Smart Network Fabric Infrastructure Supports Telco’s Drive to Grow OTT Services
Japanese telecommunication service provider Softbank Corp is streamlining its data centre operations by deploying Brocade® VDX® switches to provide Ethernet fabrics as part of the company’s group-wide common service infrastructure network. The new infrastructure will greatly reduce complexity and the cost of network operations within SoftBank’s data centres, giving the company greater agility to pursue new growth opportunities in Over-The-Top (OTT) services.
SoftBank has a strong track record of using data centre virtualisation to efficiently and cost-effectively support the back-end systems that support the company’s internal applications and external services. However, as these applications and services have increased in number and scale, Softbank was beginning to experience significant network operational issues stemming from the complexity of the existing infrastructure. As a result, the company decided to revamp its common service infrastructure network using highly open, best-in-class components.
“Increased data centre agility is critical to realising the company’s strategy of delivering new OTT services to drive growth,” said Takenobu Yamane, manager of system infrastructure and service platform, Softbank Corp. “Deployment of Brocade VDX switches as part of the new common service infrastructure network gives our data centres a more flexible and automated foundation, supporting a much more streamlined and cost-effective operational model that is capable of responding rapidly to new demands.”
The Brocade VDX 6740 and 6740-T switches, deployed in three key Softbank data centres, create an elastic, self-forming, and self-healing Ethernet fabric with Brocade VCS® Logical Chassis functionality enabling the entire fabric to be managed as a single switch. The fabric-based architecture simplifies and automates virtual machine mobility and management within the data centres, which is ideal for supporting cloud data centre operations. This enables Softbank to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of its data centre and makes it easy to scale the infrastructure to meet current demands as well as future requirements.
Having already deployed more than 70 Brocade VDX switches, Softbank is now considering adding more of the Ethernet fabric devices to expand its common service infrastructure network. With continued support from Brocade the telco is also exploring ways to further automate its data centre operations, leveraging Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and other programmatic tools to enable a truly on-demand data centre.
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