Nokia pushes SDN into enterprise market
Nuage Networks, a software-defined networking venture by Nokia, recently landed its first SDN-based, large enterprise project in China with China Pacific Insurance Company (CPIC), underscoring the company’s interest in expanding beyond telcos. CPIC is China’s second largest property insurance company, which will leverage Nuage Networks’ Virtualized Services Platform (VSP) to merge IT systems, unify its private cloud and design a test cloud for R&D research.
The company said Nuage Networks VSP will improve CPIC’s efficiency by increasing scale and minimizing mistakes through a centralized policy manager. Under the new contract, won by Nokia Shanghai Bell, CPIC will deploy the company VSP at two of its data centers. One data center will manage the needs of IT systems for 82 branch offices through a unified cloud platform. The other will aid in creating and testing the cloud for R&D purposes.
The aim of the deployment is to provide CPIC, among other institutions, the agility needed to automate virtual networks while maintaining security and privacy. The company said Nuage’s VSP will boost CPI’s security through microsegmentation, thereby increasing automation and decreasing the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Nuage announced last year it intended to pursue networking opportunities outside the telecom market. The IP routing group Nuage is a part of noted a 11% year-on-year decrease in sales in the April-to-June quarter, to about $1.5 billion. Nokia said the drawback was in part due to an overall decline in the communications service provider market. The recent venture with CPIC could help Nuage land more deals outside its typical market.
“Nuage Networks VSP has clear momentum in the telecoms industry, and we’re excited to bring that technology to large enterprises here in China, in this case helping CPIC deliver a unified cloud experience,” said Jin Jian, head of the enterprise and public sector unit at Nokia Shanghai Bell. “Working with a top insurer like CPIC serves as an excellent reference for the broader industry, and we see this as an opportunity to win more large enterprise projects in China, continuing Nokia’s push into vertical markets beyond the telecoms space.”
