Open Network Featured Article

A wide array of businesses and other organizations are moving to consolidate their data centers and otherwise update their infrastructures for more efficiency and scalability. The U.S. government is among them. But, like many organizations, the government is challenged because it has legacy software in place.

However, as organizations move to open standards, consolidating, integrating, and enhancing their infrastructure will become much easier. That’s because while legacy software makes it difficult to integrate with new tools, open standards makes it easy.

Indeed, open standards can help ease consolidation and network management. Well-documented application programming interfaces also can expedite integration and lower costs in the process. Open standards also help organizations avoid vendor lock in.

For the U.S. government, the bad news is it has to contend with some legacy software. But the good news is that it has made a commitment to embracing open standards.

The idea of open standards reflects what’s happening in networking today. That includes an embrace of agile networking, software centricity (including network functions virtualization and software-defined networking), and on-demand services. Many of the top-tier service providers, many businesses, and suppliers like Pica8, for example, are embracing SDN and white box solutions.

Pica8 builds optimized network operating system software for white box switches. The software is designed with Layer 2, Layer 3, OpenFlow, and SDN features. All of the above make it ideal to help organizations tailor their network environments to meet their specific needs and the needs of their customers.

Such organizations as factual, NTT (News - Alert), the University of Illinois, and others rely on Pica8 for agile networking.

“With all the new SDN approaches coming to market, Pica8 is very interesting,” says Eve Griliches (News - Alert), vice president of ACG Research. “They have a business model that starts with a dose of common sense or bottoms-up thinking. Their model of entering the market with a known form factor, a data center switch, and integrating SDN software hooks into their operating system, gives Pica8 a strategic position to sell both product and vision.”