Japanese technology company NEC Corp. has upgraded its software-defined networking line with a data centre interconnect for networks based on the OpenFlow communications protocol.
The company said its new Unified Network Coordinator (UNC) can connect to up to 10 controllers, 2,000 switches, 100,000 virtual local area networks (VLAN) and 10 million flows. The product provides centralized management within and across data centres.
As enterprise organizations and cloud providers continue to build multiple data centres for disaster recovery purposes, data centre interconnects become more critical, according to Rohit Mehra, vice-president of infrastructure for analyst firm IDC. Two hundred enterprise businesses surveyed by IDC recently said that data centre interconnects are a priority for their IT managers.
Mehra said the UNC can be viewed as a “controller of controllers.” Should a failure at any of an organization’s sites fail, it will enable automatic recovery.
NEC’s (TYO:6701) decision to go with the OpenFlow protocol, enables it to streamline the complex architecture inherent in traditional interconnect products, he said.
NEC’s UNC will be available in April at a cost of $29,500.