Emulation Cloud is an open application development environment that helps customers and third-party developers create, test, and fine-tune customized applications in a completely virtual environment.

With the web-scale traffic demands of fast-growing cloud-based services, content distribution, and new IT services emerging from virtualization, requirements for flexibility and programmability are growing like never before.

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Leveraging Rich APIs for a New DCI Operational Paradigm

Fortunately, there’s a new generation of network portals on the rise, like Emulation Cloud, intended to support these new requirements by leveraging the high degrees of programmability and open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in next-generation optical platforms.

Emulation Cloud unlocks the full potential of open APIs with a development portal that helps users innovate and develop new applications without investing in IT infrastructure. For a developer creating new tools, Emulation Cloud is a one-stop shop. Much like smartphones and their related application development environment, the Emulation Cloud can be used to design any application that utilizes open APIs, such as apps for enhanced network visualization, fault and capacity event notification, data center cluster management, or even detailed performance monitoring.

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Ciena Emulation Cloud overview demonstration

The Emulation Cloud also functions as a virtual lab, enabling the emulation of products to test code and scripts. Users determine the specific equipment configuration, including the quantity and types of client pluggables. Users also can connect to the emulated network elements through a Swagger GUI or directly from the user’s developer environment through direct links to the virtual machines.

Emulation Cloud is a cloud-based software development environment, designed to help users create customized applications.

There are four key benefits of Emulation Cloud:

  • It can accelerate DevOps and web-scale IT integration by enabling customers and partners to create, test, and fine-tune applications and scripts using a cloud-based solution rather than expensive and labor-intensive IT resources.
  • It provides access to full API definitions and descriptions and enables users to tap into the expertise of Ciena’s team for questions regarding APIs and code.
  • Users can schedule and access virtual lab time to develop unique operational tools, without IT infrastructure investment.
  • It encourages innovation through experimentation and testing—all from the safety of a virtual cloud environment.

Ciena offers a rich the toolset in the Emulation Cloud so developers and IT teams can simplify integration activities. The scalable virtual environment eases the development and testing of new operational tools without expensive infrastructure investments that stress IT budgets and resources.

Users can access Ciena’s Emulation Cloud from anywhere with an Internet connection, enabling collaborative development and testing activities from any location at any time. Developers can more easily innovate, experiment, and test new service models on virtual network resources, resulting in dramatically lower entry and exit costs.

White Paper
Leveraging Rich APIs for a New DCI Operational Paradigm

Ciena’s Emulation Cloud emulates both hardware and software with associated open APIs, so apps tested in the virtual environment will work with the actual hardware. The open aspect of Emulation Cloud means network/data center operators can leverage the numerous development resources on the market to scale and accelerate the development of innovative network solutions.

Users can log in into the Emulation Cloud Web portal, choose the products and network configurations they want to emulate, and select the day and time to use the emulators. The Emulation Cloud also opens access to the user community chat groups and forums, code snippets, video tutorials, and the complete set of documentation for all open APIs.

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