.  It will launch in Q1 2015.

http://www.juniper.net

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Dell, Brocade and Intel Collaborate on Open-standard NFV

Dell, Brocade and Intel have collaborated to deliver new NFV solutions for telecom service providers.

Specifically, Dell has added the Brocade Vyatta vRouter software to its newly introduced NFV platform, which is powered by Intel’s Data Plane Developers Kit (DPDK) and the Xeon E5-2600v3 processor.

Brocade’s latest vRouter (v5600) is the first 10Gbps+ virtual router capable of providing advanced routing in software.  It leverages the Intel DPDK to outperform the previous generation (v5400) and features high-performance virtual routing, stateful firewall, VPN functions and Layer4-7 application delivery service.

http://www.dell.com
http://www.brocade.com

• In October, Dell introduced its deployment-ready NFV platform, which consists of its new Intel Xeon-powered 13th generation PowerEdge servers, Dell Open Networking, and software from open ecosystem partners and open source distributions. The platform also includes foundational software and open interfaces for Management and Orchestration (MANO) for simple operation and ease of integration.  Key marketing points:

• Open and Standard: The Dell NFV platform is built on Dell PowerEdge servers with the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600v3 processors combined with the innovative open networking platforms and a rich set of open interfaces ensuring maximum interoperability, manageability, and investment protection.  
• Scalable in Any Direction: The Dell NFV platform can scale easily—up, down, or out—to accommodate a wide range of design goals, service capabilities and environmental conditions from small, unstaffed points-of-presences, to central office environments, and to hyperscale data centers. This includes options for Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS) platforms, Fresh-Air systems and modular/containerized solutions.
• Driving Open Source Innovation: The Dell NFV platform aims to provide a choice of software stack to complement Dell’s infrastructure and management software. This announcement extends Dell’s collaboration with Red Hat to co-engineer OpenStack-based NFV and SDN solutions specifically for the telecommunications industry.  
• Open Partner Ecosystem: Dell will foster an open partner ecosystem and welcomes participation and engagement without exclusivity across all functional areas. 
• Dell is making contributions to the Open Compute Project for disaggregating server elements
• Dell is backing the Linux Foundation’s Open Platform NFV Project (OPNFV) enabling open source reference implementations.
• Dell and Red Hat will make NFV test equipment available in their respective customer labs to demonstrate their joint offering.

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Zayo Plans Low-Latency Fiber from NYSE to NJ Data Centers

Zayo announced the availability of a dark fiber route between the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Data Center facility at 1700 MacArthur Blvd in Mahwah, New Jersey and 755 Secaucus Road, outside of New York City. The new route is the shortest, lowest latency fiber route currently available between the two key facilities, providing financial institutions with the reliable, high-bandwidth connectivity required for trading and transporting financial data. The route offers reduced latency from Mahwah to major data centers via 755 Secaucus Road, including 1400 Federal Blvd in Carteret, 300 Boulevard East in Weehawken, 60 Hudson Street in New York, and 111 8th Ave in New York. Zayo will also offer a fully diverse ring solution between Mahwah and 755 Secaucus Road.

The new fiber route is engineered at 38.8 km and is connected to Zayo’s extensive New Jersey/New York dark fiber network, which spans more than 500 route miles. The project is expected to be complete early in the first quarter of 2015.

http://www.zayo.com

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Infonetics: Carrier SDN and NFV to reach $11 billion by 2018

The global carrier SDN and NFV hardware and software is forecast to grow from less than $500 million in 2013 to over $11 billion in 2018, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.

The new 46-page report provides detailed analysis of the SDN and NFV markets and their many facets—from SDN router and switch hardware and software, to the many categories of NFV, particularly the virtualized network functions (VNFs) comprising policy (policy and charging rules function [PCRF] and deep packet inspection [DPI]), the mobile packet core and evolved packet core (EPC), IP multimedia subsystem (IMS), and security.

Some highlights:

• NFV represents the lion’s share of the combined SDN and NFV market, from 2014 out to 2018
• The value of NFV is in the virtualized network functions software—the applications—rather than the orchestration and control; VNF makes up over 90% of the NFV software segment
• SDN and NFV exemplify the telecom industry’s shift from hardware to software: SDN and NFV software are projected to make up of three-quarters of total SDN/NFV revenue in 2018

“For three years, the telecom industry has been abuzz over SDN and NFV, with anticipation and hard work developing the vision, goals, architectures, use cases, proof-of-concept projects, field trials, and even some commercial deployments. We’ve been gathering data in this early market for nearly two years and are projecting the global service provider SDN and NFV market to reach $11 billion in 2018,” says Michael Howard, Infonetics Research's co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks.

http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2014/Carrier-SDN-NFV-Market-Highlights.asp

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Arista Posts Q3 Sales of $155.5 Million, up 53% YoY

Arista Networks reported Q3 revenue of $155.5 million, an increase of 53.0% compared to the third quarter of 2013, and an increase of 12.7% from the second quarter of 2014. GAAP gross margin was 64.9%. GAAP net income came in at $21.9 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $11.9 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2013.

“We had good performance in Q3 2014 as we shipped our three millionth port this quarter and achieved a record $155.5 million in revenue, growing 53% year over year,” stated Jayshree Ullal, Arista President and CEO. “The flagship Arista 7500E Spine and X-Series Spline products continue to drive our customer demand.”

Arista also announced that Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., the lead joint book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters in Arista’s IPO in June 2014, at the request of Arista, have agreed to release the lock-up restrictions for Arista employees for up to 50% of the shares of Arista common stock held by them effective November 11, 2014. This will increase the public float for investors and allow its employees additional time in 2014 for liquidity prior to commencement of its quarter end blackout period.

http://www.arista.com/en/

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Radisys Posts Q3 Revenue of $51 Million, Non-GAAP Profitability

Radisys reported third quarter 2014 revenues of $50.8 million and a GAAP net loss of $4.5 million or $0.12 per diluted share. Third quarter non-GAAP profit was $0.7 million or $0.02 per diluted share.

“As we continue the transformation of Radisys, I’m pleased we met the guidance set in August and returned the company to non-GAAP profitability. Our continued progress in driving our strategy combined with a relentless focus on improving operational efficiencies and reducing cost have yielded steadily improving financial results over the prior four quarters," stated Brian Bronson, Radisys President and Chief Executive Officer.

Radisys noted 30+ MRF trials in support of both Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and WebRTC deployments that leverage its media processing expertise with either its full media processing platform or its virtualized software-only MRF.

http://www.radisys.com

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Brocade Appoints Kevin Shatzkamer as CTO Mobile Networking

Brocade announced the appointment of Kevin Shatzkamer as Distinguished Engineer and CTO Mobile Networking. He joins other high-profile hires in the Brocade Office of the CTO, including David Meyer, Tom Nadeau, and Benson Schliesser.

Previously, Shatzkamer served as a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco. He also currently serves as a board advisor for a number of companies, including DataRPM, Voltserver, and Penthera Partners.

http://www.brocade.com

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Shippable Raises $8 Million for Containerized Continuous Delivery Platform

Shippable, a start-up based in Seattle, raised $8 million in Series A funding for its containerized continuous integration and delivery platform.

The idea is to accelerate application development testing. Shippable runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is natively built on Docker, an open source project that is rapidly driving adoption of “containerization.”  The Shippable platform can abstract containerization, thus not requiring any changes to how code is written or deployed.

Shippable is available as a hosted service and Dedicated Hosts hybrid model and is free for unlimited public and private repositories.

Shippable claims the following benefits:

• Automated Functional Testing with instant, on demand dev/test environments that are containerized replicas of production
• Hybrid labs that can seamlessly grow or shrink across on-premise and cloud machines with changes in workloads
• Continuous integration and delivery with an automated pipeline from “code to production”

The funding round was led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from existing investors including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Divergent Ventures and Founders Co-Op.

“The phrase ‘continuous integration’ is a misnomer. Traditional CI tools like Jenkins only help automate unit tests, and functional testing on staging environments is still predominantly manual and not really ‘continuous.’ We have created a modern CI platform that automates the entire delivery pipeline and makes fast and agile releases possible for all enterprises,” said Avi Cavale, founder and CEO of Shippable. “We’re really thrilled to work with Madrona.  They have supported us and watched us grow since our seed round and will be great partners as we expand our business to the enterprise and beyond.”

http://www.shippable.com

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Docker Hires VMware Exec for Key Engineering Role

Docker has hired Marianna Tessel to serve as senior vice president of engineering. Tessel will be responsible for rapidly growing the global engineering team, supporting and expanding the thriving partner ecosystem, and addressing the technology demands put forth by Docker’s customers and partners.

She joins Docker from her former position as a long time vice president of engineering at VMware, where she was responsible for technology collaborations in all areas of VMware technologies, including computer, storage, networking and cloud. Tessel was also responsible for developing various VMware vSphere subsystems and pioneered multiple efforts while at VMware including vSphere integration to OpenStack and an engineered solution practice.

http://www.docker.com

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