Cloud services, NFV, WAN orchestration target of Cyan's Planet Orchestrate

Cyan (NYSE: CYNI) has extended its Blue Planet software defined networking (SDN) suite with Planet Orchestrate. As its name implies, Planet Orchestrate is an orchestration engine for cloud, network functions virtualization (NFV), and wide-area network (WAN) resources in multi-vendor, multi-domain applications.

Planet Orchestrate is the first SDN application to integrate WAN automation and management (capabilities already within Blue Planet’s domain as part of its Planet Operate application) with NFV and cloud orchestration, according to Cyan Chief Marketing Officer Joe Cumello. Based on the ETSI NFV ISG Management and Orchestration framework, Planet Orchestrate enables both WAN service creation and automation as well as orchestration of virtual resources in cloud environments, he said. Service provider can therefore create and manage services using both physical and virtual resources with the same “pane of glass,” as Cumello put it.

The new offering delivers three main features, which will become available in the next two quarters:

• Multi-domain service orchestration, which leverages existing SDN controllers and management platforms to deploy services end-to-end using both physical and virtual elements. This functionality is now in proof-of-concept and trials and will reach general ability in the third quarter of this year.
• NFV orchestration and virtual network functions management per the ETSI NFV ISG architecture, enabled both in one or more data centers or across a distributed architectures to deploy virtual network functions at the customer premises edge. This capability also is in trials now, with availability slated for the third quarter of the year.
• Cloud orchestration to set up and control cloud-based offerings such as IaaS, PaaS, etc., coordinated across the WAN. This functionality is not meant to compete or replace existing cloud services orchestrators such as OpenStack or VMware, but to ride on top of them. While this feature is also now in trials, it won’t be available until the fourth quarter of 2014.
  

Customers will pay for the Planet Orchestrate capabilities based on the number of nodes and virtual network functions being orchestrated, Cumello adds.

“The top motivation driving service providers to pursue SDN and NFV is the ability to deploy services much more quickly for new revenue opportunities – it’s about revenue and service agility,” according to Michael Howard, principal analyst, Infonetics Research, as quoted in a Cyan press release. “While operators are certainly attuned to the capital and operational benefits of these transformative technologies, it is the orchestration of virtual compute, storage, and network, combined with the automation of existing network resources that will lead to new, higher-margin revenue streams and happier customers.”

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