Ciena unveils Agility software portfolio

Addressing network operators’ need to bring the programmability and on-demand nature of the cloud to the wide-area network (WAN), Ciena® has introduced its Agility software portfolio. Including a multilayer SDN controller for the WAN and an initial set of three new software applications, Agility enables the delivery of virtualized, on-demand network services and functions. It leverages advanced, real-time analytics to help network operators provision multi-vendor networks, ensure maximum efficiency and resiliency, and rapidly create and deploy new, differentiated virtualized services at lower cost.

Ciena’s new Agility software portfolio is built using the OpenDaylight framework. This gives network operators the ability to leverage a mix of open source, self-developed and vendor components from a broad ecosystem and helps them avoid being locked-in to a single vendor. Building on the company’s pedigree in intelligent software capabilities via its OPn® network architecture, Agility also enables the network to dynamically predict and respond to changing demands from high-bandwidth services and applications. This allows providers to monetize and optimize their networks, enterprises to optimize user application experience, and government agencies to ensure mission-critical performance.

Ciena’s new Agility Multilayer WAN Controller gives network operators agile allocation of network resources at the packet, circuit and wave layers and is uniquely designed for WAN scale, reach and resiliency. By leveraging the vendor-neutral OpenDaylight ecosystem, Ciena's controller delivers an open, modular architecture which eliminates the prospect of vendor lock-in, enabling network operators to source network applications from Ciena, third parties, and their own IT staff. This controller is a focal point of joint development with Ericsson and further development will leverage contributions from both companies to expand its capabilities.

Complementing the Agility Multilayer WAN Controller, Ciena’s suite of SDN applications use advanced real-time analytics to provide greater network assurance, efficiency, monetization and application-driven agility. The new network applications include:
o Navigate – a multilayer path computation engine that combines a global view of all network resources and service demands with advanced analytics-based algorithms to automatically determine the best possible route through the network to establish a connection.
o Protect – a centralized global restoration calculator that speeds and increases resiliency and minimizes restoration bandwidth by pre-computing and distributing an optimal set of contention-free restoration paths for distributed execution in case of any failure.
o Optimize – a multilayer network optimizer that defragments the network to free up stranded bandwidth by reallocating raw capacity and fine-tuning connection routing.
o V-WAN – a network resource broker and scheduling application that offers immediate or scheduled bandwidth-on-demand to customers through an end-user portal or applications such as cloud and NFV orchestration systems via its open northbound API. Additional V-WAN applications include:
- MyPerformance network service health monitoring application that gives real-time and historical end-to-end service performance metrics.
- MyPortal Web portal application that allows service provider customers to request bandwidth on demand and verify delivery and performance.
- MyAdapter data center integration application that orchestrates bandwidth on-demand from the enterprise data center, across multiple network operator domains, to the selected cloud provider based on transaction auto-detection.
- On-demand Service VPNs that provide end customers with dedicated, multi-site network resources that they can allocate at will offering greater certainty of capacity compared to first come, first serve bandwidth-on-demand services.

V-WAN is available today, while the rest of Ciena’s Agility software portfolio is entering field trials with multiple service providers. In fact, Ciena’s V-WAN network resource broker and scheduling application as well as its network management capabilities lay the foundation for multilayer SDN control, allowing industry-leading data center provider Equinix to rapidly create and provision high-speed connections with greater agility and lower costs.