Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, cloud, and virtualization infrastructure:

Why Barefoot Networks Decided SDN Needs a New Chip — The startup is hoping to extend SDN‘s reach by applying the new P4 language.

Who Needs an IPO? Blue Coat Gets a $4.65B Bid from Symantec — Blue Coat’s plan to go public was short-lived.

VMware Acquires Arkin to Boost NSX — Arkin's software uses natural-language search.

Cisco Unfurls its Tetration Data Center Analytics Platform — It's an entirely new analytics platform to monitor every action in the data center.

Here are the week’s strays and stragglers we roped for you:

The Open Network Operating System (ONOS) Project released its seventh version - this one is named “Goldeneye.”

CoreOS announced the availability of the open source CoreOS Linux operating system in China. Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet is the first officially supported cloud provider to offer CoreOS Linux in China.

IBM and VMware are enabling VMware Horizon Air customers to take advantage of cloud-hosted desktop and application services via the IBMCloud.

Skytap unveiled the Skytap Driver to extend the native functionality of Docker Machine to Skytap Cloud.

CA Technologies announced the availability of several new integrations across its DevOps portfolio for organizations to connect and automate the entire app pipeline progression from development, to test, to production.

VimpelCom will pay Ericsson more than $1 billion to overhaul VimpelCom’s IT infrastructure across 11 countries, digitalizing its business support systems (BSS) infrastructure, using Ericsson’s new software and cloud technologies.

Plumgrid's Open Networking Suite (ONS) 5.0 is now integrated with Mirantis OpenStack distribution and the Fuel automation framework.

Spirent launched its Spirent Lumos for automating service assurance workflows in hybrid networks with physical and virtual elements.

iguaz.io is taking a fresh approach to big data’s challenges, consolidating data into a high-volume, real-time data repository that virtualizes and presents it as streams, messages, files, objects, or data records.

NEC participated in the second multi-vendor wireless transport SDN proof of concept with the Open Networking Foundation's (ONF's) open transport working group.

Cloud security company Tigera closed its Series A funding round of $13 million. It will use the funds to continue community momentum around three key open source projects: Calico, Canal, and Flannel.

Here are the other storiesSDxCentralcovered this week:

  • Ericsson Launches 5G Software Plug-Ins
  • Barefoot Networks' McKeown: On OpenFlow, P4, & the Programmable Network
  • Samsung Moves Into the Cloud With Joyent Acquisition
  • Chef Cooks Up 'Habitats' for Applications
  • ContainerX Ships Its ‘vSphere for Containers’
  • Virtualized Networks Invite Cyber Espionage
  • Cavium Snaps Up QLogic in $1.36B Deal
  • 74% of Organizations Feel the Pull of the Public Cloud
  • Unhappiness with MPLS Spurs SD-WAN Adoption
  • A Universal Snap Works Across All Linux Distributions
  • Barefoot Networks Just Raised Another $57M
  • Portworx Aims Container Storage at Enterprise Databases
  • Infinera, Corsa & ONOS Do SDN for Europe’s Research Network