Roundup: IBM, NEC, Cisco, Talari Networks

It's been a busy week for news in the data center sector. Here’s some additional news announcements:

IBM and NEC enable OpenFlow success. IBM and NEC announced that the originators of the OpenFlow protocol will deploy IBM and NEC’s solution in a parallel network to test OpenFlow’s applicability to the university’s production environment. Distributed data fabric provider Tervela has validated that this solution delivers a breakthrough in dynamic networking to ensure predictable performance of Big Data for complex and demanding environments. Selerity, provider of ultra-low latency event data, will employ IBM and NEC’s OpenFlow solution to accelerate real-time decision-making for global financial markets. "OpenFlow enables the evolution to a smarter network that can deliver and protect business-critical data with the predictable performance required for demanding applications such as global trading and e-commerce,” said Director of Software Engineering Michael Matatia of Tervela. “OpenFlow promises Tervela’s customers a competitive edge by ensuring that the network adapts dynamically to business needs by, for example, automatically segregating network traffic based on real-time statistics. The IBM/NEC solution enables our customers to use OpenFlow’s programmable intelligence using high-performance network components that also simplifies the complexities of managing mission-critical networks.”

Cisco powers Banco Supervielle data center. Cisco (CSCO) announced that Argentina-based bank Supervielle has selected Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) to extend the power of virtualization, unifying servers, and the network and storage in a single system in its new data center. After deciding to consolidate the technological infrastructure into one data center it then took less than a month to implement, configure and execute the Cisco UCS and VMware solutions. Implemented by Cisco partner Logicalis, the new data center is equipped with Cisco Nexus 5000 and Nexus 2000 switches and UCS B-Series Blade Servers. "We improved  the infrastructure performance by 50 percent with the implementation of Cisco Unified Computing System and the VMware virtualization solution compared to the previous data center technology," said Claudio Ercolessi, information technology coordinator manager, Banco Supervielle. "This data center will be able to adapt to the speed of our business, and it will facilitate the fast implementation of new applications, allowing us to create different home banking and enterprise banking platforms with differential services."

Talari Networks secures $4.5 million.  Talari Networks announced it has secured $4.5 million in financing from current backers including Menlo Ventures, Silver Creek Ventures and private investors. Mr. H. Dubose Montgomery, founder and managing director of Menlo Ventures, will join Talari Networks’ board of directors. “With the accelerated pace of server centralization and the focus on both private and public cloud computing, Talari is in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the growing need for more bandwidth and ultra-reliable, business-class WANs that don’t break the bank,” Montgomery explained. “I look forward to being more closely involved with this innovative company as it continues to build a strong and loyal customer base.”

F5 Firewall becomes ICSA certified. F5 Networks (FFIV) announced that the latest release of the F5 BIG-IP product family has been certified by ICSA Labs as a network firewall, helping customers protect their public-facing websites from today’s massive cyber attacks. As a part of the BIG-IP version 11.1 platform, BIG-IP devices are able to support 2.8 million connections per second. “We cater to numerous industries—including energy, financial services, government, healthcare, and retail—and virtually all our customers’ top priorities include defense strategies against the increasing number of web, network, DDoS, and DNS attacks,” said Dan Thormodsgaard, VP of Solutions Architecture at FishNet Security. “BIG-IP gives us a common platform to deliver applications and rapidly respond to evolving threats, providing better value to our customers. The unification of high performance data center firewall services with an advanced platform ADC is a smart combination to effectively address the new wave of aggressive attacks.”