Network News: Akamai Acquires Verivue

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the network sector:

Akamai to acquire Verivue.  Akamai Technologies (AKAM) and Verivue announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Verivue in a cash transaction. Headquartered in Westford, Massachutes Verivue has a portfolio of content delivery solutions, and will complement Akamai's Aura Network Solutions and accelerate Akamai's time to market in providing a comprehensive, licensed content delivery network (CDN) solution for network operators. "Verivue has done an impressive job of building a licensed content delivery infrastructure and getting it deployed with several important operators," said Mick Scully, Vice President and General Manager of Akamai's Carrier Products Division. "We believe that Verivue's technology will complement our roadmap for creating a comprehensive Operator CDN solution. Akamai has relationships with hundreds of network operators, and we offer them instant federation with our global Intelligent Platform. We believe joining forces with Verivue will allow us to help operators maximize content revenues and network efficiencies as the flood of media and video traffic increases."

Ciena selected by Pacific Wave international.  Ciena (CIEN) announced that the Pacific Wave international network peering facility was recently upgraded with Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical processors. This deployment will provide 100 gigabits per second networking capabilities to Pacific Wave's extensive Research and Education network infrastructure across the western coast of the United States, from Los Angeles to Seattle. “Now more than ever, research and education efforts require high speed networks that can quickly and reliably transfer massive amounts of data and applications over greater distances," said Rod Wilson, Senior Director of External Research, Ciena. "Ciena’s coherent optical solutions provide the economical and exponential growth in bandwidth requirements required to support data-intensive, collaborative research projects so that scientists can conduct experiments, investigate, and collaborate with peers in new and innovative ways.”

Extreme Networks announces 100 and 40GbE modules.  Extreme Networks (EXTR) announced new 100GbE and 40 GbE modules for its Open Fabric switch, the BlackDiamond X8. High density 'XL' 100GbE and 40 GbE switch modules offer scale, supporting up to a million routes, Virtual Machines and flow entries in the network. Additionally support was announced of Big Switch Networks Software Defined Networking (SDN) applications, providing progressive and centralized methods to achieve network monitoring and virtualize networks. Extreme Networks new 4 port 100GbE and 12 port 40GbE modules support non-blocking, wire-speed performance of Layer 2/3 services,  Layer 2/3 ACLs and flow flexibility with support of 100G-SR (100m) and 100G-OR (10Km) optics, a boost in scale of tables supported via an upgraded TCAM, and fault tolerance and redundancy with N+1 power support. "Infonetics expects strong growth of 40GbE today and 100GbE in the future with revenue combining to be $1.4B in 2016, as cloud and virtualized data center networks continue the trend of hosting rich services, storage and video," said Sam Barnett, directing analyst for Infonetics. "As vendors such as Extreme Networks offer increased scale and higher density for 40/100GbE with their data center switches, it increases the flexibility for virtualized network designs and the performance and capacity available to enterprise/SP data centers, cloud hosting companies and Internet Exchanges."