Alcatel-Lucent has broadened its software-defined networking (SDN) portfolio with the introduction of a programmable access switch that features embedded analytics and can scale to deliver up to 32 10G uplinks. The OmniSwitch 6860 supports the OpenFlow and OpenStack protocols and will be commercially available next month.

It features 24 or 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports, four fixed 1G/10G SFP+ ports and two 20G Virtual Chassis link ports for stacking into a virtual chassis. Up to eight switches can be connected into a virtual chassis with up to 32 10G uplinks and 384Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The enhanced OmniSwitch 6860 “E” models also support four unique 1G PoE ports that offer up to 60 watts of power to support devices that require high power, such as small cells that combine cellular and Wi-Fi, and high definition video surveillance cameras.  The 6860 also includes embedded analytics and programmability, Alcatel-Lucent says. It features an ASIC and coprocessor for deep packet inspection and policy enforcement. This is intended to give IT more visibility into applications passing through it, bandwidth consumption, and enforcement of prioritization, QoS and security policies.

More at: http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2014/04/02/numergy-selects-nuage-networks-for-sdn-to-support-cloud-datacentres/

Numergy selects Nuage Networks for SDN to support cloud data centers

One year old Nuage Networks provides a software defined networking (SDN) platorm for provisioning, orchestration, and control of virtual network resources/end points  The wholly owned subsidiary of Alcatel Lucent provides needed software for that facilitates connectivity between virtual resources in data centers, inter-connection of federated data centers and tieing together of virtual private networks used by branch offices to access cloud services.

French cloud service provider and IT specialist Numergy recently announced that the company will deploy Alcatel-Lucent routers and Nuage Network’s SDN platform to support its cloud computing infrastructure. Numergy is owned by a French consortium that includes the government, SFR and Bull. It said the move is an essential stepping stone towards virtualising more of its datacentre resources. Their mission: to build a “sovereign cloud” that serves consumers and businesses, first in France and then in Europe, and to ensure the location and privacy of sensitive data in compliance with the laws of France and the European Union (EU).

Numergy implemented Nuage Networks’ virtualized services platform (VSP) and virtualized services gateway (VSG) as well as Alcatel-Lucent routers to manage and automate its datacentre networks.  The company said the upgrades will make its internal networks more efficient, and that this is a key stepping stone in its broader strategy to virtualise more of its datacentre resources.

“We are pleased to implement the Nuage Networks product suite in our cloud infrastructure. The Nuage Networks SDN technology allows us to address key performance and compatibility requirements for an open environment,” said Erik Beauvalot, chief operating officer of Numergy.  “This will allow us to virtualize our infrastructure and to offer our customers cloud services in a more dynamic way,” Beauvalot added.

During the Netevents Cloud Innovation Summit, CEO Sunil Khandekar said, “Look at application delivery as the product of the network. Because if we orient ourselves in making us think of networks and compute and storage in terms of allowing applications to be deployed very, very rapidly the whole model in how we build and automate these networks completely changes.”  Sunil added that SDN was the technology that made rapid and robust application delivery happen.  He said that the key attributes of SDN are abstraction, automation, control and visibility.  Abstraction of the underlying network was defined as having the applications not be concerned about VLANs, IP addressing, what protocols they’re running, etc. in the network. They just specify what they need, what the application requirements are in an abstract format and the SDN tools facilitate the virtual connections.

Nuage Networks won Enterprise award at the 2014 NetEvents Cloud Innovation Summit held in Saratoga, California on March 27, 2014.  All the award winners are listed in this article: 

https://techblog.comsoc.org/2014/03/29/winners-of-the-netevents-cloud…

The Nuage Networks Portfolio includes:

• Nuage Networks Virtualization Services Platform (VSP) – lays the foundation for an open and dynamically controlled datacenter network fabric to accelerate application programmability, facilitate unconstrained mobility, and maximize compute efficiency for cloud service providers.
  • Virtual Services Directory (VSD) – serves as a policy, business logic & analytics engine for the abstract definition of network services. Through RESTful APIs to the VSD, administrators can define and refine service designs and instantiate enterprise policies.
  • Virtualized Services Controller (VSC) – serves as the robust control plane of the datacenter network, maintaining a full per-tenant view of network and service topologies. It is an SDN controller with advanced federation capabilities that ensure scaling and graceful interconnection to existing IP networks. Through interfaces such as Openflow, the VSC programs the datacenter network independent of networking hardware.
  • Virtual Routing & Switching (VRS) – serves as a virtual endpoint for network services. Through the VRS, changes in the compute environment are immediately detected, triggering instantaneous policy-based responses in network connectivity to ensure that the needs of applications are met.
• Nuage Networks 7850 Virtualized Services Gateway (VSG) – extends the benefits of SDN automation seamlessly between virtualized and non-virtualized assets in the datacenter. The 7850 VSG is a high-performance gateway platform, offering up to a terabit of capacity in a single rack unit with full layer 2 to layer 4 capabilities for multi-tenant datacenter environments.

More at:  http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/news/2014/numergy-and-secure-sovereign-cloud

http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2014/04/02/numergy-selects-nuage-networ…

http://www.nuagenetworks.net/resource-center/

Nuage Networks Launch Event April 2, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2WXJeOg5Ko

Stay tuned for a feature article on Nuage Networks, based on a visit to their Mt View, CA facility today (April 3, 2014) and their comments at last week’s Cloud Innovation Summit (March 27-28, 2014) in Saratoga, CA.