HP and NEC Corporation today announced they are collaborating on the integration of advanced technology, leveraging open standards, to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) enabled networking solutions to enterprise customers.
Since 1995, NEC and HP have been strategic alliance partners, with NEC’s large-scale, mission-critical enterprise IT systems developed on HP’s Unix-based operating system, HP-UX. Building upon their successful collaboration on enterprise servers, which continues to provide open and flexible infrastructure for social and enterprise system frameworks, HP and NEC are extending their alliance to encompass network infrastructure solutions.
The collaboration will deliver the innovative infrastructure and open standards–based SDN solutions required in the New Style of IT that is driven by industry trends such as social, mobile, cloud and big data.
Establish SDN ecosystem
HP and NEC also are working with industry-standards organizations to show continued commitment to a standards-based SDN solution. HP and NEC will 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.
Joint engineering expansion on networking based on open standards
The future of network infrastructure requires the use of open standards—giving customers increased flexibility and choice. 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 virtualization and automation technology becoming increasingly important to the network, 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. This will extend the benefits of the NEC VTN application to customers with an existing HP Networking–based infrastructure.
As part of the joint effort, HP and NEC will increase global delivery of SDN-ready networking solutions and software based on open standards. By combining these offerings with servers and storage, customers can build an integrated ICT (information and communications technologies) infrastructure that flexibly responds to unpredictable changes and frequent requests for changes.
“With the most widely deployed SDN-enabled infrastructure, HP is committed to providing customers worldwide with innovative solutions based on open standards,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, HP Networking. “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.”
“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,” said Shinichi Shoji, executive vice president, NEC Corporation. “Building on our successful collaborations since 1995, NEC and HP are extending their alliance to include SDN, and providing innovative next-generation ICT infrastructure.”