Hype and excitement still surround software-defined networking (SDN). For evidence, look no further than the continuing disagreement on the definition of SDN. Yet, surprisingly, there were few startups at this year’s Open Networking Summit, which wrapped up Wednesday. But a few on the exhibition floor are worth writing home about.
- One Convergence, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is playing the easy-to-use card with the OpenStack-based network-virtualization overlay software it was demonstrating at the conference. It will launch in the coming months. The One Convergence offering is similar in some ways to Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform, said Roshan Gudapati (pictured), vice president of marketing and sales. “As traffic increases, you can bring up more and more (network) instances,” he said. It’s just as easy to hit the delete button on a network, as Gudapati demonstrated at his company’s booth.
- Saisei Networks, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is working on software for traffic management — the act of setting and enforcing policies that can limit the traffic over a network. The idea is to deliver a product that eliminates the need for purpose-built legacy hardware and works at carrier grade, said Dave Newman, Saisei’s co-founder and chief operating officer.
- EstiNet, based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, has a network simulator to see what would happen if an OpenFlow controller were to send packets across multiple OpenFlow-enabled switches. The software visualizes the route of packets across switches and lets customers figure out the most efficient path and simulate the failure of switches in a network.
- Accelera Mobile Broadband Inc. is combining two favorite GigaOM topics, heterogeneous mobile networks (het-net) and network virtualization. The company, which was founded in 2009, is trying to use network virtualization to set policies and take action across the next generation of wireless networks that combine Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G technologies and sometimes even older networks.
As conference attendees heard this week, investors are still looking for SDN startups to fund. Perhaps these companies will help meet the investor demand. Perhaps still more startups need to start up.
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