Juniper Invests in Data Center Switch Vendor Blade

The amount Juniper invested in Blade’s $10 million B spherical of funding wasn’t disclosed. Privately held Blade has accumulated $230 million in funding since being spun removed from Nortel in 2006.

Data Center Definitions and Solutions

Juniper may be a new investor in Blade, as is NEC and a 3rd “technology powerhouse” as a silent investor, said Blade CEO Vikram Mehta. Garnett & Helfrich Capital, Blade’s founding investor, completed the spherical with its reinvestment.

Hajime Fukuzawa, chief manager of NEC’s shopper and server division, can be part of Blade’s board.

Blade is an aftermarket provider to each NEC and Juniper; Juniper’s EX2500 top-of-rack 10G Ethernet knowledge center switch is provided by Blade.
“Blade is well aligned with Juniper Networks in our commitment to scale back the whole price of network possession whereas providing the high performance, scalability and virtualization needed by today’s dynamic knowledge center environments,” said David Yen, government vp and general manager of Juniper’s material and switching technologies business cluster, in a very ready statement. “We are delighted to take a position in Blade Network Technologies to handle a number of the foremost difficult connectivity wants for next-generation networks.”

Juniper is functioning with IBM — additionally a BLADE client — and different corporations on its Project Stratus cloud computing design.
Blade can use the investment to ramp up R&D and sales and selling. the corporate plans to develop a 64-port 10G top-of-rack switch and management product for virtualized knowledge centers, and it plans to be the primary vendor within the business to unveil 10G switches at but $100 per port, Mehta says.

Blade simply wrapped a second quarter, that grew half-hour from last year and saw the firm ship its six millionth Ethernet switch port. That port was shipped to Baidu, the biggest search engine in China.

Citing knowledge from Dell’Oro cluster, Blade said it ended 2008 because the third-leading vendor of fastened, managed 10G Ethernet switch ports and fifth in fastened, managed 1G Ethernet port shipments.

Separately, Juniper unveiled enhancements to its E Series Broadband Service Router. New options embrace a line module and multiple IPv6 extensions for scaling subscribers, supporting in-service software upgrades, and dynamically assigning addresses over Ethernet.

The new module, referred to as the Advanced LM10A, doubles the per-slot subscriber density of the E320 whereas reducing the quantity of line modules needed within the network, Juniper says. The new IPv6 options support dynamic subscriber interfaces and DHCPv6 native pools for dynamic address assignment over Ethernet.

The Advanced LM10A line module and also the IPv6 enhancements are offered currently. Pricing wasn’t disclosed.