Pluribus Networks Reveals New Switch Support, Integrations For Edge Data Centers

Pluribus Networks is helping telecoms and managed service providers expand their data center infrastructure to include smaller edge locations, grow their cloud offerings, and inject more network automation into their environments.

The company -- which focuses on network analytics, data center interconnection and software-defined networking solutions -- announced a new white box, top of rack switch solution for the central office that pairs Pluribus' automation technology on two new Celestica Carrier Grade White Box Switches. The firm also integrated its external data center gateway router with top of rack switches running its operating system to reduce space, power requirements, and cost for edge data center deployments.

The 100 percent channel-focused company is addressing new use cases with networking solutions focused on the edge, said Mike Capuano, Pluribus Networks chief marketing officer.

"Especially with the Internet of Things, there's a number of applications that are rising up that can't be satisfied with a centralized data center because of latency or bandwidth issues," Capuano said. "We are seeing an increasing distribution of data centers out to edge locations -- like the central office for a telco -- to enable these new applications."

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The two new Celestica Carrier Grade White Box Switches that Pluribus is supporting with the latest version of its NetVisor ONE operating system -- release 5.1 -- are the Edgestone switch for central office locations and the Seastone2E switch for regional data center locations.

The Edgestone switch can be paired with specific compute and storage offerings from third-party vendors to give customers a complete, distributed cloud solution for their central office locations, the company said.

Pluribus in June introduced its first white box multi-tenant data center gateway router which was based on containerized virtual routers (vRouters). Now, the provider has integrated this once-separate and at times, very expensive gateway vRouter function into Pluribus Netvisor ONE software running on the top-of-rack switch. This "collapse" makes edge data center deployments not only cheaper, but simpler, too, Capuano said.

"As you become more distributed, you're moving into more constrained locations," he said. "We are focused on optimizing the networking solutions for those environments, which need more automation."

In addition to tier two and tier three telecom and cloud service providers, midmarket customers have adopted Pluribus Networking solutions within their environments, Capuano said.

"Our solutions are really good for cost-sensitive businesses with lean IT teams in general," he said. "Partners working on edge deployments have a unique solution they can take to market with us."

Pluribus is also announcing integrations with the Red Hat OpenStack Platform and the Red Hat Ansible Automation platform to give partners and customers more automation, the Santa Clara, Calif.- based company said. Pluribus is also working with Red Hat on integrating with OpenShift, it's container orchestration solution, which is slated to come in the second half of 2020.