Nuage snags SDN-based project with China’s CPIC, signals movement into enterprise space

Nuage Networks has won its first SDN-based, large enterprise project in China with China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC), reflecting the vendor's desire to extend its presence in other segments outside of the telecom arena. 

CPIC will use Nuage Networks’ Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) in two data centers to integrate IT systems, unify its private cloud and build a test cloud for R&D research.

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“What is interesting about this win is this is our first large enterprise in China,” said Charles Ferland, VP of business development for Nuage Networks, in an interview with FierceTelecom. “We have built the momentum with service providers and cloud service providers, but China Pacific Insurance Company tapped us to build their cloud infrastructure and we provide the SDN platform for their environment.”

Expanding its presence outside of the telecom industry makes sense for Nuage. The IP routing group that includes Nuage reported an 11% year-on-year sales decline in its recent quarter, to about $1.5 billion. Nokia attributed the decline in the overall communications service provider market as the reason.

Ferland said that the win with CPIC could lead to further business with other China-based financial companies and other large enterprises.

“This is the beginning of a transformation for large enterprises towards a private cloud,” Ferland said. “We have developed a platform that will allow CPIC to build a virtual private cloud in the data center, but in the future the company can extend that policy engine to the branch office and connect all of their offices using the same platform.”

As a private cloud implementation, which was won via Nokia Shanghai Bell, CPIC will use Nuage Networks' VSP in two CPIC data centers: one to integrate the dispersed IT systems of 82 branch offices into one unified private cloud platform, and the second to assist in building and testing the company cloud for R&D.

“CPIC is sensitive to security and data breaches so they’re building their infrastructure and using storage on premise in their own two data centers,” Ferland said. “They are building their private cloud infrastructure, and Nuage is the software that connects all of the virtual workloads and all the applications together.”

Specifically, Nuage Networks’ VSP will enhance CPIC’s efficiency by increasing scale and reducing errors with a centralized policy manager. The solution gives CPIC and other financial institutions greater agility to automate the configuration, management and optimization of virtual networks, including security services for individual applications and workloads.

Two of the key elements of this deployment are ensuring security and privacy while enabling greater automation. Specifically, CPIC can enhance security with microsegmentation while achieving better automation, stability, and performance at what Nuage says is a lower total cost of ownership.

“CPIC is using one of our core functions, which is microsegmentation,” Ferland said. “By using microsegmentation, the applications can only have access to the other applications that were preagreed-upon. A web portal can only communicate with the database, and Nuage provides the policy-driven engine to build the relationships between applications.”