Oracle Builds Out SDN Portfolio With Corente Buy

Oracle is pushing deeper into the networking space, with plans to buy Corente, a company with expertise in software-defined networks for WAN environments.

Oracle officials announced the deal Jan. 7, saying they expect it to close in early 2014. No financial terms for the deal were disclosed.

Corente’s technology is designed to make it easier for organizations to deploy cloud-based applications and services by enabling them to provision and manage global private networks that can securely and simply connect to any site and over any IP network, according to Oracle officials.

With Corente in the fold, Oracle will be able to offer technologies for cloud deployments with software-defined networking (SDN) solutions that virtualize both the LAN and WAN in the data center, the officials said. The result will be faster deployment of services within the data center, with enhanced security and manageability.

“Companies are looking for new ways to deliver a growing portfolio of cloud-based applications and services to their entire ecosystem without the long delays of securing and configuring complex infrastructures,” Edward Screven, chief corporate architect for Oracle, said in a letter to customers and partners. “Corente’s cloud-based service delivery platform quickly establishes trusted network services between public or private cloud data centers and any location over any IP network regardless of the type of transport, access, application, or provider involved.”

Oracle is looking to become more of an IT solutions provider, a move that would increase its competition with the likes of IBM, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, all of whom are making significant investments in SDN. Oracle, which inherited a hardware business when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 for $7.4 billion, has been working to create a portfolio of workload-specific systems—such as its ExaLogic and ExaData offerings—that can run other vendors’ software but is optimized for Oracle’s solutions.

More recently, the company has been building out its networking capabilities through a series of acquisitions. The giant software vendor last year bought Xsigo Systems, which offers network virtualization capabilities. Earlier in 2013, the company bought Acme Packet for $1.7 billion and mobile broadband service provider Tekelec.

Corente’s offerings include its Cloud Services Exchange—a delivery platform for cloud-based services between data centers and any other IP network site—and the Corente Services Gateway, an integrated virtual appliance that offers endpoint security on private networks. In addition, the Corente Services Portal helps organizations manage, provision and monitor private networks worldwide.

“Corente provides a full lifecycle approach to automating the provisioning and management of service delivery networks,” CEO Jim Zucco said in a statement. “Together with Oracle, we expect to deliver software-defined networking offerings that create cost-effective, secure networks, spanning global business ecosystems.”