Here's our weekly roundup of news and analysis in the software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) areas, this time weighted toward cloud operations.

1. Cloudscaling Plays Two Sides

Cloudscaling launched general availability of Open Cloud System version 2.5 on Thursday. The release keeps up with most of the latest OpenStack projects, and Cloudscaling also pledged it's going to be making OCS more closely compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the dominant public-cloud provider.

With this release, Cloudscaling "has joined the competition between VMware and Cisco Systems to supply virtualized networking to the future software-defined data center and private-enterprise cloud," writes Charles Babcock of InformationWeek.

A big part of the Cloudscaling offering is the integration of Juniper's Contrail SDN technology, which can give applications the ability to configure network equipment. (Juniper is also an investor in Cloudscaling.) Which presents the opportunity for a cheap plug: Juniper and Cloudscaling will demonstrate their work on OCS 2.5 on Sept. 20 as part of SDxCentral's DemoFriday™ series. You can register here for the live webcast of the demo.

2. EMC Floats the Nile

EMC introduced Project Nile, a cloud-storage offering meant to challenge AWS and its S3 storage. The goal is to match the scale and the automated deployment of public-cloud services "but with the control security and reliability of a Private Cloud," as Amitabh Srivastava, president of EMC's Advanced Software Division, wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Much of the press coverage this week focused on EMC's other announcement — that the VNX product line is being altered to accommodate an increasingly flash-happy storage market — and on the fact that EMC's press event was held in the fashion capital of Milan. (Interesting URL, by the way.) Project Nile is due to be available in the first half of 2014.

3. Nice Work If You Can Get It

By the way — Amazon's profit margin on AWS? About 80 percent, one industry executive reckons.

4. Bringing Your SDN Home

SDN isn't really meant as a home-network concept, but it's got some relevance there — as does network functions virtualization (NFV), in a way. The set-top box could be the place where both get instantiated.

For years, the cable industry has mulled the idea of turning the set-top box into a generic piece of equipment, with the associated functions controlled in the cloud. This would save the costs and trouble of upgrading the boxes and give operators more flexibility with services. Certain cities could become hubs for new experiments, for instance, without having to receive special equipment.

Deutsche Telekom has been testing the cloud-set-top approach and showed its prototype this week for the first time, as Light Reading reported Friday. "If Deutsche Telekom can pull it off on a massive scale, it will show other service providers that the approach is scalable," editor Mari Silbey writes.

5. Intel Racks 'Em Up

Intel made the first demonstration of its Rack Scale Architecture (RSA), showing off a rack that included newly announced Atom C2000 processors and a new optical connector, named MXC, that's built with Intel's silicon photonics technology. Intel announced RSA in July with Rackspace as a customer; it's an approach that could complement SDN and NFV in a data center.

6. VMware and NSX: You Can't Escape

Following VMware's NSX announcement from last week, blogger Ivan Pepelnjak takes us through a deeper dive in a podcast for The Class-C Block, discussing the nature of overlay networks, the reasons why MPLS is not a good alternative (cover your ears, Juniper), and how vendors exploit the political battles between server teams and network teams.