Pluribus Networks introduced some updates to its software and support for a pair of new white-box switches aimed at reducing the amount of equipment required to automate the virtualization of network functions and workflows in a distributed cloud or edge data center.

The company’s Netvisor One operating system (OS) release 5.1 includes integration with Red Hat’s OpenStack and Ansible Automation platforms, and support for Celestica’s Edgestone and Seastone2E white box central office switches. Pluribus said it has also delivered improved network slicing and the first integration of the data center gateway router function directly into the top-of-rack switch to reduce costs in a smaller footprint.

“We built this distributed software that runs in the switches themselves, and so we leverage the switch sort of as if it’s a server effectively,” Pluribus Networks CMO Mike Capuano said.

The support for Celestica’s carrier-grade white boxes “helps breaks the logjam of moving data center infrastructure into these sort of not completely environmentally controlled locations like central offices,” Capuano explained.

Pluribus views edge computing in the context of distributed cloud architecture. Centralized data centers, regional or colocation facilities, remote cabinets, and a base station on premises can all be used for edge computing, he said.

“We’re inverting the model — we’re moving from very large buildings across small geographies to a lot of small buildings,” Capuano said. A service provider will generally pick the best location to place computing workloads based on where it can meet all of its requirements at the lowest cost, he added.

“We’ve really eliminated a lot of external servers, controllers, controller licenses, network probes, and [terminal access points], and the typical per-[central processing unit] license that a lot of network virtualization vendors will charge,” Capuano explained. “Plus we’ve gotten rid of the data center gateway, so we’re really slimming down what’s required to deploy at the edge location from a networking perspective.”

In July, Pluribus Networks released a white box, multi-tenant data center gateway router targeted at regional cloud service providers, managed service providers, and colocation partners. Pluribus Networks claims that its Netvisor One OS is now also the first to support Celestica’s Edgestone and Seastone2E white box central office switches.

With the Red Hat OpenStack and Ansible Automation platform integrated into Pluribus Netvisor One 5.1, a mobile network operator can now automatically set up a network when it spins up a new virtual machine, according to Capuano. Pluribus Networks is also working with Red Hat to integrate its OpenShift platform into Netvisor One in the second half of 2020.

Considering the myriad opportunities that edge computing presents, Capuano said he expects edge computing to be deployed more quickly than 5G. “There’s just a lot less local issues and politics in edge compute than there is in putting cell towers on top of light posts,” he said.

“We believe that 5G requires edge for its architecture and also for monetization, but we don’t believe that edge requires 5G,” Capuano said. Pluribus expects edge computing to be successful in 4G LTE public and private networks alongside WiFi and wired access, he added.

The advancement of edge computing in central offices has been a “little bit slow” because “it’s missing some pieces and we think we’re bringing some of those pieces to the table,” Capuano said.