Vello Systems establishes SDN test bed in Equinix data center

Vello Systems, Inc. says it has established a three-node optical network featuring white-box Ethernet switches in Equinix's NY5 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in New York to act as a test bed for software-defined networking (SDN). SDN helps network administrators to simplify network connectivity by allowing the network to optimize itself based on the specific application using the network.

Vello Systems says its operating system, dubbed VellOS 7.0, is the first scalable enterprise network operating system based on SDN principals that doesn’t box enterprise CIOs and their data center teams into a single-vendor networking architecture. Unlike most SDN virtual overlay approaches, which Vello asserts have no awareness of the underlying network, VellOS unifies the control of the optical, Ethernet, and virtual networking planes under common open software and features a newfound level of automation not found in competing offerings, the company claims.

Equinix IBX data centers offer access to more than 900 public and private networks, providing an what Vello Systems considers an ideal place to test its open, vendor-agnostic OpenFlow-based SDN operating system.

Vello Systems says the VellOS 7.0 OpenFlow-enabled application platform already is being used by leading financial institutions, including those served by the Hudson Fiber Network, to create distributed modular Ethernet and optical transport architectures that support of new applications and service requirements. By leveraging Equinix's financial ecosystem, Vello Systems says it can offer financial firms a competitive advantage via the fastest routes to the world's leading exchanges and trading platforms.

"We believe SDN is the key to drastically changing the economics of the data center from being capital-driven to operating expense-driven," said Karl May, chief executive officer, Vello Systems. “With this test bed, we are successfully demonstrating how an OpenFlow network can drastically simplify network connectivity and application deployment over any mix of network topologies while significantly reducing CAPEX expenditures."

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