Serious gaming via the cloud? That's the ambitious aim of on-demand game system maker OnLive and its powerful new network built around high-performance MX Series routers from Juniper Networks.
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For the serious gamer, precision is paramount. There's simply no room for error—a tall order when your gaming console isn't in the room but in the cloud. Nevertheless, this has been the goal from the start for gaming-on-demand system maker, OnLive and its CEO and founder, Steve Perlman.
Perlman knows gamers are a tough bunch to please. "If you are trying to hit something and you press a button and there's a slight lag, that's it. People are just going to walk away," he says. "We knew we had a standard of excellence that had to be met in the network that was above and beyond whatever had been attempted before."
With the challenge to not only develop a state-of-the-art gaming system, but to deliver it via the web in a seamless, scalable and reliable way, the bar was high and the delivery method unprecedented.
After speaking to networking vendors of all shapes and sizes, OnLive made the decision to partner with Juniper, not just for what it could deliver in the short term, but also for its vision.
"We met with all different types of companies that were trying to sell us network gear for networks that existed today. Juniper came to sell us network gear for networks that didn't exist yet," says Perlman.
The result is that OnLive has become a powerful cloud computing company transforming not only the gaming industry, but business in general. A look inside OnLive is a look into the future of the enterprise where databases, storage and security, are all virtualized.
The OnLive network is currently built around Juniper's high-performance MX routers. Today, every single bit of end-user traffic at OnLive moves through multiple Juniper devices. The result is a lightning-fast network with low latency and high throughput that's easy to manage and maintain. In other words, along with computing power, comes manageability and affordability.
The success of the collaboration with Juniper is best summed up by OnLive systems planning director Darrell Gentry. "OnLive has done something no one has yet, the ultimate expression of cloud computing. Which is to say, you can have any cloud computing experience on any device, anywhere, anytime."
The OnLive/Juniper partnership is the promise of cloud computing happening in the real world right now. Its success is just a preview of amazing things to come.