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Cyan, RAD, Fortinet and Certes Networks to Demonstrate Multi-Vendor, Distributed NFV PoC at Light Reading's Big Telecom Event
[June 11, 2014]

Cyan, RAD, Fortinet and Certes Networks to Demonstrate Multi-Vendor, Distributed NFV PoC at Light Reading's Big Telecom Event


CHICAGO --(Business Wire)--

Four innovative providers of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solutions announced today that they will publicly demonstrate their joint European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI (News - Alert)) NFV ISG-approved proof of concept (PoC) at the Big Telecom Event in Chicago, to be held June 17-18, 2014. The four companies are Cyan (NYSE: CYNI), RAD, Fortinet, and Certes Networks.

Sponsored by CenturyLink, the multi-vendor Distributed NFV (D-NFV) PoC is based on RAD's dedicated customer-edge D-NFV equipment running Fortinet's (News - Alert) Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) and Certes Networks' virtual encryption/decryption engine as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) with Cyan's Blue Planet system orchestrating the entire ecosystem.

As the sponsor of the PoC and a valued advisor, Tier 1 service provider, CenturyLink (News - Alert), continues as an industry leader in its commitment to innovation.

"The Distributed NFV concept supports CenturyLink's managed services strategy by providing a platform for developing unique NFV-enhanced network services and bringing desired functionality directly to the customer premises," said James Feger (News - Alert), Vice President of Network Strategy and Development at CenturyLink. "We're pleased to sponsor this ETSI multi-vendor proof of concept as it provides the industry with an opportunity to prove vendor interoperability while determining which functions work best at the edge versus the network core."

D-NFV allows the placement of VNFs whee they will be both most effective and least expensive, including at the customer edge. This approach enables service providers to quickly and easily roll out new services and implement advanced capabilities without having to put capital expenditures upfront into the data center or redesign the network. The PoC demonstrates an innovative, open and agile D-NFV deployment model comprised of multiple vendors collaborating to deliver key values for service providers using physical and virtual components.



"Distributed NFV is an important ETSI-approved use case. Many PoCs are focused on the capex and opex that can be saved through NFV. Distributed NFV is about service agility - the ability for service providers to create new revenue streams and ensure faster time-to-market by adding virtualized network functions, like firewall and encryption, to existing enterprise services quickly and cost-effectively at the customer edge," said Caroline Chappell, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading. "This PoC also demonstrates multi-vendor integration and how this can drive NFV forward for the industry."

NFV and Orchestration: Beyond the Data Centers


While this PoC is important for the advancement of NFV as a whole, it more uniquely broadens the scope and conception of NFV and orchestration to encompass everything out to the edge. Specifically, NFV is implemented at the customer edge with RAD equipment, while Cyan's orchestration spans from the data center to the customer edge integrating all of the virtual and physical components.

Cyan Blue Planet NFV Orchestration allows network providers to orchestrate VNFs from multiple vendors from a single, centralized orchestration platform; these advanced capabilities simplify the deployment and life-cycle management of VNFs. Blue Planet's ability to orchestrate both NFV and multi-vendor Ethernet services provides network operators with a unique platform to create new, VNF-enhanced Ethernet services managed from one platform.

VNFs at the customer edge are implemented with RAD's ETX-2, a D-NFV empowered state-of-the-art NID, the cornerstone of RAD's Service Assured Access solution. This novel solution integrates an x86 server platform to host value-added service capabilities, as well as network functionalities that run on virtual machines.

Fortinet and Certes Networks provide VNFs that are instantiated on RAD's ETX-2 by Cyan's Blue Planet SDN Platform.

Fortinet's FortiGate-VM enforces next-generation firewall security functions that provide network and application layer protection. Real-time security updates are pushed to the FortiGate-VM by FortiGuard subscription services to ensure it is aware of and enforcing protection from the latest security threats. FortiGate-VM is managed by Fortinet's FortiManager-VM and FortiAnalyzer-VM, which provide centralized configuration, control and security analytics. Together they enhance flexibility to quickly enable comprehensive security solutions and improve the scalability of adding resources as security needs dictate.

The virtual Certes Enforcement Point (vCEP) is a virtual encryption solution that secures data in motion over any public or private network. Managed with drag-and-drop simplicity, vCEPs can be dynamically provisioned to create Certes' CryptoFlow™ VPNs, fully meshed multi-point VPNs safeguarding data in physical, virtual and Cloud environments. CryptoFlows protect critical data for any application with automatically enforced policies and simplified control of encryption keys.

The live Distributed NFV demonstration will be held in booth #519 at the Big Telecom Event in Chicago on June 17 or 18.

For More Information:

Cyan: www.cyaninc.com
RAD: www.rad.com
Fortinet: www.fortinet.com
Certes Networks: www.certesnetworks.com


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