Ipanema Technologies announced a research collaboration with BT to examine Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

The approach sees researchers at BT’s internationally recognized Adastral Park campus collaborating with counterparts from Ipanema Technologies to examine the potential of the company’s virtual ip|engines. The objective of the research is to demonstrate the ability of Ipanema’s technology to provide virtualized WAN optimization and application performance functionality, removing the need for distributed network devices.

The initial focus of the research has been on key areas of application performance management such as: connectivity, Quality of Service (QoS), acceleration, and reporting. Dr Tim Whitley, MD of Research & Innovation for BT said: “NFV has real potential as a technology, which is why we have a wider program in place to determine exactly which network functions can be virtualized. Effectively managing and controlling application performance remains absolutely critical to BT’s enterprise customers, so we welcome the opportunity to explore the future uses of virtual ip|engines from Ipanema.”

Paul Cobos, VP Global Partners, Ipanema Technologies commented: “We appreciate that the nature of networks and the methods of computing are changing rapidly. Virtualizing our technology has the potential to deliver numerous benefits to our customers, including: reduced expense, quicker deployment, reduced power consumption, hardware independence, and even greater scalability. We are delighted to be working with BT on this research project.”

BT and Ipanema Technologies have an existing commercial relationship that sees Ipanema’s ip|engine devices deployed in BT customer branch and data centre locations. This managed service, branded BT Connect Optimisation, underpins BT Global Services’ Application Performance Management service offer. Working closely together the two companies enable BT’s enterprise customers to guarantee the performance of their critical IT applications (such as ERP, CRM and Unified Communications applications). Ultimately this approach ensures applications work as needed, which significantly improves business productivity and the end-user experience.