Alcatel-Lucent launches major new SDN platform.
From telecoms.com.
French networking company Alcatel-Lucent has unveiled its Network Services Platform (NSP), a unified, SDN-based carrier solution designed to unify service automation and network optimization.
The launch of NSP marks a major milestone for A-Lu and is a strong statement ahead of its impending acquisition by Nokia. It is embracing the new, software-defined, era of network management and delivering a commercial product that claims to deliver associated advantages such as speed, flexibility and efficiency.
A-Lu is stressing NSP “…bridges the gap between service design, provisioning and network engineering for the first time.” The SDN-based software is purpose-built to present a unified interface and centralised control, including real-time visibility of all layers of the network, which A-Lu allows “…automatic multi-layer service provisioning, to use the best available network resources as well as real-time network optimization.”
“I am proud of what the NSP team has created, working closely with our customers and leveraging our in-house expertise in IP/MPLS, optics and service-aware network management,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP Routing and Transport business. “We have created a simple interface that can deal with the complexity of network control across multiple technologies. We built it from the ground up to enable a true carrier SDN that allows our customers to thrive in today’s cloud-driven world.”
The NSP will be commercially available from next month, but A-Lu has managed to get a customer quote already, from BT no less. “In order for SDN to mean we can really improve our customer experience and impact our network economics, we need approaches that consider the real-time state of the network and relate it to the requirements of the service we provide,” said Rob Shakir, BT End-to-End Network Architect.