6WIND, the gold standard for software-defined networks, today announced the availability of 6WINDGate Cloud Edition, an extension to its software product line that provides industry-leading cost/performance for data center network appliances. Building on the success of its Mobile Edition software, already deployed in two-thirds of LTE networks worldwide, 6WIND has developed the Cloud Edition version to apply its proven, unique technology to address critical performance and scalability challenges faced by cloud infrastructure providers.

The 6WINDGate Cloud Edition product includes an integrated suite of optimized networking protocols matched to the specific requirements of network appliances. These include protocol termination, QoS, routing, switching, security, tunneling and VPN functions. Cloud-focused services provided within 6WINDGate Cloud Edition include virtualization with support for industry-standard hypervisors.

“Because it addresses critical issues in network bandwidth, scalability and Quality-of-Service, our 6WIND Mobile Edition software has been adopted by multiple tier-1 telecom equipment manufacturers worldwide,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND. “The new 6WINDGate Cloud Edition product leverages the same technology strengths to accelerate the deployment of high-performance, cost-effective and flexible network appliance solutions. These include Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs), firewalls, security gateways and Intrusion Prevention systems.”

Facing on-going CAPEX pressures, data center operators are challenged to migrate to commodity hardware platforms as quickly as possible, while continuing to deliver increased performance to end-users. At the same time, OPEX constraints require improvements in resource utilization, achieved through the efficient management of Virtual Machines (VMs) and virtual appliances. With no way to predict the future mix of applications or the growth in workloads, data center networks must be architected for maximum flexibility and scalability, leading to the adoption of Software-Defined Networks based on open standards.

Suppliers of both physical and virtual network appliances for data centers must deliver new cloud-optimized solutions that provide best-in-class cost/performance, while also accelerating their development schedules so as to be early to market in new product categories.

To optimize cost/performance for network appliances, 6WINDGate Cloud Edition leverages a unique software architecture to deliver a 10x in networking performance for existing applications, while implementing comprehensive support for commodity processor platforms.

Full support for industry-standard hypervisors enables 6WINDGate to be deployed in virtual network appliances, with no performance impact. Maximizing appliance throughput enables a large number of VMs to be deployed on a single platform, together with their respective applications.

Providing full scalability across processors, blades and racks, 6WINDGate also avoids the complexity of instantiating multiple VMs as bandwidth requirements increase, enabling data center operators to configure a single VM on several physical blades.

“The rapid growth of mobile devices and the emerging class of machine-to-machine applications will accelerate the adoption of software-defined networking solutions and virtual appliances,” continued Carmès. “To support this exciting future, we will continue to enhance 6WINDGate Cloud Edition through improvements in resource utilization that can be achieved through more efficient management of Virtual Machines and Virtual Networking Appliances.”

“Data center operators must meet aggressive OPEX and CAPEX objectives while also architecting their networks for maximum scalability and optimum network monetization,” said Simon Stanley, Analyst at Large for Heavy Reading. “At the same time, they must deploy optimized solutions comprising both physical and virtual network appliances, since both appliance types will co-exist for the foreseeable future. The 6WINDGate Cloud Edition software, based on technology proven in the mobile infrastructure market, provides an ideal balance of features for addressing these critical cloud networking challenges.”

The 6WINDGate Cloud Edition software will be available in Q2 2012. For more information please visit http://www.6wind.com.