Alcatel-Lucent’s SDN subsidiary confirms cloud data centre implementation

Alcatel-Lucent’s software defined networking (SDN) subsidiary, Nuage Networks, has announced that it will be providing its Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) to global hosting firm OVH. The deployment of VSP in data centres across Europe and North America will deliver “OpenStack as a Service” to OVH.

In an official statement, the OVH Group outlined its primary business motivations for opting for a data centre-based SDN solution. The company will be investing heavily in innovative network solutions, such as VSP, with the aim of optimizing operating costs and delivering competitively priced services.

With the SDN architecture running across the data centre, OVH hopes that the “OpenStack as a Service” offering will enable customers to access dedicated Cloud infrastructure. As a consequence, OVH claims that its cloud data centres can instantly and dynamically determine resources required for a requested application in accordance with established policies.

“The Nuage Networks SDN technology allows us to offer our customers cloud services in a more dynamic way, giving them the capability to reduce their time-to-market with a programmable and automated networking environment,” said Octave Klaba, CEO and founder of OVH.

SDN solutions, when applied through the data centre, allow service providers to benefit financially and operationally through a combination of decreasedexpenditure, increased flexibility, management and control functionality, as well as delivering reduced time to market service provisioning.

Sunil Khandekar, Nuage Networks CEO, believes that Nuage Networks are well positioned to deliver SDN to service providers like OVH. “We are excited to work with OVH in support of their dedicated cloud initiative, which will allow them to deliver attractive and innovative cloud services to their European and international customers, while making their infrastructure more agile, responsive, and cost effective,” he said.

The announcement from Nuage is not the first time we’ve seen an SDN vendor working with a cloud service provider. Earlier this year, Juniper Networks concluded a project with Cloud Dynamics to provide its SDN controller “Contrail” across its series of data centres. As SDN continues to mature, more announcements of similar partnerships are almost certain as we move towards 2015.