Nokia, on Tuesday announced that it has been selected by Vodafone to be a global supplier of software-defined networking (SDN). Nuage Networks - the Nokia SDN venture - will be the supplier for SDN for the datacenter. As part of the selection, a VPN+ live pilot project with Vodafone is also underway, which will demonstrate the benefits of SD-WAN in providing leading-edge NFV and IoT applications.

The Nuage Networks Virtualized Service Platform (VSP), which will be at the heart of the Vodafone deployments, is the only network virtualization, SDN and automation solution offering a single framework to provide policy-based automation across both the datacenter and WAN. It empowers customers to transform their IT and build truly automated and agile application delivery and cloud networks. The end-to-end policy-based automation provided by VSP, across datacenter, WAN sites and public cloud providers, delivers synergy across network offerings, such as MPLS VPN and hybrid WAN services as well as hosted cloud services, by leading service providers such as Vodafone and other large cloud providers.

"We look forward to working closely with Nokia on the successful roll-out of our Vodafone Ocean implementation and our new SD-WAN with our enterprise customers. An open, multi-vendor SDN infrastructure is key for delivering better, faster and smarter services to our customers,'' said David Amzallag, head of network virtualization, Vodafone Group.

"Nokia started the SDN/NFV  journey with Vodafone more than three years ago, so we are now honored to be selected as a partner and to be awarded as a global supplier for SDN solutions. We are pleased that our Nuage Networks solution is Vodafone's top selection to transform their datacenter applications and VPN+ service offer with the highest levels of agility, simplicity and automated flexibility for all users," said Sunil Khandekar, founder and chief executive officer of Nuage Networks from Nokia.

The Nuage Networks VSP solution key facts:

• Enables high-performance, reliable SDN and policy-based automation for cloud deployments at scale
• Provides seamless virtual overlay networking across on-premises and public cloud environments as well as remote WAN sites for end-to-end automation and application delivery
• Supports a range of cloud orchestration platforms for infrastructure-wide automation, including OpenStack and CloudStack open source platforms
• Works across heterogeneous application platforms and workload types, including virtual machines, containers and bare metal applications to minimize disruption and accelerate cloud-readiness
• The data center and cloud networking framework of the VSP - Virtualized Cloud Services (VCS) - automates the configuration, management and optimization of virtual networks, including security services that provide tenant isolation and access controls to individual applications and workloads
• A centralized policy manager and SDN controller automate configuration and tuning of network and security devices, accelerating IT tasks, increasing scale and reducing errors
• VCS integrates with a broad range of open source reference architectures and management solutions to deliver virtual networking and automation in a highly scalable cloud environment