Along with stuffed turtles, Cumulus Networks and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today launched open storage networking into the stratosphere with a new partnership.

“The combination of Cumulus Linux and NetQ with HPE’s M-Series Ethernet Switches now provides organizations a more open, flexible networking fabric that is predictable, scalable, and reliable to help drive businesses forward,” said Josh Leslie, CEO of Cumulus Networks in a prepared statement. 

Cumulus Linux is the company's Linux-based operating system, and NetQ is its performance monitoring product. The new partnership makes Cumulus Linux and NetQ available on HPE’s StoreFabric M-Series ethernet switches. 

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and IoT represent an influx of data being generated across sectors — and  require robust networking capabilities in companies' data centers. 

Open networking with white box switches promises operational value, data center flexibility, and reduced network infrastructure costs, and Cumulus and HPE say their partnership will deliver on this promise.

Partho Mishra, president and CPO at Cumulus Networks explained in a written response to SDxCentral that Cumulus Linux already supports a range of hardware platforms that are being used to run AI and big data applications across the U.S., Europe, and China.

“As part of our development roadmap, we also have plans to support hardware platforms based on the Broadcom Qumran-MX family, which support external memory (aka large buffers). These are expected to start to become available in the next few months,” Mishra added.

Cumulus Networks was established nine years ago and has championed open networking since its founding. Three years ago it expanded its portfolio with a performance monitoring product called NetQ.

NetQ is built specifically for data center networks, which increasingly include containers and virtual machines (VMs) in addition to everything between switch and port. The adoption of microservices, containers, and VMs has added a layer of complexity to the data center, and monitoring tools are struggling to keep up. 

In November, Cumulus released Linux 4.0 and NetQ 2.4 that unloaded a bevy of enhancements to the network operating system.

The data center is changing, but it isn’t dying, according to Cumulus. It's expanding. 

"Customers tell us they used to be frustrated with their legacy providers and their forced upgrades, the skyrocketing costs, and the lack of interoperability with other solutions. But, many organizations like the open technology they have deployed and are planning on adopting more," Mishra said.

Late last year, Cumulus released a study conducted by Researchscape International Research that shows IT leaders have reached a breaking point with proprietary infrastructure. Findings suggest that more than half of technology leaders are interested in adopting more open technology.

In fact, 70% of companies have already implemented open networking technology to modernize their data centers to increase agility and scalability, it found.

“Enterprises are demanding that their data center networks become more agile, architecturally and operationally, so that they align better with cloud operating models and the imperative of digital transformation,” said Brad Casemore, research vice president of data center networks at ID, in a prepared statement.