Orange has entered an alliance with Akamai Technologies to create a Content
Delivery Network (CDN) solution for its business customers.
CDN systems replicate content across a widespread network of servers,
facilitating improved efficiency and service quality by increasing uptime and
enabling faster access and download speeds.
Orange said it expects the partnership to help it address the growth of
web-based traffic across its networks, enhance its HD services and better meet
its enterprise customers’ needs, particularly in media and e-commerce.
The France-based operator plans to leverage technology from Akamai’s Aura
Network Solutions, which it will provide through Orange Business Services,
initially in France.
Research by Informa has indicated that the market for commercial CDN services
will triple in value over the next five years, reaching €3.63 billion by
2017.
Gilles Prunier, SVP of Orange’s Smart Networks program, described the
alliance as an important step forward in the operator’s smart networks
strategy.
“Developing an Orange CDN service, powered by Akamai, will allow us to enrich
our existing B2B services portfolio and to support our customers’ growth by
providing them with new and differentiated web features that improve the
end-user experience and ultimately increase customer loyalty,” he said.
Source: European Communications
Industry Coverage
Industry ends in enterprise network solutions, small and medium enterprises, cloud solutions, NFV, SDN, Cisco, Huawei, Juniper, Alcatel, Brocade network products and solutions
Friday 7 December 2012
Monday 3 December 2012
Cisco Pledges SDN Openness With Cariden
Cisco Systems
Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)
still insists it's got an "open" strategy for software-defined
networking (SDN) and that the Cariden
Technologies Inc. acquisition will only strengthen it.
That statement might make competitors choke on their coffee,
given that Cariden's sofware -- used for evaluating and planning IP/MPLS
networks -- just fell into enemy hands. Cisco announced Thursday that it's
buying Cariden for roughly US$141 million. (See Cisco to Spend
$141M for More SDN Help.)
Service providers use Cariden's network planning tool, called
MATE, to see what's going on inside a variety of vendors' equipment -- Cisco, Juniper Networks
Inc. (NYSE: JNPR),
Alcatel-Lucent
(NYSE: ALU),
Huawei
Technologies Co. Ltd. and others.
Cisco claims it's going to keep it that way.
"It is our express intent to leave it multivendor,"
says Shailesh Shukla, vice president of the newly created service-provider
software and applications group (i.e., the new
boss of Cariden). "You know that service provider networks are
multivendor, so it's important for any software platform that's involved in the
network planning to be multivendor."
As for the "open" part, Cisco plans to standardize
Cariden interfaces by creating the appropriate extensions to standards such as
GMPLS and RSVP. "There's nothing inherently proprietary about any of those
interfaces," says Kishore Seshadri, a Cisco director of product
management.
Even so, it sounds awkward for Cisco to own a tool that's meant
to peek into, say, Juniper equipment. It's one thing for a smaller player like Cyan
Inc. to be able to do that. Cisco is a bigger name with a stigma of
world domination and Godzilla-sized
footprints.
"Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were using Cariden. If I were
them, I'd be a little bit worried," says Eve Griliches, an analyst with ACG
Research .
Cisco counters by pointing out that it's already embracing a
multivendor world, one where customers use (gasp!) other companies' gear.
Prime, Cisco's own network management suite, has had multivendor support for a
year and a half, Shukla says.
"We have real deployments of customers where Prime is
managing other vendors' equipment" he says. "So the multivendor piece
is not an inherent conflict," he says.
Carrier SDN
One might also ask -- as Greg Ferro of the Packet Pushers podcast did -- whether Cariden is overlapping what Insieme Networks Inc. is supposed to be doing. Insieme is Cisco's spin-in that's been described as an SDN startup.
One might also ask -- as Greg Ferro of the Packet Pushers podcast did -- whether Cariden is overlapping what Insieme Networks Inc. is supposed to be doing. Insieme is Cisco's spin-in that's been described as an SDN startup.
Cisco describes the division this way: Cariden is specifically
for service providers, whereas Insieme is more about the data center.
"What service provider customers are asking for is not what
we're hearing on the data-center side," where much of the buzz is about
the potential for new networks built on commodity switches, Seshadri says.
"What they [the service providers] seem to be looking for is more of an
incremental approach."
That incremental approach has become popular in SDN circles,
especially when talks of service-provider networks come up. It's obvious --
telcos won't rip up networks for SDN's sake -- but it's got some implications
that equipment vendors might not love. Namely, it implies SDN will have to
tailor to multivendor networks and probably support multiple types of
controllers.
Regardless of what Cisco actually does with it, Cariden is going
to fill a gap. Cisco sees Cariden's software being merged with nLight, the
control-plane technology announced in October for provisioning the IP and optical
layers together. The result, in theory, is a way to provision network paths by
picking optimal combinations of IP and optical connections. (See Cisco's Core
Router Gets Optical Genes.)
"Cisco really didn't have the orchestration part, and they
really needed it," Griliches says. "They are definitely more focused
on adding value in the software space. I think people don't give Cisco enough
credit in the sense that they're handling the market changes in that space.
"My question is: Why isn't Cariden going to be integrated
with Prime, the Cisco network managment system? It could be that it's just too
early," she adds.
There's also the fact that Cariden has an IP/MPLS heritage but
falls short on the optical side. Cariden had already been working on
IP-plus-optical management, Shukla claims, but Griliches has her doubts about
how much optical experience Cariden has amassed.
"I don't think Cariden has a lot of time working on the
optical side of things. They're talking about IP-and-optical and multilayer
optimization. Cariden says they've been working on this for a year, but given
all their clients, I don't know how much they've done," Griliches says.
Source:
LightReading
Sunday 23 September 2012
Data Centre Security
Cisco Enhances Data Center Security
Cisco has introduced a set of security solutions designed to fortify data centers against the threats they face in moving toward more consolidated and virtualized environments, while also enabling businesses to take advantage of new cloud-based models. Collectively, the offerings extend data center and security professionals' power to enforce end-to-end security for high-capacity data centers and mobile workforces. The offerings include new highly scalable software for the world's most widely deployed firewall, the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) line; virtualized ASA for multitenant environments; a data-center-grade intrusion prevention system (IPS); and new improvements to the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client to meet the stringent requirements of a more mobile and productive workforce...
Please read more here.
Cisco has introduced a set of security solutions designed to fortify data centers against the threats they face in moving toward more consolidated and virtualized environments, while also enabling businesses to take advantage of new cloud-based models. Collectively, the offerings extend data center and security professionals' power to enforce end-to-end security for high-capacity data centers and mobile workforces. The offerings include new highly scalable software for the world's most widely deployed firewall, the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) line; virtualized ASA for multitenant environments; a data-center-grade intrusion prevention system (IPS); and new improvements to the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client to meet the stringent requirements of a more mobile and productive workforce...
Please read more here.
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