A new case study from NEC shows the benefits of OpenFlow®-based SDN in a hospital setting.
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) recently announced its 2013 technical roadmap, with the continued building of the OpenFlow® substrate to meet market needs as a prominent feature. As a member company of ONF, NEC supports the efforts of this organization to drive the commercialization of open, standards-based Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
Accordingly, there is nothing more exciting than seeing your work implemented, deployed, and truly revolutionizing the way a customer’s network operates on a day-to-day basis. NEC was approached by Kanazawa University Hospital in Ishikawa, Japan for a solution to their network ailments. Rapidly evolving changes in technology and difficulties in network management, combined with a demand for a safe and secure network infrastructure, led the hospital to deploy NEC’s UNIVERGE ProgrammableFlow® series, a network solution based on OpenFlow® technology.
ProgrammableFlow allows an entire network to be managed similarly to managing a single virtual switch, enabling a flexible and efficient software-defined network. NEC installed two ProgrammableFlow controllers and 16 switches in the hospital’s clinical research building to directly address the challenges faced by Kanazawa University Hospital.
It took NEC only a month to get the new network up and running, and Kanazawa University Hospital now has a stable software-defined network meeting the demands of the hospital, including:
- Network transparency and integrated management
- Flexible, virtual networks for each department that can be controlled centrally
- Recognition and automatic deployment of connected devices to the appropriate virtual tenant network (VTN)
- Advanced routing control based on communication type, such as preallocating wideband routing for image data to help maintain network stability.
For more information about this OpenFlow® deployment, and additional case studies, please visit the “Customer Case Studies” page in the “SDN Resources” section of the ONF website.
- Gerry Feeney, NEC
Gerry Feeney is Director, Solution Delivery, for NEC Europe. Gerry brings a background of over 30 years in the telecommunications industry to his role at NEC, where he is responsible for their SDN/OpenFlow® program in EMEA.
