Still waiting for its first telco win, Matisse Networks has announced a new suite of features targeting the rapidly growing market for optical transport in enterprise and campus networks.

The new feature suite, called vMetro, enables the virtualization of IT resources across distributed data centers and campus networks and comprises three key components: Virtualized Metro Switching (vmSwitching); optical VLANs (virtual local-area networks); and Metro-wide Quality of Service (mQOS).

vmSwitching allows a network of Matisse boxes (known as EtherBursts) to operate and be manageable as a single entity, even if the resources are located in separate data centers.

Optical VLANs enable applications, servers, and storage devices to be interconnected simultaneously, thus allowing resource grouping and virtualization across multiple data centers.

Finally, mQOS delivers dynamic bandwidth reallocation across applications and sites to ensure that applications with the greatest QOS needs receive the necessary resources.

Timon Sloane, Matisse's VP of marketing, says that by extending virtualization through its vMetro products, enterprise data centers "run like an Ethernet data switch." The result is a more efficient way of scaling and managing enterprise resources.

When it came to market, Matisse targeted service provider customers with an optical transport system based on packet switching. (See Matisse Networks.)

However, despite receiving $80 million in three rounds of financing, the company has yet to secure a carrier customer. (See Matisse Aims to Make Impression, Matisse Primes Metro Ethernet Makeovers, Matisse Intros Products, and Matisse Lands $45M More.)

That's not to say the company can't still take its virtualization expertise into the telecom market, says Heavy Reading analyst Sterling Perrin.

"Virtualization is not unique to the enterprise," says Perrin. "Matisse sees it can apply its technology to virtualization, which it can push with service providers as well."

Perrin points to optical equipment manufacturer Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN), which has won deals with Interoute Communications Ltd. , Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), and 360networks Inc. based on its ability to do bandwidth virtualization. (See Infinera Muscles Into Interoute, Interoute CTO Blames Vendors for Confusion, Equinix Calls on Infinera, and Infinera Pulls a 360.)

While still searching for that elusive first carrier win, Sloane says the company is getting closer. "We've made tremendous progress in terms of moving to larger-scale deployments" in carrier networks, he says.

— Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading