BT, Monday announced it is accelerating its investment in dynamic network services by integrating a range of new technologies. As part of that investment, BT has selected Nuage Networks from Nokia to contribute technology for its future software defined WAN service.
The initial launch of BT’s SD-WAN service incorporating Nuage Networks technology from Nokia is planned for early 2017. It is specifically being developed to serve global organisations using a cloud-based IT consumption model and will complement BT’s existing IP and Ethernet VPN offering.
BT’s ongoing investments in dynamic network services respond to that demand through the development of innovative sets of capabilities, based on new programmable technology that leverages Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN).
In the coming months, BT said it will unveil further details of its roadmap for other software-defined services, aligning to the SDN capabilities that are being introduced in BT’s cloud-service nodes. These will enable organisations to control both their network connectivity and hosted applications from a single SDN-automated infrastructure.
Organisations will also be able to choose how they take this control. Their options will include a portal-based self-service or centralised account-driven service management.
Also coming, BT’s SD-WAN services will integrate with new virtual services that will include ‘try before you buy’ capabilities and be consumed on a utility basis. Virtual Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE) capabilities will provide integrated 'branch in a box' services, using the centralised automation of SD-WAN. And, with this, customers will be able to simultaneously control their on-premise and network applications.
Chet Patel, president of global portfolio & marketing, BT
As part of that strategy, we are now leveraging our expertise in SDN and NFV technology and using the breadth and depth of our global network infrastructure to enhance further our portfolio of dynamic network services. To offer more choice to our customers, we are constantly reinforcing an ecosystem of world-class partners.
