New Open SDN-Enabled Platform Uniquely Integrates Routing, Packet Optical and Applications with Large Scale Performance
OTTAWA and BOSTON – February 25, 2013
BTI Systems, the software and networking leader empowering content and service providers to capitalize on cloud services, mobility and Internet video, today announced an industry-first cloud networking solution designed to significantly improve inter-data center connectivity.
Intelligent Cloud Connect is an open software-rich platform that combines network intelligence and application awareness with significantly expanded capacity and scale. By doing so, it increases cloud connectivity performance – quadrupling capacity and scale, reducing latency by half, and increasing network applications performance by as much as 10 times – while significantly improving operational efficiencies, network control and service innovation compared to legacy solutions.
BTI today also announced $10 million in new growth capital led by investor Bain Capital Ventures; the appointment of industry veteran Tom Nolette to senior vice president of global operations; and the expansion of the company’s presence in Silicon Valley. The news caps off a strong 2012, with BTI’s revenue growth continuing at a CAGR of 40 percent for the last six years.
First SDN-Enabled Platform to Address Inter-Data Center Network Growth
The cloud is dramatically transforming the way applications are delivered and consumed, with a direct impact on the way networks are architected, controlled and managed. Cloud data center traffic is expected to grow 6-fold by 2016 – with inter-data center traffic representing the equivalent of 1.7 trillion hours of online HD video streaming.
Currently, new innovations in technologies and products are focusing on addressing network traffic issues inside the data center. While significant, they do not address the choke points and broader network optimization from data centers to users; data centers to peering points; data centers to data centers; and data centers to partners. BTI Intelligent Cloud Connect is the first inter-data center networking solution developed specifically to meet the stringent performance, scale, economics and agility demands of the cloud.
To keep up with escalating regional and global cloud processing demands, content and service providers are expanding data center capacities, and adding more locations and servers, while increasing power usage and floor space needs. Additionally, corresponding growth in inter-data center network traffic causes the leasing of more lines, building and controlling of their own networks and adding more point networking devices – including routers, switches and optical transport devices that are expensive to deploy and manage. These approaches increase operational complexities and costs, impact network utilization, and can reduce performance.
In short, this exponential bandwidth growth is creating space, power, scale, management, control, cost and service flexibility challenges, particularly for large content providers.
Intelligent Cloud Connect combines the intelligence and flexibility of routing with the capacity and scale of optical bolstered by the efficiencies and extensibility of applications integration. Rather than separate layers and separate point products, Intelligent Cloud Connect is an SDN-enabled integrated platform with management and control software, allowing content and service providers to rapidly scale new revenue-generating services, while reducing operational complexities and cost. Importantly, it will replace the need to continue to purchase separate optical transport devices, switches, router ports, and network application appliances to handle and manage inter-data center traffic growth, with more control and flexibility to optimize services.
Redefining Cloud Networking
Intelligent Cloud Connect is built on an open platform that capitalizes on the latest powerful technology building blocks as well as high-value software innovation. The software-rich platform integrates a converged fabric with integrated high-performance applications modules and 10G/100G forwarding modules. With open APIs, Intelligent Cloud Connect will integrate seamlessly into existing data center infrastructures and existing carrier applications through BTI’s extensible management and control software. Open APIs also enable content and service providers to integrate rich, high-performance network optimization applications developed by BTI and by third parties. These network applications can reside on separate servers or for highest performance, on embedded applications modules that are co-resident in the platform. Example applications include traffic analysis/analytics, traffic steering, application-level optimization and security applications.
Key business benefits of Intelligent Cloud Connect are extensive:
- High performance – Large scale capacity, low-latency and fully optimized utilization for bandwidth intensive, delay-sensitive traffic;
- Improved economics – Lower OPEX and CAPEX with fewer devices, SDN-enabled management and control, as well as reduced power, cooling and rack space requirements;
- Service innovation – Increased differentiation, control and applications performance with embedded intelligence and analytics combined with open APIs for BTI, customer and third-party applications.
Intelligent Cloud Connect will be in customer lab deployments with top-tier content and service providers in Q2 2013. Broad commercial availability of the first release will be in early Q3 2013.
###
Key Executive and Analyst Quotes
“Legacy WAN solutions are not designed to optimize the dramatic gains achieved in today’s highly virtualized data centers,” said BTI Systems President and CEO Steve Waszak. “Intelligent Cloud Connect enables providers to create highly programmable network fabrics for improved applications performance, operational efficiencies as well as service innovation demands. Customers can literally ‘cap and grow,’ retaining existing equipment investments, while decreasing additional cost outlays and efficiently supporting bandwidth and capacity demands. Large content providers are validating that we have effectively addressed their requirements while reducing significant operational headaches and costs. ”
“Data centers are becoming major confluence points for high rates of traffic growth: interconnecting data centers, and connecting data centers to access networks or peering points,” said Ovum Vice President and Practice Leader Dana Cooperson. “As data centers are becoming much more critical in support of public and private cloud services, they are becoming both larger and more widely distributed, adding pressure on the connecting networks to scale, deliver higher-performance and differentiated services, and improve economics. BTI’s Intelligent Cloud Connect, with its focus on high-availability, high-capacity, open, application-aware, and even applications-based networking, supports these goals.”
“Carriers and over-the-top providers are in a race to deliver bandwidth ‘on demand,'” said Doyle Research Principal Analyst Lee Doyle. “SDN is definitely producing an impact on the telecom infrastructure and will improve the manageability, utilization and flexibility of networks. Technologies, such as SDN, are reshaping the telecom industry in new and exciting ways. The integration of the routing and optical layers with network intelligence and application awareness via SDN will help content providers and carriers improve their network performance, flexibility and reduce operation costs over the next three years.”
“Content providers want to get closer to their customers, which is propelling a growth in distributed data centers and creating urgent network requirements for scale, control, and cost reduction,” said ACG Research Managing Partner Ray Mota. “The convergence of the optical and LSR layers simplifies operations and enables cost-effective scale over separate optical and router products. Integrating analytics and application awareness increases control, network utilization and service differentiation. BTI understands these dynamics and what is required in a next-generation cloud infrastructure solution. Their approach with Intelligent Cloud Connect appears to be right on target.”
About BTI Systems
BTI delivers solutions that transform the economics, performance and innovation of global networks through intelligent networking software and systems. Leading content, cloud and service providers choose BTI to drive improved operational efficiencies and profitably deliver high-value services to businesses and consumers around the globe. With more than 350 customers, BTI is headquartered in North America, and operates regional sales, marketing, and R&D centers of excellence throughout the world. For more information, visit www.btisystems.com.
PR Archives: Latest, By Company, By Date