Transforming Network Infrastructure Week in Review: Calient, Calsoft, Dell, EXFO, Midokura, WebNMS
Calient Technologies Inc. and the Center for Integrated Access Networks, Calsoft Labs and WebNMS, and Dell and Midokura all announced new partnerships this week aimed at expediting network infrastructure transformation.
The one involving Calient and CIAN, a university research organization, is aimed at expanding the use of optical circuit switching for metropolitan network and software-defined data center implementations.
The partners are looking at optical network pre-configuration and recovery in disaster situations, and exploring the use of software control plane solutions in hybrid packet-optical data center networks. This work involves the use of the Calient S320 optical circuit switch, Columbia University’s electrical engineering lab, and the HELIOS work that stemmed from U.C. San Diego’s CIAN project.
As for Calsoft Labs and WebNMS, they have come together so Calsoft can offer professional services to help service providers more effectively implement and use WebNMS Symphony for unified network management and service orchestration to support advanced Ethernet services.
An orchestration platform, WebNMS Symphony uses big data analytics, REST APIs, and YANG modeling to support network functions virtualization and software-defined networking. It also centralizes the control of multilayer and multivendor networks.
Meanwhile, Midokura is among the latest to jump aboard the Dell Open Networking initiative. This group provides enterprises and service providers with access to an open cloud networking infrastructure management suite based on Dell OpenStack. The relationship also involves a joint go-to-market program, a reference architecture, and a global reseller agreement between the companies.
In other recent developments related to network transformation, network service assurance and test outfit EXFO has been promoting its Intelligent Optical Link Mapper OTDR-based application, which delivers detailed information on every element of a link.
"Bringing the iOLM’s unique capability into the data center and enterprise market is yet another milestone in EXFO's vision to help IT network managers improve global efficiency,” said Etienne Gagnon, vice president of the physical-layer and wireless division at the company. “Our intelligent and automated solution finds network faults faster, keeping mean-time-to-repair low, while ensuring networks are ready for the migration to 40G/100G.”
