Pan-European network operator, Colt announced the expansion of its managed SD-WAN (Software Defined Wider Area Network) service to 13 countries across Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland and Ireland. The expansion will be supported by solution provided by Versa Networks.
The SD-WAN service combines dedicated data connections with low-cost broadband links in their WAN in order to help business users cope with future network requirements. It is delivered as a Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) service with built-in on-demand elasticity and multi-tenancy, combining SD-WAN software with open, scalable general purpose server hardware at the customer’s premises.
Colt said it is leveraging an intelligent SD-WAN platform to enable its customers to dynamically route data traffic to manage both secure and internet routing in real time. This can be configured by Colt or the customer.
With a broad set of networking and security VNFs (Virtual Network Functions), Colt claims both agility and economic advantage in the delivery of NFV-based services for the WAN and branch office by accelerating time-to-service while reducing TCO (total cost of ownership) due to centralized management for all sites.
Peter Coppens, Director of Network Portfolio, Colt
The solution is to use the public internet for those apps which are not latency critical like email or web surfing, while reserving your data networks for the mission critical, high bandwidth applications. Data over the internet is still secured by using IPSec tunnels; and the customer is free to use their existing Internet Service Provider (ISP) if they so wish.
Kumar Mehta, CEO and co-founder
Versa has worked with Colt for the last 18 months to create new NFV-based WAN services,” “We are excited to continue our joint innovation as Colt launches its cutting edge, software-based, managed SD-WAN service across Europe.
