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Networking and IT integration specialist NEC and technology giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced they are collaborating on the integration of advanced technology and leveraging open standards, to develop software-defined networking (SDN) enabled networking solutions to their enterprise customers.
The collaboration will work to deliver the infrastructure and open standards-based SDN solutions taking into consideration current and emerging industry trends such as social media, mobility, cloud computing and big data.
For example, HP and NEC have been working to ensure interoperability between HP SDN-Ready OpenFlow switches and the NEC SDN controller, which enables a dynamically controlled network infrastructure.
“With the most widely deployed SDN-enabled infrastructure, HP is committed to providing customers worldwide with innovative solutions based on open standards,” Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s networking division, said in a statement. “By aligning our expertise and ensuring interoperability, HP and NEC will continue to lead the market through continual technical advancements and flexible networking infrastructure that empowers customers to protect and grow their current and future investments.”
In addition, NEC has started work to port the NEC Virtual Tenant Network (VTN) application to interoperate with the HP SDN controller and to include the application in the HP SDN App Store.
The idea is that this integration will help extend the benefits of the NEC VTN application to customers with an existing HP Networking–based infrastructure, taking into account the fact that virtualization and automation technology are becoming increasingly important to enterprise networking.
The two companies have been strategic alliance partners for nearly 20 years, with NEC’s large-scale enterprise IT systems developed on HP’s Unix-based operating system, HP-UX.
“NEC is a pioneer in commercializing SDN in the global market. It is vital for NEC to accelerate technical innovation and maximize customers’ investment efficiencies,” Shinichi Shoji, executive vice president of NEC, said in a statement. “Building on our successful collaborations since 1995, NEC and HP are extending their alliance to include SDN, and providing innovative next-generation ICT infrastructure.”
As part of the joint effort, the partnership will increase global delivery of SDN-ready networking solutions and software based on open standards and combine these offerings with servers and storage.
This could allow customers to build an integrated information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure that responds to unpredictable changes and frequent requests for changes.
HP and NEC also are working with industry-standards organizations to demonstrate their continued commitment to a standards-based SDN solution.
The two companies said they plan to build ecosystems of application vendors providing business and network applications based on products that utilize open standards to implement SDN, which in turn allows for dynamic control of the network.