Nuage Networks says it has conducted 30 successful trials of network virtualization around the world in the past year, and that its initial focus on the data center environment is bringing validation to the much-hyped prospects of software-defined networking.
The Alcatel-Lucent venture was launched one year ago, and the company is affirming customer momentum in adoption of its SDN solution, including its Virtualized Services Platform and a virtualized services gateway. It describes the goal of SDN as the “consolidation and automation of network services,” which is perhaps as good a general definition of SDN as the industry has been able to come up with. An SDN network, Nuage added, “must provide policy-driven connectivity to support applications placed anywhere in the infrastructure, and be instantaneously reachable by users.”
The company also acknowledged that enterprises and service providers are “seeking best of breed tools that can ensure an open multivendor SDN approach.”
“We see the data center as a microcosm of the bigger cloud network,” said Houman Modarres, who leads marketing for Nuage.
Operators and businesses, he said are “trying to reduce any delay in turning up new applications and services, to be able to address more customers with more content, more quickly,” he added. “That’s where the benefits of a new operational model really manifest themselves.”
“For a company like Nuage, one year is plenty of time to get positioned and start making noise, especially when using technology that was mostly proven and in trials with various CSPs and large enterprises,” said Tim McElligott, senior consulting analyst for global operations and monetization strategy at Stratecast, which chose Nuage as a “company to watch” in 2014. “We believe there will be significant forward movement in SDN in 2014, and Nuage Networks is among the best positioned in an industry battle amongst the likes of Juniper, Cisco and VmWare to make the most immediate impact.”
