French networking company Alcatel-Lucent unveiled its vision for software-defined networks earlier this week. Its vision is called “Application Fluent Network”, or a network that makes automatic and continuous configuration adjustments based on the needs of applications it supports.

The concept of software-defined network (SDN) is one of the latest buzz phrases in the IT networking industry. Companies use it to describe networks that connect virtualized computing infrastructure, where management tasks are automated to the max via software to reduce complexity.

Alcatel-Lucent says its SDN vision is different from the rest in that its Application Fluent Network technology detects virtualized applications and applies policies to adjust the network to meet each application’s individual service-quality demands.

The platform uses profile-driven policies to make configuration adjustments. It combines individual user policies, device and application types and information about the network to adjust network-access priority and to allocate bandwidth.

Other vendors’ SDN approach does not extend far beyond automating the initial configuration for changes in virtual machine deployments, according to Mark Fabbi, a Gartner analyst.

“The focus for early SDN related use cases has been primarily on automation to remove the need for the human middleware required for network reconfiguration related to adds, moves and changes of virtual machine deployments,” he said.

Belgian media-solutions firm CandIT Media was the first company to use Alcatel-Lucent’s SDN set-up, using the network vendor’s OmniSwitch 6900 LAN switches. Since CandIT produces digital media content for clients, its network frequently goes through large traffic spikes.

Luc Andres, CTO of CandIT, said OmniSwitch optimizes the network automatically for content transfers, increasing utilization rates of the network’s physical components.