Here’s our gathering of the week’s news bits around software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and related topics.

... Google’s cloud computing business is giving market leader Amazon a run for its money by dropping prices and simplifying its offerings. The company reduced prices across a range of services, but as Wired notes, the most notable change is the automatic 53 percent “sustained-use discount” on virtual machines used continually over the course of a month. The idea: to close the gap between high cloud costs, which have been falling, and hardware costs, which have been falling even faster.

... Not to be outdone, Amazon Web Services responded with price cuts of its own the day after Google’s news broke. No direct mention of Google in its announcement.

... Also on the cloud front, Cisco announced plans to build a giant global Intercloud, or network of clouds. Based on OpenStack, Intercloud would be designed to allow organizations and users to combine and move workloads — including data and applications — across different public or private clouds while maintaining network and security policies. Cisco expects to spend more than $1 billion on its expanded cloud business over the next two years. The company plans to deliver the Intercloud with and through international partners.

... Frank Frankovsky, the man who led Facebook's server-building initiative that seeded the Open Compute Project, has left to start an optical-storage company, GigaOm reported.

... Cumulus Networks beat out Juniper and Extreme Networks to provide switching software for IX Leeds, a nonprofit Internet exchange point (IXP) based in the U.K. The company chose Cumulus’ Linux OS for its upgraded IXP after its requirements outgrew the Brocade system that was installed when the project began. Cumulus’ software will be running on Quanta switches.

... 6WIND is inviting entries for its network tool implementation contest, “Speed Matters: The Challenge." Entries must be built using Intel’s data plane development kit (DPDK). Among the judges will be Jim Metzler, founder and vice president for Ashton, Metzler, & Associates — who you might recognize as the star of the SDN Journey videos on SDxCentral.

... Arista added new 100-Gb/s modules to its 7500E spine/core switch.

... Verizon Terremark, the cloud-provider arm of Verizon, joined the Linux Foundation as a Gold member. Terremark has shown open-source chops before, having invested in the Xen Project and Cloudstack a year ago.

... Spherix, a 47-year-old company, sued Cisco for "immense" patent infringement. The basis of the suit is a group of Nortel patents that were purchased in 2011 by the Rockstar Consortium — Apple, BlackBerry, Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony — and later sold to Spherix. In November, the Consortium used some other patents to file a suit of its own against Google.

... Cyan's CFO abruptly resigned and was replaced. Cyan, a vendor whose equipment and software manages the packet and optical layers together, went public in May at $11 a share but has been a disappointment since. It closed trading Thursday at $4.13.

... Finally, the Linux Foundation released its first Collaborative Development Trends Report. Among the findings: More than 77 percent of business managers said collaborative development practices have benefited their organizations by speeding up the product development cycle. Check out more here.