Telus and Nuage Networks form camaraderie with new SD-WAN
Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company, announced it is teaming up with Nuage Networks, a Nokia venture, to initiate Telus Network as a Service (NaaS), software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) platform.
SD-WAN is an emerging network architecture that decouples network control and forwarding functions. The technology enables businesses to create, manage and optimize WAN connections. Telus joined forces with Nuage Networks to address challenges regarding the amount of time it takes to turn up and connect websites.
Nuage Networks SD-WAN solution provides a single platform to connect internet sites both big and small. A customer can log into a portal, order connectivity for a site and go back to the portal to spin up a virtual function on a CPE, explained Hussein Khazaal, vice president of marketing and partnerships at Nuage Networks. With Nuage Networks SD-WAN, the amount of time it takes to bring up a site can be reduced by 80 %. Moreover, it minimizes costs, boosts business agility and provides the scalability needed to meet cloud-driven requirements
The roots of WAN technology trace back to the 90s. With the rise of the cloud, big data, the internet of things (IoT), and software as a service (SaaS), the SD-WAN market has undergone an exponential boom. According to a survey conducted by the market research firm IDC, approximately 70% of customers said they would review or use SD-WAN by the end of the year; and more than 40% of enterprise respondents said they intend to implement integrated SD-WAN solutions acquired by communications service providers.
What makes Nuage Networks SD-WAN unique is everything can be done through a single application program interface (API). Users can define a template, make an API request and let the platform do the rest. Nuage Networks SD-WAN is a new way of abstracting the network complexity from what the user wants. The platform has built-in capabilities, which can be optimized to add customers to the TELUS network swiftly and capture new customers outside the TELUS network.
Telus isn’t the only telecommunications network to collaborate with Nuage Networks for its SDN solutions. Several global providers seeking to automate and advance their WAN connections have contracted with Nuage Networks, including BT, China Telecom, Telefonica and Telia. “Nuage Networks has become a leader in helping service providers deliver fully automated and self-service SD-WAN solutions to enterprise customers who are looking to connect their users quickly and securely to applications in private and public clouds,” said Sunil Khandekar, CEO and founder of Nuage Networks.
“Our platform is present in the world’s largest carrier-grade networks and is being deployed as a complete overlay that can serve as a natural extension of customers’ existing L2 and L3 MPLS VPN and other WAN service offerings to remote sites. We are the only vendor that offers a single SDN automation platform for the datacenter, WAN and public cloud – providing operational simplification, agility and significant cost savings across the multiple cloud-based services currently offered by these providers,” he added.
