Japanese vendor NEC has established a partnership with Portuguese incumbent operator Portugal Telecom that will see the two firms collaborate on SDN (software defined networking) and virtualisation technology for datacenters and carrier networks.

The two firms said that the agreement would “enable both companies to test and assess the commercial feasibility and benefits of SDN implementation for carrier datacenters”, adding that SDN and network virtualisation have “exceptional potential”.

As part of the programme the two will conduct a study into where SDN solutions might provide the most benefit within Portugal Telecom’s network infrastructure.

“The challenges of legacy networks are leading [Portugal Telecom] to deal with complex and inflexible network configurations, operations and management,” the firms said. “With this partnership, Portugal Telecom aims to understand how SDN can solve these challenges.”