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

... Here comes the rumor mill: Bernstein Research said EMC is ready to buy, and who does it have its eye on? Arista Networks and possibly even Brocade (cue the overwhelming, “What?”). The Wall Street analysts said Arista would be a good choice, because combined with EMC's VMware possession and its go-to-market capability, it could maybe give Cisco a run for its money. With Brocade, EMC may become a major networking player.

... Network World reported that Cisco replaced its top computing exec, Paul Perez, for undisclosed reasons. VP of UCS Product Management and Solutions Satinder Sethi will take over Perez's post.

... The Defense Information Security Agency (DISA) canceled its request for a VMware five-year deal valued $1.6 billion, citing the need “to further analyze the Government's needs.” The planned deal made waves due to its lack of transparency for other suppliers, such as AWS, Citrix, Minburn Group, and Nutanix, according to The Register.

... Network World reported HP slimmed down the list of bidders for two Chinese companies it's selling... well, selling 51 percent of. Frontrunners are Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., ICBC International Ltd.’s direct-investment arm RT Capital, and state-owned China Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy Development Center have been shortlisted, sources told the publication. Note that Huaxin bought a majority stake in Alcatel-Lucent's enterprise division last year.

... Telco Systems showed off its expanding portfolio for Open Metro Edge (OME) SDN and NFV during the MPLS SDN World Congress this week, showing the transition from Carrier Ethernet 2.0 to SDN and NFV frameworks. OME can be deployed separately to meet specific service provider needs, or users can bundle it as a complete product to capitalize on new revenue opportunities, customer retention, and easier network operations.

... F5 Networks CEO John McAdam has signed on as a strategic director at Seattle VC firm Madrona Venture Group, according to GeekWire. McAdam, who remains boss at F5, will dole out guidance (and get a peek under the hood) at startups in Madrona's portfolio, which includes a number of big data and analytics firms.

... Huawei is joining ONOS and the Open Networking Foundation to build an open SDN industry ecosystem, aiming to speed up SDN commercialization. Huawei will also work closely with OPNFV to develop a programmable SDN architecture that meets operator needs. In a separate announcement, Huawei said it's teamed with DataCore Software to launch jointly certified, hyperconverged products.

... Compuverde said it now supports web-scale, hyperconverged and hyperscale storage architectures with its software-defined and horizontally designed storage platform.

... Extreme Networks unveiled what it claims is the industry's most complete (as of right now) product for Secure Mobility with Analytics for the Private Cloud. It will include 25 IdentiFi access points, a virtualized mobility controller, software licenses for network management, BYOD and network access control, as well as wireless intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and application analytics. The catch? It's exclusively for Aruba and HP customers. (Sidebar: did you know Extreme Networks is the official Wi-Fi provider for the NFL? Things you learn when you read the whole press release...)

... Nutanix unveiled a new technology certification, the Nutanix Platform Expert (NPX). It is on track to become the most rigorous technical qualification in enterprise computing, the company claims, and highlights the increasing adoption of multihypervisor environments in enterprise data centers.

... OpenSSL issued a new security patch. Last year's Heartbleed incident comes to mind immediately, but consensus seems to be that this set of vulnerabilities isn't so severe.

... Bare metal switches are going to be making a splash in the near future, so says Infonetics. The research firm's forecast says that bare metal switches will comprise just under a quarter of all data-center ports shipped worldwide in 2019. If you're doing the math, that's an 11 percent jump from 2014.

... VMware bigwig Martin Casado joined the CloudGenix advisory board, looking to help execute the company's strategy to bring SDN benefits to WANs.

... OpenDNS acquired BGPmon, a provider of network and routing monitoring services based on Border Gateway Protocol (hence its moniker, I assume).

... Pica8 and network training company INE teamed up to announce an inaugural network engineer training program for OpenFlow-based SDN. The collaboration for this particular training bridges Pica8’s SDN R&D and deployment experience with INE’s background in network certification training.

... Cisco launched three advances to its Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) portfolio, including Application Engineered Routing, the IOS XRv 9000 virtual router (also noted here), and high-density 100-Gb/s line cards for the ASR 9000 series.

... BTI Systems announced what it's calling an industry-first for an optical transport platform by integrating MPLS core routing. It also showed off results from the European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) showing interoperability between the BTI 7800 Intelligent Cloud Connect platform and Cisco and ZTE products.

... cPacket introduced Active Test, a feature for running a stress test on a production network.

... The OpenDaylight Project unveiled the full program for the OpenDaylight Forum in India, to be held April 22-23.

Here’s what else SDxCentral covered lately:

• Surprise! IBM Actually Has a Huge Team on SDN
• Corsa Raises $16.5M for Its Programmable Data Plane
• Why LSO is the Next Big Thing
• How Software-Defined Infrastructure Could Swallow IT
• Mirantis Uses Juniper Contrail To Counterbalance VMware
• New F5 Load Balancer & Volume Licensing Aim to Enhance App Delivery
• Vitesse, a Long-Struggling Ethernet Chipmaker, Lands a $389M Offer
• Broadcom Expands High-End Switching Line
• Cisco Virtual Router Targets Service Providers This Time
• IBM Exec: 'Perfect Storm' Poised to Transform Networking
• Carrier SDN Efforts Require New Service Orchestration
• Ex-Cisco VP Announces $2M in Funding for Startup Altocloud
• Ericsson Buys Telco Services Firm in China, Adds 1,000 Staff
• A10 & Big Switch Collaborate for Cyberthreat Protection