Cisco has made an investment in 6WIND, a networking software vendor with a focus on network functions virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN).
Coinciding with the visit this week between Cisco CEO John Chambers, his replacement Chuck Robbins, and France's President Francois Hollande, the investment is part of a broader initiative to commit $100 million to help French businesses innovate.
6WIND has developed a platform that it says can enable the network architecture transition from hardware to software that's required for virtual networking on standard servers, without changing the existing software infrastructure.
The company's products include 6WINDGate; 6WIND Virtual Accelerator, which provides accelerated virtual networking infrastructure; 6WIND Turbo Router and 6WIND Turbo IPsec, which are software appliances for bare metal or virtual machine environments.
Addressing a broad set of needs for service providers, data centers and enterprises, 6WIND's software platforms have already been deployed in critical applications for major companies. The company has put together teams to sell its products in the Americas, EMEA, APAC and China.
For Cisco, the real value in this investment is that it furthers its movement to drive more innovation around SDN and NFV as key customers like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) virtualize more of their network functions.
Cisco has been named as one of Verizon's vendor partners to assist in their transition to SDN. Joining Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), Cisco is also taking part in AT&T's Domain 2.0 program, including. AT&T has set a goal to virtualize and control more than 75 percent of its network using a software-driven architecture by the year 2020.
For more:
- see the release
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