NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker Technology, a provider of OSS/BSS and service orchestration solutions, announced that, in partnership with Infinera and Juniper Networks, they have released a new Transport SDN solution designed to transform how networks are managed and controlled.
Combining Infinera's expertise in building Intelligent Transport Networks, Juniper's capabilities in IP/MPLS, physical/virtual network functionality and domain orchestration, and NEC/Netcracker's multi-layer control and service orchestration expertise, including NEC's advanced network transport products, the partnership is intended to deliver a compelling new Transport SDN solution.
The integrated solution provides functionality spanning visibility across all IP, optical and microwave domains, including SDN and traditional network environments, optimises network utilisation and automates service provisioning and path restoration.
The solution is designed to equip service providers to implement network transformations that can intelligently adapt to the dynamic requirements of end users, with the ability to provide network slices for specific services end-to-end cross the network. This capability allows providers to accommodate changing traffic patterns and on-demand customer requests and improve quality of services for customers, as well as enabling cost savings by optimising capacity usage.
The solution additionally allows service providers to automate the network service infrastructure, thereby enabling them to focus resources on addressing new revenue opportunities and optimising service costs.
NEC/Netcracker, Infinera and Juniper Networks noted that they joined to demonstrate the combined solution as part of the Optical Interworking Forum (OIF)/Open Networking Foundation (ONF) Transport API project earlier this year. Participants in the project executed a multi-domain path selection and recovery test plan with intra-lab and inter-lab testing across multiple global carrier labs, including those of Verizon and Telefónica.
During the demonstration, NEC/Netcracker's Multilayer SDN Controller used the new Transport API defined by the ONF to communicate with Juniper's NorthStar Controller at Verizon's lab and the Infinera Xceed optical SDN domain controllers at Telefónica's lab. As part of the event, NEC/Netcracker's Service Orchestration solution successfully created and managed Ethernet point-to-point private services across multiple vendor and multiple operator domains.
