Singapore-based DCConnect said it will use the Linux network operating system (NOS) from Cumulus Networks to support its next-generation SDN (NG-SDN) service for carriers and customers in Asia.

The Cumulus NOS runs on more than 30 hardware platforms from a dozen vendors including Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Mellanox, and Lenovo. Two years ago it expanded its portfolio with a performance monitoring product called NetQ.

According to DCConnect, which provides on-demand connectivity to global data centers and cloud service providers, it is using the Cumulus NOS and NetQ for telemetry-based network visibility. It said it has been able to evolve “the simple concept of SDN as a network automation tool into a predictive, automated network with meaningful analytic tools.”

The company explained that its aim is to assist customers and carriers to develop NG-SDN technology in emerging countries, especially in Asia. The service focuses on software-to-software control, which it claims “is entirely different from the software-to-hardware approach currently employed by most vendors” and enables it to “transform networking into a process that is similar to computing.”

DCConnect CTO Billy Fung said with traditional vendors in the past, SDNs “have been based on the idea of software controlling hardware. Now with Cumulus’ Linux-based platform deployed within our network, software controls software. This is game-changing technology that will revolutionize the way companies provision and manage their network solutions.”

Cumulus Networks was established nine years ago and has championed open networking since its founding. The company is losing one of its co-founders, however, as it recently confirmed that CTO JR Rivers is leaving the company.

It’s been quite a week for SDN and on-demand connectivity in general.

CenturyLink said it has connected with Microsoft Azure and its Azure Government division as part of its ongoing efforts to expand its cloud networking capabilities. That means customers are able to make use of CenturyLink’s Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections with the Microsoft ExpressRoute in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

The company launched Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections in October 2018. The platform gives enterprises the ability to immediately connect to public clouds and are delivered over private MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 connections across CenturyLink's redundant global fiber network using SDN. CenturyLink has already enabled the real-time creation and deletion of private Ethernet connections to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has been forging relationships with more public cloud providers.

Paul Savill, senior vice president of core network and technology solutions at CenturyLink, said the addition of Microsoft Azure means that CenturyLink “can now directly connect to approximately 70% of the desired destinations for all public cloud market users. This gives customers even more flexibility for how they leverage their cloud workloads.”

In a further public cloud development, interconnection and data center specialist Equinix said it has expanded its existing relationship with IBM Cloud to support enterprise hybrid cloud deployments. The company said the Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric (ECX Fabric), an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service, offers enterprises a “private onramp” to IBM Cloud to provide private connectivity to IBM Cloud including Direct Link Exchange, Direct Link Dedicated, and Direct Link Dedicated Hosting.