Juniper Pushes SDN Strategy Ahead With JunosV Contrail

Juniper Networks is leveraging its recent acquisition of Contrail Systems to launch JunosV Contrail, a product portfolio that includes the open, standards-based JunosV Contrail Controller for software-defined networks.

The company says the JunosV Contrail Controller provides the core benefits SDN customers are seeking: multitenancy, cloud federation and network automation. Enterprises can provision and enforce networking services such as security, load balancing and DPI using automated SDN service chaining within and across hybrid clouds. Any physical IP-based network can be virtualized using software overlay technology and integrated into an open cloud orchestration system that supports several common protocols, including XMPP and BGP. These virtual networks serve the applications; compute resources, storage and networking can be provisioned on demand.

In addition to the controller, the JunosV Contrail includes analytics capabilities to help enterprises gather more information from all elements of their networks. Juniper has also struck partnerships with Citrix, Cloudscaling, Mirantis and Red Hat so customers can easily use JunosV Contrail to build OpenStack or CloudStack clouds and take advantage of open standards.

Now in beta, JunosV Contrail is expected to be widely available in the second half of the year under the Juniper Software Advantage licensing program. Pricing was not disclosed. Juniper acquired startup Contrail late last year for $176 million on the heels of Cisco acquiring SDN player Cariden for $141 million.

Riverbed Stingray Services Controller Allows One ADC Per App

Riverbed Technology is giving enterprises the ability to automatically provision, deploy, license, meter and manage their application delivery controller inventory in an as-a-service model with its new Stingray Services Controller. Rather than having to deploy ADCs in a network-centric model of one application per ADC box, the new controller enables one ADC to be deployed for each application -- essentially an application delivery controller-as-a-service (ADCaaS).

The Stingray Services Controller comes with a new consumption model for customers deploying ADC services, called the Stingray Traffic Manager "micro" instance. These STM micro instances can range from small ADC instances to large Stingray instances all on commodity servers. Enterprises will no longer need to estimate traffic load and be able to pre-procure ADC capabilities in advance. ADC services can now be flexibly scaled on demand to meet the needs of each application in the data center with support for high density, full isolation and multitenancy scaling.

Riverbed is demonstrating its Stingray Services Controller this week at Interop Las Vegas booth No. 1,351. The controller is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2013. Pricing was not disclosed.

Huawei Grows CloudEngine Switch Line

Amid recent reports that it was no longer interested in the U.S. market, Huawei was on hand at Interop Las Vegas to launch the latest member of its CloudEngine line of data center switches, the CE12816. The new switch has a capacity of 64 Tbps, the company says, and leverages its next-gen VRP8 software platform to provide L2/L3 switching capabilities.

As with all switches in the CE12800 series, the CE12816 supports 1, 10, 40 and 100 GE connectivity, while supporting densities up to 192 100-GE, 384 40-GE, or 1,536 10-GE line-speed ports. Other features of the CE series include the Cluster Switch System, which virtualizes multiple switches into one logical switch, and the Virtual System, which virtualizes one switch into multiple independent logical devices. Together, they turn the network into a resource pool that can be allocated on demand.

Pricing and availability of the CE12816 were not disclosed. Huawei is located at booth No. 1,439 at Interop Las Vegas.

Ixia Introduces Testing and Validation Tools

Ixia has developed a tool to help enterprises simulate a data center rack of virtualized servers in the form of a single appliance. RackSim allows enterprises to validate and test the resiliency of their networks, including both on-premises and virtual technologies, in concert with the Ixia's new IxNetwork AppLibrary.

With RackSim, enterprises can test and validate workload mobility, shared services, dynamic provisioning, resource optimization, simplified management and disaster recovery of a virtualized data center. They can also simulate hypervisors, virtual machines and application traffic. The IxNetwork AppLibrary combines real-world applications with protocols and stateless traffic to more thoroughly test network infrastructure.

Ixia is showcasing RackSim and the IxNetwork AppLibrary at Interop Las Vegas 2013 in booth No. 1,951.

BMC Would Go Private Under Proposed Acquisition

BMC Software will have new owners if shareholders approve its sale to a private investor group led by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital along with GIC Special Investments and Insight Venture Partners. The transaction would be valued at $6.9 billion with affiliates of the private investor group acquiring all outstanding BMC common stock at $46.25 per share in cash. For the four fiscal quarters ended March 31, BMC's revenue was $2.2 billion.

BMC's board of directors unanimously approved the agreement to be acquired, and the deal is expected to close later this year pending shareholder and regulatory approval. As part of this agreement, however, BMC has left the door open until 30 days from the May 6 announcement to entertain proposals from other interested buyers.