Alcatel-Lucent’s Nuage Networks has won a data center contract with Numergy, a French cloud services firm created by SFR, Bull and the French government. Numergy plans to open two data centers this year and ten more over the next three years. The company will use Alcatel-Lucent’s 7750 service routers in combination with the firm’s Nuage Networks’ SDN solutions. Numergy will deploy the Nuage virtualized services platform (VSP) and 7850 virtualized services gateway.
Nuage Networks was formed by Alcatel-Lucent a year ago to focus on software-defined networking. The company said it wanted to target data centers and to apply key concepts from mobile networking to data centers. For example, Nuage CEO and founder Sunil Khandeka said that limited connectivity in data centers leads to inefficient use of server assets, and that software can address this issue.
French telecom SFR, one of the investors in Numergy, was a trial customer for Nuage Networks. Nuage partners include F5 Networks, Citrix, Palo Alto Networks, and HP, all of which are looking at ways to integrate the company’s SDN solutions with their own software.
Nuage says that its solution allows networks to be configured according to pre-defined policies and that it gives Numergy a a common policy framework through which the company can maintain full control and visibility of its infrastructure. Numergy will also be able to experiment with new network configurations without impacting the live network.
For mobile operators, SDN offerings from infrastructure giants like Alcatel-Lucent can offer advantages and challenges. An equipment vendor is clearly in the best position to offer software that interfaces with its hardware. The challenges arise when the operator includes another vendor’s equipment in the network as well. Recognizing this opportunity, a number of software companies are working to create “vendor-agnostic” SDN solutions for mobile operators.
Follow me on Twitter.
