Brocade and NEC announce SDN partnership
Brocade and NEC have announced a collaboration deal in the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) space, with the companies to set up joint labs for the development of open standards-based solutions for network virtualisation, data center infrastructure management, WAN management, and traffic engineering.
The solutions will be built around Brocade’s OpenFlow-enabled products and NEC’s Programmable Flow Controller.
At the same time, Brocade has also announced hardware-based OpenFlow support in its MLX routers and NetIron platforms, which the company says enable SDN deployments at speeds of up to 100GB.
Brocade has been endorsing OpenFlow since 2010; Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager, service provider business for Brocade, says in a statement that this deal is a continuation of that commitment.
"SDN enables network operators to rapidly deploy innovative services and access powerful analytics through programmatic control,” Cheng says, "unlocking the intelligence of their data center and wide area networks.”
OpenFlow standards are managed by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Version 1.2 was published in February 2012.
ONF executive director Dan Pitt says open interfaces are going to lead to faster innovation in networking technology.
"We are excited to be joined by leading global companies to help develop and implement advanced networking capabilities for today’s operators and enterprises,” Pitt says.
