OREANDA-NEWS. NEC Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, NTT Communications Corporation, Fujitsu Limited and Hitachi, Ltd. today announced the development of technologies that enable Software-Defined Networking (SDN,) compatibility for wide area networks, including platforms for comprehensively integrating and managing multiple varieties of wide area network infrastructure and general-purpose network control applications used with those platforms.

These technologies were developed through the "Open Innovation Over Network Platforms" research and development project. Also known as the "O3 (O Three) Project", this initiative was launched in June 2013 based on research consigned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' Research and Development of Network Virtualization Technology, and has been promoted jointly by the five companies.

The project has defined unified expressions of network information and built a database for handling them, allowing network resources in lower layers such as optical networks to be easily handled at upper layers such as packet transport networks. This enables the provision of software that allows operation management and control of different types of networks based on common items. With these technologies, telecommunications carriers can quickly and easily provide virtual networks that combine optical, packet, wireless and other features.

Foremost, these achievements allow service providers to inform telecommunications carriers about their desired network configurations by, for instance, easily entering them via a website. Telecommunications carriers will be able to build virtual networks that satisfy the needs of service providers by flexibly combining optical and packet transport networks. They will also be able to comprehend what is happening when and where on the virtual networks, instantly and accurately. Moreover, in the future, telecommunications carriers will be able to reduce the time to design, construct and change networks in response to service providers' requests by approximately 90% compared to conventional methods, by having network devices in different layers coordinate with each other.

This project aims to commercialize results of research and development on network virtualization and to promote their global popularization and standardization. Disclosure of information related to the project began online and through other outlets in FY2013, and some of the research and development results will be made open to the public in FY2014. The project aims to clarify the contents of the research and development results, results of verification tests, etc. by March 2016 to provide them to domestic and overseas telecommunications carriers and service providers and vendors.

When these technologies are commercialized, businesses, for instance, will be able to build optimal networks and start utilizing services instantly only by applying specialized software for applications, such as the use of big data, high-quality broadcasting, and a global corporate intranet.