Brocade and NEC Collaborate to Expand Market for Software-Defined Networking

Brocade and NEC (News - Alert) Corporation of America are collaborating to provide integrated solutions around Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlowswitching, including network virtualization.

Under the partnership, Brocade and NEC will do joint marketing for open standards-based solutions for network virtualization, large-scale data center infrastructure management, traffic engineering and Wide Area Network (WAN) flow management. These high-value solutions are built around Brocade's (News - Alert) OpenFlow-enabled products and NEC's award-winning Programmable Flow Controller.

According the press release, to support their commitment for ongoing certification, interoperability and solution validation testing, Brocade and NEC will setup joint solution labs in key locations to test and demonstrate their solutions. The present Brocade and NEC OpenFlow-enabled products have been successfully tested for interoperability in 2011.

"Through standards-based solutions like OpenFlow, the SDN and underlying network can be coupled to optimize service performance and cost. A key objective for Verizon (News - Alert) is to virtualize the network and converge the orchestration of the virtualized networks with VMs in the data centers to create a true cloud," said Stuart Elby, vice president, network architecture and technology, Verizon, and founding board member of Open Networking Foundation (ONF).

To enable their joint customers to do continuous innovation and seamless deployment, Brocade and NEC aligning their technology and implementation methodology, including OpenFlow standards, tunnel technology and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

"The combined NEC and Brocade SDN solutions will give customers the ability to design, deploy, monitor and manage secure, multi-tenant networks from a single point of control," said Mitsuhiro Murooka, vice president, NEC Enterprise Technologies IT. "Brocade and NEC customers will be able to achieve greater service agility, granular traffic control and significant productivity gains by adopting a software-defined network architecture."

Brocade and NEC recently demonstrated their technology and joint solutions at the Open Networking Summit 2012 in Santa Clara, California and Interop (News - Alert), Las Vegas. Additional demonstrations are planned for upcoming industry events, including Interop Tokyo (June 13 to 15, 2012).