Infotech Lead America: Intel announced strategies for leadership in the software-defined networking and network function virtualization (NFV) space.
Announcing three strategic reference architectures — aimed for telecoms, cloud data center and enterprise data center infrastructure market segments — Intel said that it will combine open standards for SDN and NFV with Intel hardware and software to enable networks to be more agile and intelligent.
Integrating SDN and NFV on standard x86 platforms allows lowering the acquisition and management costs as well as enabling new innovative services never before possible in networking infrastructure.
Rose Schooler, vice president of Intel Architecture Group and general manager of Intel’s Communications and Storage Infrastructure Group, said: “The reference designs announced today enable a new phase in the evolution of the network and represent Intel’s commitment to driving an open environment that fosters business agility and smart economics.”
The reference designs and development kits are an important part of Intel’s strategy to enable the industry to move toward open, standards-based technologies such as SDN and NFV.
By separating control and data planes, SDN allows the network to be programmed and managed externally at much larger and more dynamic scale for better traffic control across the entire datacenter. NFV allows service providers to virtualize and manage networking functions such as firewall, VPN or intrusion detection service as virtual applications running on a high-volume x86-based server.
Many ISVs, OEMs and service providers are building innovative solutions on top of Intel’s switch reference architecture, including ATT Foundry, Big Switch Network, Chunghwa Telecom, HP, NEC, NTT Data, Quanta, Super Micro and VMware.
“By decoupling the network from underlying hardware and enabling a new network architecture based on industry-standard x86 technology, network virtualization can transform the operational model of networking to help customers dramatically lower operational and capital expenses,” said Allwyn Sequeira, vice president, Networking and Security, VMware.
“We share Intel’s vision of enabling the network transformation with SDN and NFV across the telecom industry,” – said Atsuo Kawamura, General Manager Telecom Carrier Business Unit, 1st Carrier Services Division, NEC Corporation.
