6WIND

Last updated
6WIND
IndustrySoftware
FoundedSeptember 1, 2000 (2000-09-01)
Headquarters,
France
Number of locations
United States, United Kingdom, Singapore
Key people
Julien Dahan, CEO
ProductsVirtual Service Routers, 6WINDCloud, Virtual Host Accelerator, 6WINDGate

6WIND is a virtual networking software company delivering disaggregated and cloud-native solutions to CSPs and enterprises globally. The company is privately held and headquartered in the West Paris area, in Montigny-le-Bretonneux. 6WIND has a global presence with offices in the US and APAC. The company provides virtualized networking software which is deployed in bare-metal or in virtual machines on COTS servers in public & private clouds. Their solutions are disaggregated and containerized based on the cloud-native architecture.

Contents

History

6WIND was founded in 2000 as a spin-out from Thales Group (previously Thomson-CSF), a provider of electronics for aerospace, defense and security. A 3.75 million euro investment from Sofinnova Partners and others was announced in 2004, and 5 million euros in 2004. [1] Partners include Red Hat, VMware and Wind River Systems. [2] Equipment vendors that provide boards and systems utilizing 6WIND software include Emerson Network Power. [3]

Other partners include: Kalray for data centers, [4] Hewlett-Packard for acceleration technology on ProLiant servers, [5] Dell, [6] Canonical, [7] Alcatel-Lucent for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. [8]

In April 2013, the company announced it would support an open-source software project for the Data Plane Development Kit from Intel. [9] In early 2012, 6WIND introduced a mobile edition and cloud edition of 6WINDGate, for 4G mobile phone companies and cloud computing. [10]

The company announced its Speed Series of packaged software in late 2014, marketed for network function virtualization (NFV). A product called 6WIND Virtual Accelerator allowing hypervisor scaling. A venture capital investment from Cisco Systems was announced in 2014. [11] [12] In 2015, the company announced its Turbo Router Turbo IPsec software. [13]

In 2016 Radware said that their Aleon NG VA product used a product of the company along with OpenStack. [14] [15] That same year Mirantis announced integration with 6WIND for data centers and NFV.

The company promotes its performance by publishing performance tests. [16]

In 2015 Light Reading mentioned that 6WIND software allowed Italian service provider NGI to build a router marketed for software-defined networking. [17]

In August 2017, 6WIND announced a "replacement program" for Brocade vRouter users. [18] 6WIND vRouter is based on DPDK traffic runs in the fast path outside of the Linux kernel, avoiding potential Linux kernel processing bottlenecks. [19] This announcement has been followed by two articles from The Register and SDxCentral comparing 6WIND with dedicated equipment and explaining how the vRouter solution helped a Spanish ISP to become SDN ready. [20] [21]

In November 2022, 6WIND announced an strategic partnership with IP-Tribe in APAC. [22]

See also

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References

  1. "Sofinnova Partners announces a €5 million second investment round to support the development of 6WIND". Press release. Sofinnova Partners. February 9, 2004. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  2. Wind River, 6Wind partner on multicore CPUs, EE Times, January 14, 2008.
  3. Anne-Francoise Pele. "6Wind joins Emerson's partnership program", November 18, 2008.
  4. "Kalray and 6WIND Announce New Partnership". finanznachrichten.de. 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  5. "6WIND Turbo IPsec Performance Certified on Hewlett Packard Enterprise ProLiant Servers for Cost-effective Security Gateway Solutions for All Size Networks". Press release. February 2, 2016. Archived from the original on June 3, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  6. "Dell introduces new NFV platform, starter kits - FierceWireless". www.fiercewireless.com.
  7. Nestor, Marius (2015-12-07). "Canonical Partners with 6WIND to Accelerate the Growth of Ubuntu Cloud Networking". softpedia.com. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  8. "Alcatel-Lucent signs agreements with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND to accelerate delivery of virtualized radio access networks". 15 December 2015. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  9. "6WIND Announces dpdk.org Open-Source Project to Accelerate Development of Intel Architecture-Based Networking Products". Press release. April 9, 2013. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  10. Janine E. Mooney (February 13, 2012). "6WIND Now #1 Supplier of Networking Software for LTE Infrastructure, Extends Product Line to Cloud Infrastructure Solutions". Press release. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  11. Martyn Warwick (2014). "SDN/NFV Wars: Cisco tries to put the breeze up HP by blowing money into French company 6Wind". Telecom TV. Archived from the original on January 26, 2017. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  12. Richard Chirgwin (July 7, 2015). "Cisco slings simoleons at software-defined networking biz 6Wind". The Channel. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  13. "6WIND Offering Accelerated L3 Virtual Appliances". Sponsored blog posting. Packet Pushers. October 21, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  14. "Radware, 6Wind Team on Virtual Acceleration". Press release. April 19, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  15. "Radware's Virtual Alteon ADC Achieves Industry Highest Performance in OpenStack Environment". Press release. April 26, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  16. "Blazing performance with 6WIND Speed Series Turbo Appliances". SDx Central web site. September 24, 2015. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  17. Mitch Wagner (February 17, 2015). "Italian SP Deploys Homemade SDN Appliance". Light Reading. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
  18. "6WIND Lures Brocade vRouter Customers Left Out in Cold". sdxcentral.com. 2017-08-24. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  19. "6WIND Offers Replacement Program for Dead Brocade vRouter - Packet Pushers". packetpushers.net. 2017-08-25. Retrieved 2023-07-02.
  20. Chirgwin, Richard (1 July 2018). "Be The Packet. Take each hop it makes. Your network will repay you". The Register .
  21. "Spanish ISP Replaces Cisco Hardware Routers With 6WIND vRouter". SDxCentral.
  22. "6WIND and IP-Tribe announce Strategic Partnership in APAC". Yahoo Finance. 2022-11-29. Retrieved 2023-07-02.