Software is becoming an increasingly important part of telecommunication networks and deployments as both wired and wireless carriers look to add functionality to operations while increasing simplicity and reducing costs. RCR Wireless News is keeping an eye on recent developments through its weekly “Software” wrap up.
Hewlett-Packard this week announced plans to acquire open source software provider Eucalyptus for an undisclosed amount. Eucalyptus specializes in software for building private and hybrid enterprise cloud platforms.
As part of the transaction, current Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos will join HP as SVP and GM of its Cloud business. Mickos will report directly to HP CEO, President and Chairman Meg Whitman. Martin Fink, who currently runs HP’s Cloud business, will remain in his roles as CTO and director of HP Labs, as well as lead the company’s efforts in the network function virtualization space.
HP earlier this year said it plans to invest more than a billion dollars in software-based solutions that have the potential to replace HP servers and other hardware. The company said the investments would center on OpenStack, with HP’s platform in the space dubbed Helion.
“We’ve said before that we believe the future of the cloud is open source, and this transaction underscores our deep commitment to helping customers build enterprise-class, open clouds their way,” said Fink following the Eucalyptus announcement. “We’ve already seen significant momentum since launching HP Helion and have put in place an outstanding team. I’m confident that Marten, a fellow open source devotee, will continue to build out the HP Helion portfolio into the enterprise cloud offering of choice.”
—Software-defined networking’s role in data center and enterprise networks appears solid, as a report from Infonetics Research cited significant growth in related revenues in 2013. According to the analyst firm, data center and enterprise SDN revenues surged 192% in 2013, boosted by a number of new entrants in the space.
“The early SDN explorers — NEC in Japan and pure-play SDN startups in North America — were joined in 2013 by the majority of traditional switch vendors and server virtualization vendors offering a wide selection of SDN products,” noted Cliff Grossner, directing analyst for data center, cloud and SDN at Infonetics Research. “Even more eye opening, in-use for SDN Ethernet switch revenue, including branded Ethernet switches, virtual switches and bare metal switches, grew more than tenfold in 2013 from the prior year, driven by significant increases in white box bare metal switch deployments by very large cloud service providers such as Google and Amazon.”
Infonetics Research found that bare metal switches were the “top in-use for SDN-capable switch use case in the data center and are anticipated to account for 31% of total SDN-capable switch revenue by 2018.” The firm added that the market for SDN could hit $9.5 billion in 2018, at which point it predicts the adoption of SDN network virtualization overlays to become “mainstream.”
Infonetics had previously reported a slowdown in the telecom industry’s move toward virtualization claiming an “SDN hesitation” that resulted in just a 2% increase in year-over-year revenues of router and switch equipment during the first quarter. Despite the overall slowdown, the research firm remains confident that the SDN and NFV segments will continue to see strong potential as wireless operators continue to look for ways to decrease expenses and increase revenue potential.
“We believe the current generation of high-capacity edge and core routers can be nursed along for a while as the detailed steps of the SDN-NFV transformation are defined by each service provider — and many of the largest operators in the world are involved, including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, NTT, China Telecom and China Mobile,” explained Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research. “And there is intensifying focus on multiple [content delivery networks] and smart traffic management across various routes and alternative routes to make routers and optical gear cooperate more closely.”
—Kontron said it plans to begin offering its commercial-off-the-shelf hardware platforms pre-validated to meet Wind River’s network function virtualization service targeted at telecom service providers. The offering comes as Kontron has recently joined Wind River’s Titanium Cloud NFV partner program.
Kontron said its pre-validated platforms will include the Symkloud MS2910 product that is designed with 10G redundant switching for support of OpenFlow.
Wind River earlier this year launched its Titanium Cloud NFV program in an attempt to ensure the availability of interoperable hardware and software solutions for telecom equipment vendors deploying products based on NFV. HP earlier this month signed up for the program, joining initial partners Brocade, Genband, Metaswitch Networks, Nakina Systems and Overture.
Make sure to check out the latest in telecom-related software news at RCR Wireless News’ dedicated software page. Also, if you have telecom software news to share, please send it along to: dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter?
