Pacnet selects Vello Systems’ VellOS™ application-aware software platform

Pacnet and Vello Systems have at the Open Stack Summit in Hong Kong the Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN). PEN is the first Pan-Asia Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform leveraging Vello’s Connectivity ExchangeTM application based on the VellOS™ 7.0 Linux software platform.

Working in partnership with Mirantis, the leading pure-play OpenStack company, Vello has developed an open, innovative dynamic network platform which Pacnet has extended to provide carriers and large enterprises with the ability to provision network bandwidth on-demand exactly when and where they need it. VellOS Connectivity Exchange also provides Pacnet with industry-first “intelligent overprovisioning,” meaning that the expensive WAN links between countries and data centers are always fully utilized and monetized via software control of data flows associated with tiered SLAs.
“We are very impressed by the advanced business connectivity capabilities, such as highly-granular service level agreements, enabled by the VellOS platform,” said Jon Vestal, VP of Product Architecture, Pacnet. “PEN, leveraging our wholly-owned network of data centers and subsea cable network, delivers scalable bandwidth and software-enabled intelligence, allowing customers to dynamically provision bandwidth in minutes through an OpenFlow based software controller. With the introduction of PEN, we are at the forefront of industry efforts to meet the networking challenges prompted by the growth of cloud computing.”

These tiered SLAs are made possible by a number of innovative Connectivity Exchange features, including on-demand provisioning, just-in-time provisioning, bandwidth calendaring, and automatic path recalculation and failover.

For example, Pacnet customers can provision links between remote data centers through a self-service portal and Application Programming Interface (API). When there is a need to move workloads across data centers they can dynamically request higher bandwidth (and pay a premium) only during this period and automatically revert to the original settings. If there is any failure on the links or at the data center, VellOS Connectivity Exchange will automatically recalculate an alternate path while maintaining SLA compliance.

PEN will be available in 10 data centers in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore at launch in Q1 2014, followed by the US and China by first half of 2014, and eventually expand to all its interconnected data centers across 14 cities in the Asia-Pacific region.

“What we’ve achieved at Pacnet is a signal example of the significant economic and operational benefits that truly open systems can deliver,” said Karl May, Chief Executive Officer, Vello Systems. “The Pacnet PEN offering based on the VellOS Connectivity Exchange application represents what can be achieved in an application and environment-aware network that can adapt dynamically to changing resource requirements of critical business applications.”

VellOS provides an automatic network discovery and fine-grained visibility, giving customers a graphical view of all the elements in the network that it has control over. Administrators use application policies to automatically set up the paths between end points (servers, apps, storage or end customers), defining quickly and easily which endpoints can talk to which other endpoints and with what SLAs across distributed sites. This process is quick, simple to accomplish and makes light work of an otherwise time consuming and error-prone manual task.

VellOS’ integrated Connectivity Exchange application allows PEN-enabled data centers to achieve superior utilization levels from its existing network links (both LAN and WAN). Today’s need to over provision links between data centers occurs because administrators simply do not have the level of control that they need. The VellOS Connectivity Exchange gives network administrators the ability to define how much bandwidth a particular application should be provisioned with through the network.