Brocade announces OpenFlow support

networking (SDN) space, integrating OpenFlow support to its MLX Series of routers and NetIron platforms and announcing a new SDN collaboration with NEC Corporation of America, DatacentreDynamics reports.

It also plans to add its SDN architecture to the Brocade VDX family of data centre switches, ADX Series application delivery switches and NetIron CES series.

According to Telecom Paper, as part of the collaboration, Brocade and NEC are committing to ongoing certification, interoperability and service validation testing. To this end, Brocade and NEC will establish joint service labs in regional offices to test and demonstrate their solutions.

The current Brocade and NEC OpenFlow-enabled products successfully completed interoperability testing in 2011. Brocade and NEC are collaborating on technology and implementation alignment, including OpenFlow standards, tunnel technology and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Brocade rival Juniper is also supporting OpenFlow. Cisco has a multifaceted SDN strategy that includes OpenFlow, an investment in start-up Insieme, which Cisco may acquire, and an architecture called Open Programmable Environment for Networking, or Cisco OPEN, PC Advisor writes.

HP has a slew of OpenFlow-enabled switches and orchestration tools, and IBM has demonstrated OpenFlow interoperability and recently announced a partnership with NEC. Arista has partnerships and an architecture that stresses standard APIs available today.