F5 announces service delivery networking platform: Allows carriers to manage voice, data and video traffic

F5 Networks Inc. (FFIV) is introducing a new platform delivery system that it says allows wireless operators to use a unified IP-based platform to manage voice, data and video traffic. The Seattle-based company said its software portfolio can give operators a way to manage their network regardless of the type of traffic going across the network.
“We’re like an air traffic controller,” said Jason Needham, senior director of product marketing. “We sit in the data centers and spread out the traffic to the right locations, sending it to different runways.”
The company said its solutions mark the entrance of a new product sector, which it calls Service Delivery Networking. F5 already offers these products to its enterprise customers and is extending its portfolio to mobile operators as they work to optimize the data load from voice, data and video traffic. “By offering a set of integrated solutions for service and subscriber management—such as intelligent traffic steering, large-scale IPv4 to IPv6 translation, secure DNS traffic management, traffic optimization and acceleration, and policy enforcement—F5’s SDN provides a holistic architectural approach to solve the challenges mobile operators face today,” the company said in a news release.
F5 aslo released two NEBS compliant platforms, the BIG-IP 11050 platform and a VIPRION Performance Blade 200 that scales to more than 6 million L7 requests per second.
“Until now service providers have been forced to take a piecemeal approach when deploying service delivery solutions for voice, data, and video, using multiple point products that significantly increase costs and complexity, and don’t scale well,” said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5. “Years ago, we witnessed the same evolution within the enterprise market where customers needed to move towards an all IP-based environment in order to cost-effectively support user demands and business requirements. With Service Delivery Networking, F5 is further extending the value its network and application fluency brings to service providers, enabling them to break out of costly conventional infrastructure models while adhering to industry standards and architectures like 3GPP, 3GPP2, NEBS, and IMS.”
As part of the announcement, F5 announced partnerships with Flash Networks, Openwave Systems, Vantrix and Volubill, each of which leverage F5’s SDN solutions to deliver best-in-class service provider solutions. “For example, the collaboration between F5 and Openwave provides integration of the two companies’ products to enable smart, dynamic policy control and enforcement with user- and service-level awareness as part of Openwave’s traffic mediation solutions for wireless operators worldwide,” the company said in a news release.