IIJ and ACCESS Form R&D Joint Venture for Next-Generation Cloud Platform Technology

TOKYO-April 5, 2012-Internet Initiative Japan Inc. and ACCESS Co., Ltd.,, today announced the establishment of Stratosphere Inc., a joint-venture company whose goal is to create a platform for the then and there-generation cloud computing environment. In order to achieve this goal, the company will first innovation and develop a suite of software to implement the software defined networkconcept.

SDN is a much talked about new research concept that enables network virtualization and automatic operation in a cloud environment. A core research of SDN called OpenFlow, and software development have been advancing primarily in the U.S.. Stratosphere was founded to capitalize on the advanced software development capabilities of ACCESS in the network and mobile innovation fields, including SDN, and on IIJ's cloud and network operating technology expertise, with both companies bringing committing top technologists to quickly develop innovative new products and capture a leading position in the network virtualization market.

The SDN concept came to the foreground when it

The SDN concept came to the foreground when it was discovered that information systems cannot be flexibly built in a cloud environment without a flexible networking environment, because networking is vital to uniting a variety of virtualized computing resources into operational information systems. Nevertheless, particularly for operators who provide multi-tenantcloud services with virtualized computing resources deployed on physical computers in multiple data centers in widely separated regions, restrictions due to physical networking and complexities in network configuration management are a bottleneck for flexible and scalable service provision and infrastructure expansion.

The SDN concept resolves these issues by using software to control the configuration of virtual networks which connect multiple virtualized computing resources. With the SDN environment, an arbitrary number of virtual machines can be quickly created and deployed to any location with arbitrary network topologies. This allows us to construct cloud environments that are more flexible than those we have today.

Stratosphere will develop a suite of software for integrated control of the entire cloud environment, from virtual networks built on SDN to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Through IIJ and ACCESS's sales channels, these software products will be sold to data center operators, communications operators, large EC operators, and other similar customers.

This spring, Stratosphere will release its first product, a beta version of SDN IaaS that can automatically configure a virtual network through a controller that utilizes OpenFlow protocol. In the fall, the company plans to release commercial products with advanced functionalities and performance optimizations which reflect market demand. Should the contingency arise, a PaaS that interfaces with the SDN IaaS will be developed in parallel. The company expects to have a full line-up of platform products that control each strata of the cloud environment within this fiscal year.