Here’s our summary of news from around the software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) worlds this week.
1. Huawei Unveils Its Latest Large Switch
Huawei announced its new S12700 campus switch, touting it as being ready for SDN and a few other key buzzwords, such as Internet of Things and bring-your-own-device (BYOD). The SDN part refers to the S12700’s support of Protocol Oblivious Forwarding (POF), Huawei’s proprietary extension of OpenFlow 1.3.
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Due to ship in October, the S12700 comes in versions fit eight or 12 line cards. The 12-slot version can theoretically hold 576 10G Ethernet ports or 96 100G Ethernet ports — meaning, if you do the math, that Huawei is offering 48-port 10G Ethernet and eight-port 100G Ethernet cards.
2. Procera Preps for NFV
Deep packet inspection vendor Procera announced Tuesday that it’s virtualized its PacketLogic product line.
It might seem like an odd claim to make, considering Procera’s products are software to begin with. As Light Reading notes, the main challenge is to make sure the virtualized features are compliant with the ETSI NFV effort — i.e., ensuring the software can run on arbitrary, standard hardware, as opposed to, say, something with specialized processors.
3. Cyan Tumbles
A disappointing earnings forecast kicked Cyan in the shins, with the stock falling 18 percent to $9.08 a share on Wednesday.
No one is surprised that Cyan is losing money, with losses of $9.1 million, or 33 cents per share, on revenues of $31.7 million for its second quarter, which ended June 30. It’s the third-quarter outlook that was a surprise, with greater-than-expected losses of 19 to 22 cents per share on revenues of $36 million to $38 million.
After going public in May at $11, Cyan’s stock has languished. It opened Friday at $9.03.
4. BTI Apparently Sees a Bright Future
Bringing a CFO into a privately held company is often a sign that an IPO is in the works, as Light Reading pointed out. It’s a good guess that that’s the mission for Ken Taylor, who got announced as an executive at BTI Systems on Monday. Taylor’s experience in networking goes back to the days of Newbridge Networks, where he was VP of finance before the Alcatel acquisition.
Included in the press release was a slew of statistics about how well BTI has been doing (or claims to have been doing). For instance: Data center and cloud revenues for the first half of 2013 were up 120 percent from the same period a year ago.
5. VMware Gets an Exec
Media types have been having fun pouncing on stories about VMware execs moving elsewhere, but this time, VMware actually picked someone up, albeit out of parent company EMC. Chuck Hollis, EMC’s marketing CTO, joined VMware to work on “projects the likes of which he said he cannot discuss,” as CRN put it.
Hollis, an 18-year EMC veteran, had actually revealed his move a few days earlier on his own blog. He’ll be working in the storage and application services (SAS) unit led by Charles Fan. Whatever his job is, it will involve the software-defined data center (SDDC) concept that VMware has been obsessing over.
Recent news elsewhere on SDxCentral:
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