DEVOPSdigest

Ciena unveiled key enhancements to its Blue Planet network orchestration software designed to help operators expand and accelerate the delivery of new services across both virtual and physical domains.

Available today, the enhancements enable service providers to accelerate their transformation from closed and siloed network architectures to more open, on-demand software-driven networks.

Blue Planet software helps service providers automate services – from creation to orchestration to delivery – across both physical and virtual domains. This reduces operational costs, eliminates network complexity and drives greater competitive advantage through a level of service programmability previously unachievable.

Blue Planet software advances Ciena’s OPn network architecture approach and delivers a number of critical benefits to service providers, which include:

- Rapid Customization and Agile Development: New container-based, micro-services architecture allows rapid customization and accelerated development of new applications, including those from third-parties and based on open-source. Blue Planet loosely couples software functions within these containers to create and enable SDN Management and Control, NFV Orchestration, and Multi-Domain Service Orchestration. The new architecture also enables disaggregation of the software stack, enabling providers to add their own services.

- Self-Service Programmability: New TOSCA-based service templates equip providers with "DevOps" style self-service programmability of resources (physical, virtual, or cross-domain) for creating, deploying, or enhancing services. This reduces professional services fees typically required by OSS or integration vendors.

- Simplified Integration with Legacy Systems: Support for business process model and notation (BPMN) standard simplifies integration with legacy OSS/BSS systems and simplifies providers’ ability to create, integrate and operate new services. BPMN reduces network complexity and improves the ability to offer programmable, self-service tools to end-users.

- Freedom to Choose: Blue Planet supports non-Ciena domains (e.g. access, metro, core, cloud) to deliver end-to-end service orchestration. This enables providers to select and deploy best-of-breed options at each domain without losing operational simplicity and abstraction. It also reduces vendor lock-in and ensures simple, low-cost operations across multi-vendor physical or virtual functions and domains.

- Open and Standards-based: Blue Planet incorporates more than 15 standards or open source code bases (including Docker, LINUX, TOSCA, BPMN, Netconf/YANG, etc). Additionally, open APIs expose critical data to northbound platforms.

“More than a year ago, Ciena’s Blue Planet division (formerly Cyan), embarked on a journey to break down the software silos that are prevalent in the vendor community. Now, we’re poised to bring together SDN, NFV and service orchestration into a unified, open platform that enables service providers to leverage these cutting-edge technologies for building virtualized on-demand networks and cloud-based service offerings,” says Mike Hatfield, SVP & GM, Blue Planet, Ciena.

“We are beginning to see what innovation is truly possible with Blue Planet. One thing is clear – Blue Planet is disruptive and serves as an agent for transforming the network as we have known it. We look forward to continuing to work with our customers and driving new virtualized on-demand services into the marketplace,” added Francois Locoh-Donou, SVP, Global Products Group, Ciena.