Brocade Announces Open Mobile Network Visibility

Brocade announced new "NETWORK VISIBILITY solutions and a partner ecosystem to empower mobile network operators with critical insights into the traffic within their networks, while also transitioning their visibility infrastructures from being closed and monolithic to software-enabled, open, and disaggregated.

The Brocade® Network Visibility product family includes:

• Brocade MLXe Packet Brokers (starting at $250,000) and Brocade ICX® Packet Broker (starting at$33.000): A comprehensive family of packet brokers to address the wide range of density, performance, and programmability needs of Tier-1 mobile operators

• Brocade Virtual Packet Broker: The industry's first full-featured, virtual TAP/packet broker for vEPC environments
   
• Brocade Session Director (starting at $300,000): Software-based separation of mobile control flow processing in the visibility network to deliver maximum scalability, real-time programmability of packet brokers, and enhanced network intelligence
   
• Brocade Packet Probes: Software-based, scalable, wire-speed packet processing engines that decode and reduce mobile bearer and control traffic to extract and deliver essential metadata required by network monitoring and analytics solutions
  
• Brocade Visibility Manager (starting at $50,000) : A single-pane-of-glass management application for the entire Brocade Network Visibility solution
   
• Open APIs: Application programming interfaces between Brocade and third-party components to help ensure freedom of choice at each layer of the visibility infrastructure

To accelerate adoption and foster innovation in network visibility and analytics solutions, Brocade is building a diverse partner ecosystem. Launching with Viavi Solutions, EMC, Guavus, and Avvasi, the Brocade Network Visibility partner ecosystem aims to provide greater choice and value for mobile operators through best-in-class solutions and third-party interoperability at every layer of the visibility infrastructure:. 

See "Brocade Disrupts the Traditional Network Visibility Market With Comprehensive New IP Solution" - here.

M&As - Mitel Acquires Mavenir; Brocade Acquires Connectem

Two acquisitions in our space:

• Few week after Mavenir acquired the DSC vendor Ulticom (see "Mavenir Turns Ulticom OEM to Acquisition" - here), it has been acquired by Mitel:
  
  "Mitel announced that that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement in which Mitel will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Mavenir common stock in a cash and stock deal valued at approximately $560 million .. With an established footprint of over 130 mobile customers including 15 of the top 20 mobile carriers worldwide, Mavenir is a leader in 4G LTE mobile solutions helping to define the market with a series of industry firsts, including: the world's first live network deployments of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and RCS5 with MetroPCS (now T-Mobile); the first mobile network deployment of IMS-based VoWi-Fi (Wi-Fi calling) with T-Mobile US; and the first implementation of Virtualized RCSe with Deutsche Telekom.
  
  The deal provides Mavenir the financial and operational footprint to drive further market expansion of the company's award-winning mobile solutions.
  
  See "Mitel Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire Mavenir" - here.

• "Brocade announced its intent to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company in the LTE virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) market, in an all-cash transaction.
  
  Related posts:
  
  - Telekom Austria Implements Connetem NFV-Based EPC w/Procera's DPI - here
  - Optus Tests Connectem to Manage Cell Congestion at Peak Usage - here
  
  The acquisition of Connectem extends Brocade's leadership in software networking and virtualized network functions, by enabling service providers and enterprises to offer ubiquitous connectivity between mobile and IoT devices, data centers, as well as public and private clouds. Connectem's vEPC solutions integrate seamlessly with Brocade's software and physical networking product portfolios to deliver industry-leading New IP data center infrastructure"
  
  See "Brocade to Acquire Connectem; Extends Leadership in New IP to Mobile Networks" - here.

[Cisco, Brocade]: Overview of Service Functions Deployment Issues

An IETF document by Paul Quinn, Cisco Systems and Thomas Nadeau [pictured], Brocade "provides an overview of the issues associated with the deployment of service functions (such as firewalls, load balancers, etc.) in large-scale environments"

Introduction 

The delivery of end-to-end services often require various service functions including traditional network service functions (for example firewalls and server load balancers), as well as application- specific features such as http header manipulation. Service functions may be delivered within the context of an isolated user (e.g. a tenant), or shared amongst many users/user groups. 

Current service function deployment models are often tightly coupled to network topology and physical resources resulting in relatively rigid and static deployments. The static nature of such deployments greatly reduces, and in many cases, limits the ability of an operator to introduce new or modify existing services and/or service functions. Furthermore there is a cascading effect: changing one (or more) elements of a service function chain often effects other elements in the chain and/or the network elements used to construct the chain. 

This issue is particular acute in elastic service environments that require relatively rapid creation, destruction or movement of physical or virtual service functions or network elements. Additionally, the transition to virtual platforms requires an agile service insertion model that supports elastic and very granular service delivery, and post-facto modification; supports the movement of service functions and application workloads in the existing network, all the while retaining the network and service policies and the ability to easily bind service policy to granular information such as per-subscriber state. 

This document outlines the problems encountered with existing service deployment models for Service Function Chaining (SFC) (often referred to simply as service chaining; in this document the terms will be used interchangeably), as well as the problems of service chain creation, deletion, modification/update, policy integration with service chains, and policy enforcement within the network infrastructure. The document highlights three key areas of WG focus for addressing the issues highlighted in this draft that will form the basis the possible WG solutions that address the current problems.

See "Service Function Chaining Problem Statement draft-ietf-sfc-problem-statement-11.txt" - here.

[TechNavio]: Transparent Cache Market to Grow at 31% CAGR

A new report by TechNavio finds that ".. Transparent caching is a solution that enables the service provider to offload a significant amount of content traffic by storing a cached copy of the popular content close to the edge of the network, which is delivered to the user directly from the edge of the network rather than from the source. It is invisible to both the content originator and the end user, hence the name. 

TechNavio's analysts forecast the Global Transparent Caching market to grow at a CAGR of 31.3 percent over the period 2013-2018".

TechNavio identifies Blue Coat Systems (here), Juniper Networks, PeerApp (here) and Qwilt (here) as key vendors and Akamai, Alcatel-Lucent (here), Allot Communications (here), ARA Networks, Brocade, BTI Systems (here), Cisco Systems (see "Cisco Partners with PeerApp" - here), Fortinet, Google (here), Huawei (here), Level 3 (here), SuperLumin Networks, Swiftserve (here), VidScale as prominent vendors

See "Global Transparent Caching Market 2014-2018" - here.

Hitachi: Big Data Analytics Enables QoE, QoS and Monetization

Hitachi Data Systems announced it that  ".. Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) and several telecommunications partners [Brocade, JDSU, SeaChange] will demonstrate the ability of big data applications in telecom to lower network and operations costs, reduce customer churn protecting existing business revenues, and create new revenue streams. World-class quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) is possible only through the integration of a streaming data platform technology for real-time data, and the use of Hadoop and database technologies for batch and online data.

Demos:

• Fine-Grain Analytics for Video Premium Services (With JDSU)

• Carrier-Hosted Analytics – Backhaul Services (With JDSU)
• Virtual Network Platform
• Multiscreen Video Delivery (With SeaChange)

• Brocade Deterministic Networks with Hitachi Unified Compute Platform (UCP) for Media (With Brocade)

• Hitachi Content Platform and Hitachi Cloud Services
• The Internet of Things and Network Function Virtualization
• RAN-Aware Video Traffic Optimization
• Advanced M2M Network Solution 

See "Hitachi Data Systems to Showcase Leading Network Analytics Technology at Mobile World Congress 2014" - here.

SDN Gets Standards and Open Source

 

After several months of being a buzzword and using Software Defines Networks anywhere possible, the big guys establish a new forum to define it, build standards and offer an open-source framework(!).

"The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to open source development and technologies, today announced the founding of the OpenDaylight Project, a community-led and industry-supported open source framework that will accelerate adoption, foster new innovation and create a more open and transparent approach to Software-Defined Networking (SDN)".

Technical Overview

"Founded by Big Switch Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Ericsson, IBM, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Red Hat and VMware .. on the principles of open and transparent development, OpenDaylight unites technology industry leaders to establish the largest SDN open source project to date .. The first code from the OpenDaylight Project is expected to be released in 3Q13 and expected donations and projects include an open controller, a virtual overlay network, protocol plug-ins and switch device enhancements".

See "Industry leaders collaborate on OpenDaylight Project, donate key technologies to accelerate Software-Defined Networking" - here.