ADARA Networks, CALIENT partner for SDN-based WANs

Cloud and software-defined networking (SDN) software vendor ADARA Networks and optical switch vendor CALIENT Technologies have announced a partnership to address software-defined WAN applications. The companies say a joint offering is now available for evaluation and proof of concept testing.

The offering combines ADARA's SDN SKY Controller, CloudFabric Cloud Management Platform and Axis packet switches with CALIENT's S-Series optical circuit switches. The result is an SDN-friendly approach to cloud computing and networking that can add a low-latency, high-speed optical overlay network to existing Layer 3 routed/IP-MPLS networks. The architecture enables real-time data flows to bypass the traditional packet-based Layer 2/3 network to improve transport latency, the companies say.

The approach enables SDN deployment in a heterogeneous, multivendor network that encompasses multiple network domains. The packet and optical layer integration is incrementally deployable to minimize risk, the companies add.

Network security is ensured via use of ADARA Advanced Novel Encryption in the packet transport segment and physical isolation and security in the photonic layer, the companies explain.

"The demand for CALIENT's 3D-MEMS Optical Circuit Switching technology is expanding to include data center interconnect (DCI) and other WAN applications as customers seek to optimize the use of networks that are scaling to 100 Gbps and beyond," said Atiq Raza, chairman and CEO at CALIENT. "The partnership with ADARA allows network operators to achieve something highly valuable and not previously attainable – the realization of full Layer 0-7 multilayer optimization across wide-area networks consisting of equipment from multiple vendors and across multiple domains."

The partnership is one of a number of efforts CALIENT has pursued that marry optical circuit switching and SDN (see "CALIENT unveils SDN optical topology controller" and "CALIENT touts SDN-enabled optical circuit switching"). The primary focus previously has been on the data center environment (see "Building a data-center network with optimal performance and economy" and "CALIENT LightConnect Fabric Manager enables virtualization of data center pods"), so the alliance with ADARA represents an expansion of its SDN-related activities into a new application space.

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