Matisse Networks introduced virtualization of metropolitan optical networks with a suite of new features collectively known as vMETRO.

vMETRO is a collection of capabilities purpose-built to enable the virtualization of IT resources across distributed datacenters and campus networks. vMETRO allows enterprises to cost-effectively implement metro-wide application agility to scale business-critical IT infrastructure beyond the physical power, space, and cooling limitations of a single site, enabling:

• Metro-wide datacenter capacity pooling
• Improved IT resource utilization
• Scalable metro network infrastructure

"We are on the brink of advancing from the current era of virtualizing individual servers to true datacenter automation," said Mark Bowker, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Next generation virtualization capabilities that dynamically provision resources such as storage logical unit numbers (LUN) over distributed arrays or migrate live compute instances between buildings with tools like VMware's VMotion become possible when an enterprise has a high-capacity, low-latency interconnect such as Matisse Network's EtherBurst."

EtherBurst fully integrates Ethernet and optical technologies. EtherBurst offers the operational simplicity and universal interoperability associated with Ethernet while providing the bandwidth and scalability of wave division multiplexing (WDM) optics. The new vMETRO capabilities make EtherBurst suited to help enterprises grow their metro networks to interconnect distributed datacenters and campus local area networks (LAN).

"Server and storage virtualization have improved resource utilization and simplified data center management while increasing responsiveness," said Michael Kennedy, President, Network Strategy Partners. "Circuit WDM systems, however, have been a barrier to extending the benefits of virtualization across the metro optical network. Matisse's vMETRO enables virtualization of both Ethernet switching and optical transponders so that servers, storage and bandwidth resources may be efficiently shared across the metro area."

vMETRO Components
vMETRO includes a number of distinct components, each available exclusively from Matisse:

• Virtualized Metro Switching (vmSwitching)
• Optical VLANs
• Metro-Wide Quality of Service (mQOS)

"vMETRO now makes it possible to interconnect distributed resources as if they were all within a single facility," said Timon Sloane, VP of Marketing for Matisse Networks. "Any combination of applications, servers and storage subsystems that can be networked together within a single datacenter can now be interconnected with the same ease and performance across a metro region using the Matisse EtherBurst distributed switch."