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

… The rumor mill is churning with murmurs that Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers may retire as early as this fall, a story the Rayno Report broke earlier this week. The networking giant also is said to be preparing for a re-org that could shuffle 20,000 jobs inside the company.

… VMware added NSX to its price list, meaning channel partners can sell it — and we can see what the price is, and at first glance, it seems rather high: A perpetual license starts at $5,996 per CPU, and a term license starts at $34 per virtual machine per month, according to CRN. Volume discounts are available — and keep in mind these are list prices, which can often be higher than what actually gets paid.

… Four NFV vendors are teaming up to demonstrate a distributed NFV (D-NFV) proof-of-concept (PoC) at Light Reading's Big Telecom Event in Chicago next week. The ETSI-approved PoC will bring together RAD, Fortinet, Certes Networks, and Cyan to prove vendor interoperability and determine which functions work best at the edge versus the network core.

…On a related note, Fortinet and Certes officially joined Cyan’s Blue Orbit SDN and NFV ecosystem.

… Ciena launched its newest packet-optical platform. Capable of multi-terabit switching of traffic between data centers, the programmable 8700 Packetwave Platform integrates 100-Gb/s Ethernet and MPLS-TP packet switching with 100-Gb/s coherent optics. While the 8700 is no upgrade to Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform, the company is positioning it as the packet foundation for the metro Ethernet market.

… KEMP Technologies has rolled out what it's calling the first SDN adaptive load balancing product for HP’s Virtual Application Networks (VAN) controller. KEMP's new product allows its Virtual LoadMasters application delivery controller (ADC) to “pull” circuit information across the northbound interface within the SDN controller so it can use intelligent algorithm aggregation for Layer 2-7 load-balancing decisions.

… Pica8 demonstrated live 40-Gb/s Ethernet line-rate VXLAN at Interop Tokyo this week. The company created a VXLAN tunnel over a core Layer 3 network using two Foxconn white-box bare metal switches with the Broadcom Trident-II chipset running PicOS 2.3. The architecture enables seamless VM mobility using standard orchestration tools across Layer 3 boundaries.

… VictorOps, a collaboration platform designed for DevOps teams, has rolled out a retrospection reporting tool designed to automate the post-mortem process.

... Anuta Networks added more features, including YANG data modeling support, to its NCX product. The company also announced a partnership with NTT-AT, an independent company inside the NTT Group.

... The Optical Internetworking Forum plans to start work on a specification for virtual network services (VNS) that could become a main driver for deployment of SDN in transport networks.

Finally, here's the other news we've covered this week: