Alcatel-Lucent rolls out Data Center Switching Solution

Alcatel-Lucent has announced its new data center switching solutionblueprint for enterprises. This unique solution provides a complete data center switching fabric that extends the boundaries of the data center through virtualization of the network with an innovative "mesh" architecture design. This reduces costs and allows an enterprise to leverage its IT resources and optimize application delivery to employees across sites and devices.

Leveraging market leading scalability, low latency and low-power consumption, enterprises can move beyond costly client server computing by managing applications as a service across a range of data center deployment models, including multi-site data centers, dedicated departmental or workgroup virtual data centers, and hybrid environments that can integrate service provider offerings. With its application services enabling approach, Alcatel-Lucent opens the door for enterprises to leverage cloud service offerings from service providers to further extend the business value of the solution.

"Network infrastructure is becoming more complicated as new applications, new devices, data center virtualization and cloud computing become requirements for the enterprise," said Zeus

Kerravala, Vice-President & Distinguished Research Fellow, Yankee Group. "Enterprises need an infrastructure that is capable of monitoring and delivering these applications in real-time as if they were a service with low latency and a high-quality user experience."

Alcatel-Lucent's data center switching solution delivers two architecture breakthroughs: the data center "mesh" and the "pod" Virtualization in the data center requires enterprises to optimize

server-to-server traffic while striving to reduce costs. Alcatel-Lucent's "pod" architecture addresses this need with the new OmniSwitch 6900 by delivering a highly dense solution that allows enterprises to directly connect top-of-rack switches without relying on a core switch to carry server-to-server traffic.