Pluribus Networks a leader in open networking and next generation software defined networking (SDN), today announced version 5.0 of Netvisor ONE OS, extending the Adaptive Cloud Fabric to support emerging edge computing and distributed cloud architectures with greater scalability, automation, and market leading network slicing functionality. The company also unveiled an expanded partner ecosystem to offer a more complete solution for distributed cloud deployments.

Opportunity at the Edge

A number of new applications are emerging, along with 5G, that require computing to move to the edge of the network, enabling data processing to occur closer to people and things. This will result in an explosion of mini- and micro-data centers, which need network connectivity that is cost-effective and easy to manage. Econocom Italia's Naboo Cloud is one such example, a high-performance hybrid cloud platform built across multiple geographically dispersed data centers in Italy, delivering a "gateway of services" to large and mid-sized businesses.

"Success in edge computing will require elegant and efficient activation of distributed applications in a highly performant, scalable, and automated fabric which can support a diverse mix of deployment sites and optimize operations in both ‘local cluster' and distributed application contexts. With its support of large scale ‘whole stack' slicing, standards such as VXLAN for network virtualization, extensive automation for both deployment and operations, and its integration with top orchestration systems for managing cloud infrastructure resources at scale, Pluribus' Adaptive Cloud Fabric is well-positioned for addressing the requirements of the industry's emerging distributed cloud and 5G networking deployments," said Paul Parker-Johnson, Chief Analyst, ACG Research.

Next-Generation Fabric for Distributed Cloud

Pluribus Adaptive Cloud Fabric radically simplifies network operations in highly distributed environments with the power of fabric wide automation and troubleshooting, while improving performance and reducing latency with fully distributed network services. Pluribus' controllerless SDN approach uniquely delivers on the promise of network automation and programmability in a highly efficient and resilient manner with absolutely no controller-to-switch latency penalty even when deployed across distributed data centers. The Pluribus software runs on open networking switches reducing networking capital costs by 30 - 60% over traditional vendors and eliminating vendor lock and catalyzing innovation.

Netvisor ONE OS and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric have been extended to support distributed cloud edge compute sites with release 5.0:

• Greater Scalability: Doubling the number of containerized FRR vRouter instances per switch for North-South traffic, now supporting up to 2,000 virtual routing and forwarding instances (VRFs) per network slice for East-West traffic.
• Improved Automation: VXLAN automated tunnel provisioning and management with end-to-end troubleshooting, now with flowtrace for deep flow visibility across the fabric.
• Enhanced Network Slicing: Doubling the number of containerized FRR vRouter instances per switch, further scaling the already industry-leading slicing across the management, control and data plane for full isolation of tenants and untrusted data like IoT.

Building on Customer Momentum

The Netvisor ONE OS has been selected by over 200 customers globally across enterprise and service provider, the majority operating multi-site data center environments which have been unified by leveraging the Adaptive Cloud Fabric. Tier 1 service provider growth has been particularly rapid with Netvisor ONE now deployed as the fabric for network function virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) in 25+ mobile cores at some of the largest 4G and 5G network operators in the world.

"I am excited to see our customer base grow and now step into a new market by extending our Netvisor OS and Adaptive Cloud Fabric to the edge to deliver the next generation network fabric for distributed cloud and 5G. Distributed cloud is a huge market with a highly challenging networking problem, and I believe Pluribus can solve this challenge better than any other vendor on the planet," Kumar Srikantan, CEO, Pluribus Networks.

"Pluribus Networks was selected for Econocom Italia's multi-site data center deployment because their solution makes our four data centers look like one, radically simplifying operations while providing fabric-wide network services to our customers. We believe this is the most innovative multi-site and distributed cloud networking solution available," Paolo Bombonati, COO, Econocom Italia.

"We've had Pluribus Adaptive Cloud Fabric deployed across our data centers for over four years now and having a unified, multi-site, data center architecture is critical to our operations. Pluribus enhances our operations by increasing our architectural flexibility and data analytics capabilities, while reducing our total cost of ownership through the use of white box hardware. Pluribus has also enabled us to create separate network slices across our data center locations to isolate our IoT traffic, improving our security posture," Matthew Bielecki, Product Owner - Networks and Telecommunications, Steelcase Inc.

New Partner Ecosystem

Pluribus is playing an active role in several new and important industry initiatives, including as a founding member of the Linux Foundation Edge and Vapor IO's Kinetic Edge Alliance. Today, Pluribus is announcing its own partner ecosystem that includes hardware partners, Dell EMC and Edgecore, along with MobiledgeX, Red Hat, and Vapor IO. Each company brings unique edge computing capabilities and expertise to the ecosystem to create a comprehensive solution to address the needs of distributed cloud environments.

Dell EMC:
"Combining Netvisor ONE and the Adaptive Cloud Fabric with our high-performance switches delivers an industry-leading open networking leaf and spine solution for data centers, including for geographically dispersed multi-site data center environments. We believe these multi-site deployments are a first step toward edge compute and we look forward to continuing our work with Pluribus as a key open software partner for Distributed Cloud solutions for both our enterprise and SP customers," Alley Hasan, director, Dell EMC Networking & Solutions.

Edgecore:
"As the leading networking contributor to OCP, a strategic supply chain partner in ONF, and a proven supplier of disaggregated networking to Tier 1 network operators worldwide, Edgecore understands what it takes to deliver data center and telecom edge solutions based on open networking. We believe that Pluribus Networks' Adaptive Cloud Fabric software combined with Edgecore Networks' industry-leading open network switches will enable operators to deploy distributed cloud infrastructures at scale while minimizing the capital cost and reducing operational complexity," George Tchaparian, CEO, Edgecore Networks.

MobiledgeX:
"We are impressed with Pluribus' Netvisor ONE OS and Adaptive Cloud Fabric and believe that it is an excellent fit for the network blueprints for our service provider partners. SDN fabric on white box switches can simplify and optimize the costs to deploy edge compute networks for our SP partners and it also allows us to focus our resources on application lifecycle orchestration at the edge, where we bring the most value. We look forward to partnering with Pluribus as the Distributed Cloud market starts to accelerate," Jason Hoffman, CEO, MobiledgeX.

Red Hat:
"Pluribus integration with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat OpenStack® Platform will help to provide a set of rich orchestration tools for the Adaptive Cloud Fabric supporting cloud native, virtualized and bare metal environments. To support growth for distributed edge cloud infrastructure, we look forward to collaborating with Pluribus on specific customer projects and larger industry-wide blueprints in OPNFV such as virtual central office," Ian Hood, chief technologist, Global Service Provider, Red Hat.

Vapor.io:
"As the industry shifts towards distributed intelligence, IoT and latency sensitive applications, we see a critical need to locate high-performance compute, storage and network resources as close to the end user and devices as possible. Our Kinetic Edge colocation and interconnection services will support the Pluribus Adaptive Cloud Fabric, creating the potential to simplify networking for our mutual customers," Matthew G Trifiro, CMO, Vapor IO.

Availability

Netvisor ONE Release 5.0 is available in Q1 2019 and is compatible with a broad set of 10GbE, 25GbE and 100GbE open networking switches.