SDxCentral spent this week in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, and below are a few news bites we didn't get a chance to cover (we were too busy schmoozing, but hey, now you know).

Oracle unveiled new Ethernet switches and added virtual network services to Oracle SDN. The advances help to address significant networking necessities for cloud-enabled data centers. The 10- and 40-Gb/s Ethernet switches — the Es2-72 and ES2-64 — were created to hone a gamut of capabilities for Oracle engineered systems, servers, and storage with low latency and high scalability.  The switches are used in Oracle's Netra Modular System, and are also made available independently. The new virtual services empower users to deploy security, load balancing, and routing on-demand in a single virtual instance while managing in a single pane using Oracle Fabric Manager. These additions to Oracle's SDN strategy offer greater flexibility and scalability for enterprise data centers and NFV infrastructure.

Deutsche Telekom launched a cloud VPN service for medium and small businesses, expanding the long relationship between it and Cisco. The new offering will be Deutsche Telekom's first commercial service based on its Pan-European IP network, designed and created to use a joint DevOps methodology cultivated by it and Cisco. The cloud VPN uses a self-service online portal that gives customers an easy way to select, subscribe, and activate secure and scalable Internet services. Its portfolio includes branch, site-to-site, and remote-access-encrypted VPNs, firewalls and web security. The service will be made available first to subsidiaries in Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia.

Telecom Italia said it intends to support new Cisco-enabled managed business services, including Cisco Meraki. As part of its new LAN management offering, Telecom Italia's support will engage businesses throughout Italy. With a modular set of services for management and operation of business customer networks, Cisco Meraki will still offer deep application control, providing a better end-user experience. The collaboration between Telecom Italia and Cisco will also include development of more cloud-managed services based on Cisco's virtualization and orchestration software, enabling Telecom Italia to give organizations easily deployable offerings that can be managed from the cloud and provide visibility across the network.

Sonus IQ, a new service delivery architecture from Sonus Networks, was introduced. The platform aims to bring security and intelligence to real-time communications networks, enabling the "new IP" architecture for enterprise and operators. Sonus IQ promises to deliver better quality-of-experience at lower capex, with higher service automation and lower new service cycle time, resulting in decreased opex. Compass Networks joined in on the announcement, saying it will demonstrate how operators around the globe can heighten productivity of new cloud-based services using its own SDN Forwarding Platform alongside the network-as-a-service Sonus IQ platform.

NoviFlow launched a new switch, the 2128, set to be available in Q2 of this year. It featured the NoviWare 300 OpenFlow switching software, and supports all OpenFlow 1.3 features, as well as cornerstone capabilities of OpenFlow 1.4. 2128 is 240 Gbps throughput and will be powered by EZchip NP-5 NPU.

(Photo: Torre Porta Fira en la Plaza Europa by Ramiro Sánchez-Crespo.  Use under commercial creative commons license. Photo has been cropped. Color has been adjusted)