Software-defined networking technology has developed over the past few years and now plays a major role in many telecom infrastructures and data centers. However, when selecting such important systems, it is important to know the major players in the industry that can provide the right solution for the organization’s specific needs. Previous parts of this series examined vendors including Cisco, Citrix, Big Switch Networks, Dell, Jeda, ADARA and PLUMgrid. To aid telcos in these decisions, here are a few more of the top SDN vendors active in today’s market:
Nuage Networks
Nuage Networks, from its name to its service promise, focuses on helping enterprises and telcos best leverage the cloud. Nuage’s name comes from the French word for cloud, and the organization is part of software giant Alcatel-Lucent. Nuage has identified the obstacles service providers can face involving the cloud and has created SDN and virtualization solutions to help foster success of platform deployment. Some major offerings from Nuage include its SDN technology to boost service speed and efficiency, as well as its Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform, which was established with the help and expertise of parent company Alcatel-Lucent.
Cyan Inc.
Cyan, founded in 2006, is headquartered in California and aims to enable network transformation for telecom service providers. The organization’s flagship product, its Blue Planet SDN Platform, was developed to regulate, orchestrate, envision and automate multi-vendor networks. The open source solution has the capacity to support more than 50 third-party vendor devices and is touted as one of the top SDN and NFV orchestration systems currently available. Overall, the company aims to provide solutions to address network issues that can affect services, including infrastructure complexity, scalability and other performance problems.
VMware
VMware, a well known name in the SDN and virtualization industry, has been a growing presence in the sector for the past few years. The organization provides a number of offerings for telcos, including cloud systems, management solutions, SDN and virtualization applications. Its top SDN products include vSphere with Operations Management, vCloud Suite, vCloud Hybrid Service, NSX, Virtual SAN and consulting services. VMware also boasts one of the lowest total costs of ownership in the industry via its memory oversubscription, dynamic load balancers, scheduler, direct driver model and logical resource pools.
Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks, founded in 1996 and based in Sunnvale, Calif., is a growing force in the SDN market. The company helps clients establish the most robust, innovative networks possible with its technology. Recently, Juniper announced an expansion of its SDN offerings, including new solutions like Junos Fusion, which links scattered network parts, and Juniper NorthStar Controller for open standards-based traffic engineering.
