NGENA aims to launch services in early 2017; comprises Deutsche Telekom, Reliance Jio, SK Telecom and more
BARCELONA, Spain – CenturyLink, Deutsche Telekom, Reliance Jio Infocomm and SK Telecom announced their Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance during this week’s Mobile World Congress event.
The alliance plans to launch international network services for business customers in the first half of next year. The partners said they expect more than 20 additional service providers to join the alliance, the foundation of which is still subject to applicable regulations.
Enabled by Cisco Systems’ cloud and virtualization technology, the network assets of all partners will create the alliance’s global network.
“Services based alone on the public Internet are not secure or reliable enough for real-time applications such as logistics, manufacturing and telemedicine,” explained DT CEO Timotheus Höttges. “A network without sufficient service quality is a risk that customers do not want to take. That’s why our alliance aims to provide multinational enterprise customers with a secure, powerful, global network service faster than before.”
Meanwhile, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said strategic partnerships are key in today’s digital economy to drive fast innovation.
“NGENA is a pioneering alliance among leading service providers to deliver globally consistent, cost-effective and flexible services, allowing them to deliver better experiences at a faster pace,” Robbins said.
NGENA is set to target multinational companies looking to purchase their global telecommunications services from a single source. The alliance partners will define unified service levels, so instead of separate agreements in different countries, customers can be served by a single point of contact within the alliance.
The global partner alliance said that the physical and virtual network assets will be managed through hubs located in Europe, America and Asia using automated provisioning. The alliance partners said they will be able to deliver full international VPN functionality; application performance management; wide-area network and local-area network management; and optimization up to additional built in services such as unified communication and collaboration; advanced security services; and platform APIs for adoption of industry-specific use cases.
