Alcatel-Lucent announced that its CloudBand “carrier cloud” management solution now supports an expanded array of popular open source cloud computing software as well as networking equipment from leading technology vendors.
Carrier cloud represents a new class of cloud services that enable communications service providers to bring the benefits of the cloud to their own networks and business operations while offering cloud services with the security, reliability and quality enterprises and consumers expect from telecommunications networks.
Until now, one key obstacle that limited the introduction of carrier cloud services was the lack of interoperability of cloud solutions with service providers’ multi-vendor network environments. Because it is compatible with network equipment from other vendors, CloudBand eliminates that obstacle. CloudBand gives service providers the flexibility they need to introduce carrier cloud services while benefiting from their existing investments in network infrastructure.
Alcatel-Lucent has also adopted an open approach to integrating best-of-breed open source cloud computing software. Joining other leading communications and IT companies, Alcatel-Lucent supports the OpenStack Foundation which was co-founded by NASA and RackSpace and is dedicated to open cloud development throughout data centers, which are central to the delivery of all cloud services.
This move complements Alcatel-Lucent’s utilization of Apache CloudStack in the CloudBand Management System, and support of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). CloudBand’s unique, open approach gives service providers greater flexibility when selecting cloud platforms.