Network News: Mellanox Launches Cloud Interconnect

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

Mellanox Launches ConnectX03Pro interconnect. Mellanox (MLNX) announced ConnectX-3 Pro, a network adapter IC and card with hardware offload engines that support virtualized overlay networks commonly used in cloud infrastructures. Networking overlay technologies were developed to enable application and tenant scalability and resource tunneling across the cloud, however this has been limited due to the high CPU overhead imposed on cloud resources. The ConnectX-3 Pro implements these overlay technologies within the interconnect hardware itself, allowing clouds to take advantage of virtually unlimited scalability and resource mobility without the CPU overhead. “To meet the growing demand of cloud computing services, cloud providers must be able to take full advantage of new software techniques to scale-up their cloud networks without reducing performance or efficiency of the infrastructure,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “With ConnectX-3 Pro, cloud providers will be able to easily scale and grow their business and provide new value-add services while reducing the cost of their cloud infrastructure; ushering in the age of Cloud 2.0.”

Level 3 names new CEO, selected by Voice America.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that Jeff K. Storey has been appointed by the Board of Directors to be the company's president and chief executive officer, effective immediately. Storey was also nominated for election to the Board of Directors at the company's Annual Meeting of Stockholders to be held on May 23. Storey joined Level 3 in 2008 as the company's president and chief operating officer. "We are extremely pleased to name Jeff as our new CEO and look forward to him joining our Board of Directors," said Walter Scott, Jr., chairman of the Board of Directors of Level 3. "Jeff was the clear and unanimous choice of the Board. With 30 years of industry experience and his intimate knowledge of Level 3's customers, employees and operating environment, Jeff is the right executive to lead Level 3 into the future." Level 3 also announced it is providing content delivery network (CDN) services for VoiceAmerica, a producer of more than 300 original live Internet talk radio programs delivered on a weekly basis. Level 3's CDN services will help enable VoiceAmerica to deliver its online content to a more global audience. "VoiceAmerica's popularity is rising across the globe, and in order to continue providing a superior streaming experience to a growing audience, we must have a CDN that can handle high demand and scale to meet our expansion needs," said Jeff Spenard, President of VoiceAmerica. "Level 3's suite of media delivery services and its extensive IP backbone allows us to seamlessly deliver our content to more browsers, mobile devices and listeners around the globe."

Avaya innovates fabric-enabled networking. Avaya unveiled new solutions demonstrating the company's continual innovation in network fabric technologies, including the industry's first fabric-enabled multi-service edge device and a new model for IP Multicast that significantly improves efficiency, reliability and scalability over traditional approaches. Based on an open, standards-based implementation of Shortest Path Bridging, Avaya VENA Fabric Connect delivers an array of network services, including Layer 2 and Layer 3 virtualization with optimized routing and now, fully integrated support for IP Multicast. The VSP 4000 fabric-enabled multi-service / multi-tenant edge device further extends the Avaya VENA Fabric Connect across the entire network to the campus, metro or WAN edge. "Avaya is fundamentally changing the way that networks are designed, built and operated with our Fabric Connect technology," said Marc Randall, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya Networking." With this announcement, we are delivering all the services capabilities with far greater simplicity, agility and availability than the wide majority of current rigid, complex and error-prone networks supporting enterprises today."