This graphic provides an overview of how Nicira software creates a network virtualization layer to make it easier to manage virtual machines. (Source: Nicira)

Networking startup Nicira today unveiled its Network Virtualization Platform (NVP), along with an impressive lineup of companies using its product. Nicira was founded by key players in the development of the OpenFlow protocol for software-defined networking.

But the company’s approach to networking goes beyond OpenFlow. Its software platform manages a network abstraction layer, which lets users create virtual networks that operate independently of the underlying physical network hardware. Nicira says its software will work with any network hardware from any vendor and is hypervisor agnostic, working with VMware ESX, Linux/KVM, Xen Server and Microsoft’s HyperV.

Making VMs More Mobile

Nicira’s technology could make it easier to move virtual machines between data centers, an attractive aoption for companies whose infrastructure is spread across many cities or countries. That’s one reason that Nicira made its debut with users including AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments, NTT and Rackspace.

“Nicira allows us to repurpose network infrastructure on-demand and move applications dynamically,” said JC Martin, Cloud Architect at eBay. “This eliminates the operational constraints associated with the existing network environment, and reduces the time it takes us to deliver a service from days to minutes.”

Nicira’s NVP software aims to create a network that follows the operational model of a virtual machine, decoupling applications from network hardware as well as server hardware. This could help companies with highly-virtualized server infrastructures overcome current limits on the applications they can support and where the workloads can be placed.

“Network virtualization is the biggest change to networking in 25 years,” said Stephen Mullaney, Chief Executive Officer of Nicira. “NVP provides the final pivotal piece to cloud computing, the most transformational change to IT in a generation. And the largest most forward-thinking cloud providers are laser-focused on operations and economics, the two benefits Nicira delivers.”

High-Profile Backers and Customers

Nicira was founded by researchers Martin Casado and Nick McKeown from Stanford University and Scott Shenker from University of California at Berkeley. Casado’s work at Stanford led to the creation of OpenFlow and Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which shifts the networking shifts from hardware to software. The company has raised $50 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, VMware co-founder Diane Greene and Benchmark Capital co-founder Andy Rachleff.

Nicira is among a group of new companies working with OpenFlow and network virtualization. Other players in this sector include Big Switch Networks and Embrane.

One early differentiator is the praise Nicira is drawing from from existing customers. Here’s an overview of customer commentary from today’s release:

• “Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform is a game changer,” said Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace. “Nicira’s product and industry contributions with OpenStack are tightly aligned with our strategy to bring together the most innovative and open technology with our own fanatical support. Together we are bringing enterprise private networking to the cloud.”
• “Network virtualization and software-defined networking enable us to provide an even more robust, responsive IT infrastructure for our firm,” said James Davis, Senior Vice President, Global Network Services, Fidelity Investments. “Nicira’s commitment to open networking standards allows us to scale our infrastructure, while continuing to provide the highly flexible, agile and innovative IT services that help us meet our customers’ needs.”
• “Network virtualization is the key to cloud and maximizes important NTT group assets, including worldwide data centers and carrier-grade networks,” said Eiji Kuwana, Vice President, NTT R&D Labs. “Nicira’s integration into OpenStack and cloud scale led to our partnership. We believe software-defined networking is the future of our industry and Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform transcends anything we’ve seen.”
• “AT&T, working with Nicira, is delivering enterprise-grade, secure and scalable network virtualization within its internal OpenStack deployment,” said Toby Ford, AVP Cloud Architecture and Strategy, AT&T. “Nicira’s technologies support our work to open the network for innovation and unlock numerous, differentiated offers such as the AT&T API Delivery Platform, the AT&T Developer Center ForHealth, and other services we’ll be building for developers and businesses.”

NVP software is available through a usage-based, monthly subscription, which scales per virtual network port.

The Steelhead CX series is a dedicated WAN Optimization appliance and like its predecessors in the xx50 series, overcomes bandwidth and geographic limitations to make users more productive, data transfers faster, and applications perform seamlessly regardless of location. The new CX series however has greater throughput and offers more capacity, all for the same total cost of ownership. The Steelhead EX adds a robust platform with more memory, disk, and CPU to support the Virtual Services Platform (VSP) and Granite, a new architecture also announced Wednesday.

“In an effort to simplify management, increase resource utilization and reduce costs, organizations have been actively consolidating and virtualizing IT environments into centralized data centers,” said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “While these consolidation efforts provide numerous benefits, it is imperative that organizations ensure that these consolidated IT environments are adequately protected and available. Furthermore, these consolidation efforts can introduce inherent performance over distance challenges. Riverbed’s enhanced Steelhead product family enables organizations to centralize virtually all applications, driving down operational overhead and costs, yet still maintain high levels of availability and improve end-user satisfaction.”

Steelhead-CX and Steelhead-EX series are expected to be generally available this quarter.

Riverbed Granite

Riverbed also announced a new architectural approach called edge virtual server infrastructure (edge-VSI) that does for edge servers what virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) did for desktops. Riverbed Granite is the new offering that enables edge-VSI. With Granite, global enterprises can achieve complete consolidation of edge applications, servers and storage to the data center, while delivering services to the edge of the enterprise as if they were local. Edge-VSI is complementary to wide area network (WAN) optimization, accelerating performance for applications and use cases not addressed by any WAN optimization approach today.

Saving up to 50 percent over traditional approaches to managing distributed infrastructure, Granite decouples storage from its server over thousands of miles, yet works as if the storage were local to the server.  Granite solves bandwidth and latency problems over distributed networks, but lower in the technology stack – at the block level – making it possible to deliver global storage and server infrastructure extended from the data center over the WAN.

“Traditionally, data centers and remote offices have been managed through separate operational processes, procedures and infrastructures,” said Dave Russell, Research Vice President, Storage Technologies and Strategies, at Gartner. “In an ideal world, IT could leverage its investment in building the data center of the future by putting its IT infrastructure into one central data center, with its control, economies of scale, and security. However, with workers at large enterprises distributed across the globe, performance is a key challenge, especially for storage heavy workloads. To make this a reality, a new approach is needed that addresses these currently challenging workloads.”

Granite is expected to be generally available this quarter.

Cisco Systems says it has updated its Catalyst 6500 family of switches (shown above) for 40 GB Ethernet and 100 GB Ethernet. (Photo: Cisco)

At Cisco Live 2012 London Cisco Systems (CSCO) announced it has updated its switching portfolio with 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) and 40 GE capabilities, the next speed limits for networking. These new capabilities provide a holistic architectural approach across campus, data center and service provider environments.

A 40 GE option is available for the Catalyst 6500 switching line and both 40 GE and 100 GE capabilities are available for the Nexus 7000 portfolio.  Two new M2-Series modules for the Nexus 7000 are available: a 2-port, 100GbE Module delivers up to 32 100GE ports and the M2-Series 6-port 40GbE Module provides 96 non-blocking 40 GE ports.

The new Nexus 3064-X switch supports a variety of 1/10/40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options as a high-performance, high-density, ultra-low latency Ethernet Switch. A new Nexus 1010-X Virtual Services Appliance offers a dedicated hardware platform for scalable deployment of services critical to virtualization infrastructure.

Providing investment protection for the Catalyst 6500 Series, Cisco is also offering a new 40 Gigabit Ethernet Interface module to help customers prepare their networks for transitions to 40 GE. The Catalyst 6500 E Series chassis are now validated to support full 160 gigabits per slot throughput in active/active mode.

Aimed at space-constrained environments the new Catalyst 4500-X switch is a fixed aggregation 1 RU switch. Cisco also announced simpler network virtualization functionality for its Catalyst 6500, 4500 and Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 product line with a new technology called Easy Virtual Network as well as scalable virtual services with a new Nexus 1010-X appliance for the data center.

Operational Efficiencies

To compliment accelerating Catalyst and Nexus switches to 40 GE and 100 GE options Cisco introduced solutions to help simplify network virtualization and enhance network monitoring, troubleshooting, and management.   New features in Cisco NX-OS software inclue  PowerOn Auto-Provisioning and Python scripting to customize network behavior based on events as they happen, simplify configuration, and harness network intelligence. A Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) simplifies Unified Fabric management and provides a converged LAN and Storage operational dashboard, bringing visibility and advanced diagnostic capabilities into the virtualized data center or cloud.

“Network virtualization is becoming more important as enterprises seek to address security and regulatory concerns without the expense of overlay networks,” said Dominique Massoni, Network Engineering Operations Manager at EDF Group.  There are a number of available solutions, with varying degrees of scalability and complexity. We found Easy Virtual Network to be the right solution for us. It is simple, easy to replicate between sites, and is fully compatible with the solution we have been using, so we didn’t have to redo the work we’ve already done.”

Radware Alteon 5224 ADC platform. Radware (RDWR) said that its Alteon 5224 application delivery controller (ADC) for enterprises delivers new levels of performance, on demand throughput scalability, and port density for its class, while offering 10GE connectivity and ADC virtualization capabilities. Meeting the challenges of load balancing and advanced application delivery services, the Alteon 5224 features the ability to scale up to 16 Gbps using the same platform and offers 10GE ports as well as two built-in 10GE SFP+ ports. The platform is shipped with two embedded virtual ADC instances (vADC) that can be expanded on-demand to support up to 24 fully-independent vADCs. ”Companies running mission-critical applications need to cost-effectively and flexibly scale to ensure connectivity to today’s and tomorrow’s switching infrastructure, as well as assure their application high resilience, fast performance and scalability needs,” said Nir Ilani, director, product marketing, Application Delivery at Radware.  ”The Alteon 5224 advanced ADC platform provides a complete set of application delivery services that ensure the availability, performance and security for applications – while topping any other alternative ADC on the market.”

Brocade advances ServerIron ADX application delivery switches.  Brocade (BRCD) announced significant software advancements to the Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of cloud-optimized application delivery switches designed to help customers gain greater application control and service scalability. The new Brocade OpenScript engine gives the ability to intelligently predict the effect on the network before introducing scripts into production. Built on PERL, OpenScript is a scalable and deterministic application scripting engine that allows network operators to customize the capabilities of their network to match their specific needs. Brocade ADX version 12.4 doubles the IPv6 performance of ADX and delivers consistent services across IPv4 and IPv6. The Brocade ADX switch also enables a seamless transition to IPv6 while preserving IPv4 assets through standards-based IPv4-to-IPv6 translation technology. ”A service provider’s critical asset is its network; this makes reliability, scalability and performance critical factors for its success,” said Alan Weckel, senior director for Dell’Oro Group. “The importance to predetermine the impact network load on their application delivery infrastructure is becoming critical as service providers not only create new revenue generating services but also mitigate network implications before any traffic passes through their application delivery infrastructure.” The Brocade ServerIron ADX software release version 12.4 is generally available now.

Arista announces Advanced Event Management suite. Arista Networks announced Advanced Event Management (AEM), a suite of new capabilities in Arista’s Extensible Operating System (EOS), that enables increased and unprecedented levels of network automation while improving overall system uptime. As a way to fully utilize the intelligence within EOS AEM is purpose-built to enable distributed systems automation, to simplify complex tasks, react programmatically to network changes, and simplify troubleshooting tasks. “Until now, Network automation has been limited by command line interpreters and often a lack of vendor commitment to open standards and flexible programming languages,” said Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. “Arista’s focus on a modern software-defined network operating system, that is customizable, with built-in automation capabilities is a welcome change for the cloud-era.”  AEM will be available in March 2012 as part of Arista EOS version 4.9.

Version 9.5 of Riverbed Cascade provides deeper visibility into the data center network as a NPM solution to provide a wizard-based, streamlined configuration process for service monitoring across ADCs. It spans physical, virtual and load balanced environments to give insight into multi-tiered applications.

Riverbed says its Virtual Cascade Shark is the first product to offer continuous packet capture and performance analysis in virtual environments. To enable a transparent data center and “decomplexify” performance management the new Cascade version and virtual cascade shark deliver greater visibility and empower IT staff to simplify end to end performance monitoring.

“The irresistible tide of server virtualization has combined with increasingly strategic deployments of application and network optimization technologies to create new and troublesome visibility barriers for IT operations,” said Jim Frey, managing research director at EMA. “This requires a fundamental re-assessment of performance monitoring and management technologies due to fast emerging requirements for integrated visibility and virtualized instrumentation. The Riverbed Cascade solution is evolving in this very direction, and coupled with the balance of the Riverbed optimization portfolio, comprises a unique and compelling combination of visibility and control for the evolving, virtualized enterprise IT infrastructure.”

Integrating directly into the hypervisor, the new Virtual Cascade Shark software provides the real-time visibility needed to manage and troubleshoot application performance as it traverses the virtual switch in VMware ESX environments. Providing centralized service-level discovery and monitoring it works with the Cascade Profiler performance management dashboard, exporting application-enhanced traffic metrics.

New Features in 9.5 

With version 9.5, Cascade extends service monitoring and troubleshooting across load balanced applications and both physical and virtual environments. Multi-segment analysis with Cascade Pilot gives precision time stamping and accelerates problem identification, whether the issue is on the LAN, the WAN, or within the data center.  Cascade Shark can now adopt nanosecond time stamps from SPAN port aggregators for greater precision and accuracy. Cascade 9.5 tightens the integration between Cascade Shark and Cascade Profiler by bringing support for voice over IP protocols and quality metrics into Cascade Profiler.

“Virtualization and load balancing have fundamentally transformed the data center,” said Dimitri Vlachos, senior director of marketing and product management, Cascade Business Unit at Riverbed. “While these technologies provide amazing benefits, they also create real visibility challenges. For end-to-end performance, IT operations need visibility into all application and network traffic across all IT environments – physical and virtual, from the user to the deepest depths of the data center. Cascade provides enterprise customers a unique, cost-effective, and easy-to-use solution for monitoring and troubleshooting today’s complex IT environment and the critical applications that run over it.”

Emerson advances Avocent Data Center Planner. Emerson Network Power (EMR) introduced the next generation of Avocent Data Center Planner, a component of its portfolio of DCIM capabilities. The software solution enables data center managers to make informed decisions for the planning and effective management of their data center assets and physical infrastructure. Features of the new release include the ability to gauge real-world power usage, visualization for end-to-end connections, zone management, and Spanish language support. “The ad-hoc data center management tools that were effective in the past are increasingly difficult to maintain in today’s complex environment,” explained Traci Yarbrough, director of product marketing, Emerson Network Power data center solutions. “Avocent Data Center Planner is an effective alternative to legacy management tools because it provides all of the detailed information that is required to efficiently plan and manage the physical infrastructure in one dynamic graphical interface. Customers realize an immediate return on investment because they no longer need to consult multiple point products to make decisions and plan changes. It also builds on our promise of delivering a simple and easy to use DCIM capability.” Avocent Data Center Planner is available worldwide immediately.

VMware opens cloud solution marketplace.  VMware (VMW) announced the VMware Solutions Exchange, an online virtualization and cloud solutions marketplace where customers, partners and developers can converge to help simplify the process of evaluating and selecting business solutions through a centralized, self-service portal. Embracing both private and public clouds, VMware will enable customers to use search tools and directly engage with partners and developers to help ease the process of finding the right solution for their businesses. “With the VMware Solution Exchange, we are offering our robust partner network a new and centralized marketplace to promote their solutions and directly connect with customers to help expedite the sales process,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances at VMware. “For customers, our goal is to empower them to quickly and easily find the resources they need to make purchasing decisions to accelerate their journey to the cloud, while also helping our technology partners deliver and manage joint solutions in a single, self-service location.”

Riverbed selected by MasterBrand Cabinets.  Riverbed Technology (RVBD) announced that MasterBrand Cabinets, Inc. (MBCI), a leading kitchen and bath solutions provider, has deployed 28 Riverbed Steelhead appliances, and Steelhead Mobile client software, across its operations in the United States and Canada and to its developers in India. Looking for a solution that enabled mobile workers and provided employees in remote offices around the world faster access to data and applications, Master Brand Cabinets turned to Riverbed. Its WAN-optimization solutions from Riverbed reduced data traffic by 82 percent and increased bandwidth capacity by four times – and in some cases by as much as six times during peak periods – in its private cloud environment. As a result of its Riverbed deployment, MBCI has been able to avoid upgrading its bandwidth, which will save the company as much as $1.2 million per year (based on adding four to six T1 lines at $800 each per month, across 21 manufacturing sites). At the same time, MBCI has experienced an 82 percent reduction in data across the WAN and increased bandwidth capacity up to six times during peak data periods. “We had two choices – add more bandwidth or invest in WAN optimization,” said Jadd Miller, senior network engineer at MBCI. “We chose the Riverbed WAN optimization solution as it gave us the most value out of our legacy systems, while drastically improving the performance across our WAN. Adding additional bandwidth would have been a partial remedy, since it did not address the latency issues caused by distance.”

Intel to acquire Qlogic’s InfiniBand business. Intel Corporation (INTC) announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with QLogic to acquire the product lines of and certain assets related to its InfiniBand business. The InfiniBand assets help Intel grow its networking portfolio and provide scalable high performance computing (HPC) fabric technology. InfiniBand is widely used in HPC environments and is a key element to Intel’s efforts to innovate fabric architectures in order to achieve ExaFLOP per second performance by 2018.  InfiniBand was the interconnect family used in 41.8 percent of the Top500 Supercomputers in November 2011. “At the International Supercomputing Conference 2011, Intel unveiled a bold vision to redefine HPC performance and break the Exascale barrier by 2018,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center and Connected System Group. “The technology and expertise from QLogic provide important assets to provide the scalable system fabric needed to execute on this vision. Adding QLogic’s InfiniBand product line to our networking portfolio will bring increased options and exceptional value to our datacenter customers.”

New release of Rackwise DCIM product. Rackwise announced that it will release version 3.6 of its core DCIM software product, the Rackwise Data Center Manager in April of 2012.  The new version will be released in accordance with its recent licensing agreement with Intel. The new software release will contain a suite of new features including enhanced device level real-time monitoring, enhanced power modeling, rich asset search, visualization, blade server management, fault impact analysis and business reporting analytics. “We are extremely excited to make this announcement, marking the initial product launch pursuant to our agreements with Intel to develop and introduce ground-breaking capabilities for the data center infrastructure management market,” said Rackwise CEO Guy Archbold. “The integration of device level data aggregation within our asset visualization, modeling, and analytics functions provides data center and infrastructure technology professionals powerful, state-of-the-art tools for real-time data management to maximize operational efficiencies and economic benefits.”

Fibertown adds carriers to Houston data center.  Fibertown announced the addition of new telecom carriers into its 50,000 sq.ft. North Houston data center. “Multi-carrier connectivity provides our data center customers with more robust options and plays a crucial role in the redundancy of our offerings,” said Brandon Perryman, senior vice president at FIBERTOWN. “Customers are empowered to select acarrier that best fits their business requirements.”  The Houston data center offers diverse fiber entrances and houses primary and secondary Point of Presence (PoP) rooms.

Internap completes SOC2 audit.  Internap (INAP) announced that it has successfully completed the transition from SAS 70 to a Service Organization Controls (SOC) Report, regarding the operations and control structure in its company-controlled data centers. The SOC2 Type II Report confirms that Internap’s data center security and operational procedures have been reviewed and tested by an independent certified auditor and validates that controls and processes are suitably designed and operate effectively to protect and safeguard customers’ equipment and data. “In today’s global economy, service providers must demonstrate they have adequate controls and safeguards when they host information belonging to their customers,” said Mike Higgins, senior vice president of data center services at Internap. ”Completing the SOC2 audit demonstrates Internap’s commitment to meeting the service and performance level needs of our customers.”

Headquartered in Palo Alto, Big Switch Networks was founded in 2010 to bring virtualization and cloud innovation to enterprise networks using OpenFlow-based SDN. The OpenFlow standard was developed at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, and allows users to manage network equipment using software that can run on servers that communicate with switches, rather than directly on the switch or router.

Since SDN has taken off commercially, giving back to the academic and research community by open-sourcing the code was “only natural,” said Big Switch Networks CEO Guido Appenzeller.

“The first instance of OpenFlow open-source code was developed by the Stanford Research Lab — where several members of our company including myself worked – in collaboration with other universities nationwide to demonstrate its feasibility,” he said. Further, the move to open source will encourage a rich SDN ecosystem and stimulate innovation, Appenzeller explained.

Centralized Network Management Through SDN

OpenFlow Controllers are central components of SDN because they capture control information from OpenFlow-enabled switches to centrally manage networks. Floodlight will support the needs of academics, provide a powerful platform to commercial developers to build SDN network services and assist network admins who want to utilize OpenFlow, according to Big Switch.

Big Switch Networks said it is committed to maintaining and enhancing Floodlight, which will be a component of its commercial controller and the foundation for additional features and network applications. It is is offered under the Apache 2.0 license, which is the license used by other fast-growing projects such as Hadoop and OpenStack.

Floodlight, which originated from the Beacon controller created by Big Switch Networks advisor and Stanford PhD candidate David Erickson, was designed and built in Java to offer an easily extensible, developer friendly platform for SDN. The source code is available on the OpenFlow Hub website.

OpenFlow Hub Community

OpenFlow Hub, created and maintained by Big Switch Networks, is a community of developers leading and/or contributing to open source OpenFlow projects. OpenFlow Hub is open to all developers and welcomes any open source project promoting OpenFlow or SDN regardless of its license or commercial strategy.

Sample visual map of a network produced by ExtraHop Networks.

As today’s mission critical applications move information over networks, it is increasingly important to IT shops to be able to see, predict and fix issues in real-time. With the amount of network traffic today, diagnosing problems can be like “looking for a snowflake in an avalanche,” says Jesse Rothstein, CEO and cofounder, ExtraHop Networks.

ExtraHop, founded in 2007 and shipping product since 2009, has a real-time solution for network admins. The company’s platform provides agentless, network-based application performance management (APM) solutions that  measure, map and assist with troubleshooting at the transaction level in dynamic environments.

“The tools and technology in use today are from the time when we had static environments,” said Rothstein. He co-founded ExtraHop after a six-year tenure at F5 Networks where he was a Senior Software Architect and co-inventor of the TMOS platform, an application delivery platform. “There is a hodge-podge of different approaches from the network side, the application side – they are all using different approaches to try to solve the problem.”

ExtraHop’s platforms, whether virtual or hardware appliances, allow customers to perform sophisticated anlayses to understand traffic at the transaction level, seamlessly with no overhead. They use auto-discovery to create a visual map of every device on the network. Data center managers planning migrations find the mapping function very helpful.

“I compare network tools to either telescopes or microscopes. Either you see things like a telescope from 50,000 ft view or from a microscopic level, such as the packets,” Rothstein said. “Our tool is like Google Earth – you can see everything from a very high level and then drill down to a specific area.”

The company has clients in multiple industry sectors, including online travel, retail, e-commerce, financial services and tech companies.

What ExtraHop does is it makes a copy of network traffic from each Ethernet switch, in real-time, which is different from other approaches of installing sensors along points in the network. This approach limits the overhead and risk.

“The network info has always been there, in a sense, just flying off the network and falling on the floor,” Rothstein says. Often tools used were only available to look back at history, rather than observe transactions in real time.

As the ExtraHop CEO looks ahead to the new year, he sees striong demand for these kind of tools, and predicts robust growth for his company. “We doubled in size in 2011, and I expect we’ll do the same in 2012,” said Rothstein.

Avaya introduces new edge switches.  Avaya announced an updated portfolio of  Ethernet switches that will bring the capabilities of Avaya’s Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA) to the edge of the campus network. The new Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 4800s enable enterprises to optimize networks for communication and collaboration, and simplify the convergence of voice, video and data communications. The new switches will consume upwards of 50 percent less energy, handle five times more traffic and allow a total cost of ownership that is up to 50 percent lower than competing solutions. ”Enterprises want data networking solutions that they can forget about. Solutions that make it effortless for them to connect new IP phones, secure new devices and users, and add more capacity,” said Steve Bandrowczak, vice president and general manager at Avaya Networking. “Avaya’s collaboration-ready ERS 4800 switches deliver these features to enterprises today. They also provide support for advanced Avaya VENA capabilities like network virtualization and wireless integration that will allow enterprises to simplify their networks and the deployment of next-generation applications and services in the future.”

Ciena selected for 40G New York to Europe network.  Tata Communications, in partnership with Ciena (CIEN) announced the launch of 40 gigabits per second enabled services on its TGN-Atlantic subsea cable system from New York to London. The deployment of 40G coherent optical technology on the TGN-Atlantic cable is the first on Tata Communications’ global submarine network. This upgrade allows for four times the capacity of traditional 10G wavelengths to give bandwidth and flexibility to carriers and enterprise. TeleGeography expects the demand for trans-Atlantic capacity to increase nearly 9-fold between 2010 and 2017. Tata’s high capacity optical network will be based on Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform with 40G/100G coherent technology and will be fully compliant with International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  “The deployment of 40G technology on our TGN-Atlantic cable system is a hugely significant step for us in cementing our leadership in global network infrastructure. It will ensure our network is future proof and will bring maximum long-haul transmission bandwidth, lower latencies, higher uptimes and seamless scalability to carriers and enterprises, while ensuring a low cost of ownership for our customers,” said John Hayduk, President, Product Management and Service Development at Tata Communications.

Interxion to host Hibernia submarine cable from North America to Ireland.  Interxion (INXN) announced an agreement with Hibernia Atlantic to host a Point of Presence (POP) for its high-capacity fiber optic cable system at Interxion’s Dublin 2 (DUB2) data centrer. Interxion’s DUB2 facility offers connectivity with access to over 25 carriers. The new Hibernia link offers the only direct, submarine cable to connect North America to Ireland, delivering competitive advantage to Interxion’s customers. “The fact that this is the only direct, submarine cable to connect North America and Ireland further reflects our commitment to delivering the best possible connectivity options to our customer base, Hibernia’s high-capacity fibre optic cable system is especially relevant for our digital media community, such as content delivery providers and social media engines, that require high-capacity bandwidth,” said Tanya Duncan, Managing Director of Interxion. “Our secure facilities were specifically designed to support mission-critical applications and IT systems, and Hibernia’s diverse, high-speed connectivity is another true value-add for our clients,” she concluded.

AboveNet offers core wave services in San Francisco.  AboveNet (ABVT) announced that its Core Wave services are now available to enterprise and carrier customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. The new offering provides customers with a flexible, dedicated and cost-effective data transport solution for point-to-point connections in and between top metro business hubs. Connectivity between key data centers or enterprise locations in key locations including San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Jose will enable 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, and 10Gbps service and the benefits of a dedicated wavelength service. Utilizing ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer) technology, Core Wave solutions provide dynamic wavelength add/drops and inter-ring connectivity with flexible traffic routing.