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.

... OpenStack Juno was released Thursday. It includes some help for NFV, included in OpenStack Nova, the compute project.

... VMware officially introduced NSX network virtualization platform to its global partner program, setting up resellers to start offering it.

... VMware and CSC will collaborate to offer OpenStack infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform. It will be built on VMware's SDDC products.

... Blue Box closed a $10 million Series B funding round with participation from prior investors including Voyager Capital and Founders Collective.

... Mellanox added three new top-of-rack Open Ethernet SDN switches to its 10/40/56-Gb/s Ethernet switch portfolio.

... Calient Technologies has expanded its support for SDN with a new plugin for the OpenDaylight platform.

... Pluribus Networks brought on Bob Layton as its new vice president of Americas enterprise and channel sales.

... Korean provider KT teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to develop some NFV technologies.

... ... Pica8 spelled out the ways its bare-metal OS takes advantage of Broadcom's Trident II chipset. VXLAN is the best-known overlay feature available in the Trident II, but PicOS is the first network OS to support L2oGRE, L3oGRE, and NVGRE, the startup claimed.

... 6WIND launched Virtual Accelerator, the first product in its new Speed Series family. It will offer accelerated virtual switching and networking features for virtual infrastructures to enable NFV, data center virtualization, and network appliance virtualization.

... Telco Systems unveiled its first two TelcoApps, vFirewall and vRouter. The company also announced the release of its newest Open Metro Edge solution product, CloudMetro100.

... CENX received a multimillion dollar order from an unnamed Tier 1 North American service provider.

... Tufin launched general availability of its Security Policy Orchestration product for the VMware NSX network virtualization platform.

Here's what else SDxCentral covered this week:

• SDN & OpenFlow World Congress: The SDxCentral Report — Links to our coverage of the conference from Dusseldorf, Germany. We'll be adding more stories next week, so be sure to bookmark that page.
• NFV Group Will Gently Push for Open Source Help
• NEC Aligns With Dell & Drops SDN Controller PricingSDN & OpenFlow World Congress: Dell, HP, and Cumulus Reach Out to the Masses
• If EMC Buys Cloudscaling, Is It the Startup's Final Home?
• Embrane Lands UOL Deal, With Help from Cisco's ACI
• Dell's OpenDaylight Participation Turns Platinum
• What NTT Docomo Wants from NFV
• OpenDaylight Coders Madhu Venugopal, Brent Salisbury, & Dave Tucker Open Shop on a Docker Startup
• Can Coriant Transcend With Its New SDN Strategy?
• Amdocs Makes a Play for NFV Orchestration