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

... Equinix and IBM said that SoftLayer cloud services will be directly accessible through the Equinix Cloud Exchange.

... Mellanox added the Switch Abstraction Interface to its Open Ethernet switch systems, figuratively connecting them to the Open Compute Project.

... Last month, Microsoft Azure fell victim to an outage that left customers experiencing service interruption on Azure Storage and other services. While the Azure folks followed up with a preliminary root cause analysis (RCA), this week they released a more in-depth RCA showing human error was the main impetus behind the outage. Customer comments following the fessing up from Azure were a mixed bag — while pleased with the amount of transparency regarding the issue, open forums aren't complete without some choice words for systems that don't work right when you want them to.

... Google and Verizon entered a long-term patent cross-license agreement and offered up little else on the terms, besides that it will span several products and technologies and "reduce the risk of future patent litigation." We'll have to wait and see how that last part turns out...

... As we reported in September, Infinera introduced Cloud Xpress. Now it's shipping, just in time for the holidays.

... Trend Micro and HP signed an OEM agreement aimed at helping enterprises fight advanced targeted threats and custom malware.

... OPNFV added another member -- Array Networks is now a silver founding member.

... Calient, alongside the Center for Integrated Access Networks (CIAN), announced it's looking to expand the use of optical circuit switching in software-defined data center and metro networks. CIAN, a 10-university research organization, has planned research activities that Calient will participate in.

... Big Cloud Fabric, from Big Switch Networks, got certified to run with Red Hat's Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5. This means Big Switch's fabric can be a networking option in OpenStack, something Midokura and Akanda are also vying to provide. Big Switch's OpenStack push has also included a partnership with Mirantis and, of course, "OpenStack Compatible" certification.

... Plexxi announced the availability of three new product starter kits that it claims will make it easier for organizations to adopt SDN. The three kits include the Agile Datacenter Starter Kit that enables basic data center compute and storage connectivity alongside integrations with OpenStack and vCenter; the Distributed Cloud Starter kit, which offers a redundant high-performance interconnect between two data centers that can be as many as 50 miles from one another; and finally, the Big Data Pod Starter Kit, a scalable entry network with six switches, transceivers, cables, control software, as well as Cloudera and Hortonworks integration modules. All three kits are now available.

... As reported by Dark Reading, a vulnerability called Grinch could potentially open all Linux systems to intrusion. Alert Logic discovered the problem, and says that while a fix has yet to be found, you shouldn't let the (warning: punny language ahead) Grinch steal Christmas. The problem can apparently be averted by just not using the default configuration of Linux's Policy Kit.

• VMware Vet Leaves Midokura to Chase Big Data
• Pluribus Ousts Arista in a Wall Street Cloud
• OpenDaylight Security Hole Went Unfixed Since August
• Skyport Gets Some of the Old Juniper Band Back Together
• Riverbed to Go Private Under Pressure from Hedge Fund