Sonus Buys Treq Labs’ SDN Portfolio for $10.1 Million

Sonus Networks is spending $10.1 million for the software-defined networking products from Treq Labs, a move that will enable Sonus to expand what it offers service providers and enterprises that are looking to more quickly and easily manage their networks and provision services.

Sonus officials said they will combine the SDN offerings from Treq with the company’s own session border control (SBC) and policy management technology to give organizations the tools they need to create more flexible, agile and programmable networks, which is becoming increasingly important as they deal with the growth of such network-intensive applications as video and unified communications (UC).

The deal with Treq closed Jan. 2.

In the past, network operators and enterprises have had to over-provision their networks in order to manage the congestion created by workloads, a practice that is costly and inefficient, according to Sonus CTO Kevin Riley.

“This model is no longer economically feasible given the rapid increase in network bandwidth driven by video and UC,” Riley said in a statement. “A solution is required which can deliver predictable behavior in an environment of congestion via intelligent network control and application-aware policies.”

Treq’s SDN offerings combine programmatic network control, awareness of the state of the network and application policy to ensure service-level agreements, he said. That dovetails well with the SBC and policy capabilities of Sonus’ portfolio.

SDN and network-functions virtualization (NFV) enable organizations to remove the control plane and network tasks—such as load balancing and firewalls—from complex networking gear and put them into software that can run on low-cost commodity systems. The goal is to create networks that are easier to program and more affordable than traditional infrastructures.

“Our industry’s transition to SDN is a strategic element to the selection criteria of both enterprise and service provider customers as they evaluate their future network architectures,” Sonus President and CEO Ray Dolan said in a statement.

The Treq SDN technology will help network operators reduce costs through improved network utilization, automated provisioning, and faster service creation and deployment, and migrate from traditional networks to a network-as-a-service model, according to Sonus officials.