As the marriage of “IT” and “IP” continues to take shape on the way to realizing the true promise of cloud services, the impact is being felt by all. One key talisman for the networking industry is LightReading and their annual Leading Lights awards, a benchmark on the hottest new products of the year. As Ethernet & SDN expo gets underway in the Big Apple, we are proud that our Virtualized Services Platform has been honored as a finalist in this year’s Best New Telecom Product category alongside other innovative products from across the telecom landscape.
The truly meaningful shift, however, is that HALF of this year’s award finalists are products that in some way address network virtualization in support of cloud applications, embodying key attributes of the software defined networking (SDN) mindset. For the first time, many of the best new telecom products aren’t classic telecom products at all.
Whichever worthy product is deemed the winner, a transition is clearly underway. That’s a true sign of advance for the networking industry: Where networks are not seen as the end-game, but rather serve to accelerate cloud-based application delivery without boundaries and restrictions. After all, if networks can become as easily consumable as compute infrastructure already is, and as reflexive as cloud applications need them to be, then the true power of the cloud can be unleashed. To the extent that SDN pillars of network abstraction and automation are central to making that happen, we are well on our way if we follow the leading lights.
Finalists for the Best New Telecom Product category found here.