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Red Hat Partners with NEC for OpenStack NFV Features

Red Hat Inc. continues to form partnerships to position its OpenStack cloud platform as a leading contender in the new era of software-defined networking and network functions virtualization.

The enterprise Linux company yesterday announced it was working with NEC Corp. on network functions virtualization (NFV) features for the Red Hat OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution to develop a carrier-grade offering for the communication services provider (CSP) market.

NFV, along with software-defined networking (SDN), is part of a young movement to revamp network architecture with new techniques to virtualize functionality such as load balancers and other performance or security tools.

Red Hat has partnered with NEC on several other projects and even teamed up with Huawei in December for another NFV collaboration.

NEC's carrier SDN vision
[Click on image for larger view.]The NEC Carrier SDN Vision (source: NEC Corp.).

NEC will integrate its NFV and carrier expertise into OpenStack "to deliver mobile packet core virtualization, also known as virtualized Evolved Packet Core, or vEPC, as well as virtual Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE)," Red Hat said in a statement. It said the companies will continue the collaboration and contribute to open source communities such as the OpenStack project itself and the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV).

"NEC has commercially delivered SDN/NFV solutions, including vEPC and vCPE, and will continue driving innovation with broader virtualized network functions that promote greater agility, stability and security of services, as well as new revenue creation while enabling a wide range of customers to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership," company exec Atsuo Kawamura said in a statement.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.

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