This was quite the week for Next Generation Communications community news since, unlike its usual focus on wireless, the center stage was occupied to things related to Software Defined Networks. In fact, community host Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) (ALU) had not one but two interesting SDN and cloud related announcements this past week that deserve highlighting:
- First, ALU laid out its SDN strategy for enterprise data centers. Leveraging SDNs for enabling the provisioning and optimal operation of a next generation Applications Fluent Network is the goal, and now is a good time to learn as much about this as possible. This includes a recent webinar, SDN: Let’s Cut the Hype, What is the Reality, which is a great resource for getting a handle on the subject.
- The company also rolled out enhancements to its CloudBand 'Carrier Cloud' offer for service providers that highlighted significant new management capabilities.
As mentioned, ALU was not alone in its concentration on things relating to data center transformation and specifically SDNs. Also making news on this front were:
- Coraid, a developer of Ethernet storage solutions, and Big Switch Networks, a platform-independent software-defined networking (SDN) company, who have partnered to build a networked storage solution that offers enhanced end-to-end security, dynamic flexibility and simplicity. To achieve this, the solution will leverage Big Switch Networks' Big Virtual Switch, a data center network virtualization application running on the Big Network Controller.
- Infinera (News - Alert), who recently announced the successful demonstration of a prototype Software Defined Network (SDN) Open Transport Switch (OTS) that enabled the optical transport network of ESnet (U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Sciences Network) to be configured by an SDN controller through the OpenFlow protocol.
In broadband news relating to service providers, thanks to ALU electric utility Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) is now offering customers 1-Gigabit broadband service in its operating area over an ALU-supplied GPON network. Across the Pacific Ocean, NTT (News - Alert) Communications has upgraded its network with next generation core routing capabilities to power its video transmission services. And, UK giant BT (News - Alert)
BT renewed its contract with ALU for its portfolio of Motive Customer Experience Solutions.
Features
As you will see below, the features not only tracked the news with insights into things relating to SDNs, and the cloud but also highlighted voice networking transformation as well as the management of the in-home next generation communications experience.
Service Providers
Enterprise
- TMCnet Contributing Editor Susan Campbell, examined the risks enterprises now face of not having a good migration plan for their legacy TDM PBXs and the need to empower the entire organization with IP telephony solutions such as Alcatel-Lucent’s OpenTouch Suite.
Industries
- In line with the items about SDNs in the news, take a look at how and why colleges and universities are transforming their data centers to provide a superior connected education.
Weekend reading
As is customary, I have a few suggestions for your weekend reading enjoyment. First, there are two Alcatel-Lucent TechZine articles that I recommend:
And, while this is not the first time I have mentioned how informative I thought this was, by all means if you have not listened to the webinar, SDN: Let’s Cut The Hype, What is the Reality?, this weekend would be a fine time to do so.
In addition, do not forget the community Resource Center. It is constantly being updated with whitepapers, videos and case studies. In particular, the whitepapers, Alcatel-Lucent The 2012 Cloud Networking Report and Turning Small Cells into Big ProfitsEmbedded OTDR. are very informative as are the featured eBook, Innovating Innovation, and the whitepaper Creating Your Smart Grid: A How-To Guide. Finally, take some time to enjoy the featured video on
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