AT&T extends hybrid networking options
AT&T recently announced it is making its SD-WAN service available to over 150 countries and territories.
AT&T originally deployed its platform, dubbed SD-WAN – Network Based, to select customers in the U.S. in 2017. The expansion of AT&T’s SD-WAN ought to enable more customers to access the solution from the edge of the network.
“AT&T has one of the most comprehensive enterprise portfolios. In fact, they have one of the only portfolios that truly spans edge-to-edge,” said Courtney Munroe, group vice president of Worldwide Telecommunications Research, IDC, in a statement. “With AT&T SD-WAN – Network Based, AT&T has launched an industry leading offer that it’s implementing and scaling globally. AT&T is taking full advantage of its network virtualization efforts to broaden SD-WAN’s appeal to more businesses.”
Mix and match connectivity options are available for customers with site-specific needs. As part of the extension, customers can choose to migrate half of their locations to SD-WAN – Network Based and dual broadband, in addition to maintaining other locations on a virtual private network (VPN). The service can also be integrated with AT&T NetBond for Cloud, which provides enterprise customers with multiple cloud-to-cloud connection options.
AT&T’s SD-WAN is supported on architecture based on software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). The company has pledged to virtualize and control over 75% of its network by 2020 using software-defined architecture.
“Managing connectivity should be simple. We know businesses want to customize their networks as their needs evolve and technology changes. Our AT&T SD-WAN – Network Based solution delivers flexibility and scalability to help businesses optimize and align network performance, functions and costs,” said Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business. “We can bring everything together edge-to-edge – from end points, to connectivity, to the cloud – wrapped in security.”
The expansion follows on the heels of AT&T announcing it was working with GridRaster to improve augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) mobile apps at its edge computing test zone in Silicon Valley. AT&T also recently contributed software code to a new open source project by The Linux Foundation called Akraino, which focuses on developing on open source software stack capable of supporting high-availability cloud services for edge computing systems.
