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Also known as hybrid WAN, the ser-
vice allows business customers
to cope with the network requirements
of the future digital economy by combin-
ing dedicated data connections with
low-cost broadband links in their WAN.
“Putting it simply, the customer
wants secure, guaranteed delivery
with quality of service for their data
network,” said Peter Coppens, director
of network portfolio at Colt. “But they
don’t want increasing data capacity
requirements to mean more expensive
bandwidth circuits.”
The solution is to use the public
Internet for those apps which are
not latency-critical, such as email or
web surfing, while reserving your data
networks for the mission-critical, high-
bandwidth applications, Coppens con-
tinued. “Data over the Internet is still
secured by using IPSec tunnels; and
the customer is free to use their exist-
ing ISP if they so wish.”
The
Coltoffering is delivered as
a virtualized service with built-in on-
demand elasticity and multi-tenancy,
combining SD-WAN software with open,
scalable general-purpose server hard-
ware at the customer’s premises. With
a broad set of networking and security
virtual network functions, Colt claims
both agility and economic advantage in
the delivery of network function virtu-
alization (NFV)-based services for the
WAN and branch office by accelerating
time-to-service while reducing total
cost of ownership due to centralized
management for all sites.
The service expansion will be based
on platform elements provided by Ver-
sa Networks. Kumar Mehta, CEO and
co-founder said: “Versa has worked
with Colt for the last 18 months to cre-
ate new NFV-based WAN services. We
are excited to continue our joint innova-
tion as Colt launches its cutting edge,
software-based, managed SD-WAN ser-
vice across Europe.”
For customer sites that are “on-net”
(i.e., directly connected with Colt fiber)
bandwidth scales in a very cost-efficient
way: off-net this is not the case. The intro-
duction of SD-WAN removes these limita-
tions by enabling a path to public Internet
for those apps which are not latency criti-
cal such as email or web surfing.
Customers can then reserve off-net
data capacity for more business-critical
applications. The end result is that a
hybrid network is formed where non-crit-
ical data is offloaded to a secured Inter-
net tunnel, freeing up MPLS bandwidth
for business-critical data, efficiently
increasing the total bandwidth to branch
sites. Data over the Internet is secured
by using IPSec tunnels; and the custom-
er is free to use their existing Internet
service provider if they so wish.
Colt is leveraging the intelligent SD-
WAN platform to enable its customers
to dynamically route data traffic to man-
age both secure and Internet routing in
real time. This can be configured by Colt
or the customer.
Coppens added, “The SD-WAN is a
new way to architect, deploy and oper-
ate the WAN, providing a dramatically
simplified way of deploying and manag-
ing multi-site connectivity. So much
so that it’s forecast that by the end of
2019, 30 percent of enterprises will
use SD-WAN products across sites, up
from less than 1 percent today.”
Weston-Comstor
to Offer Cisco
Cloud in Middle East
Westcon-Comstor,a value-added
distributor, is extending its commit-
ment to Cisco in the Middle East
region through a new agreement with
CloudHPT. Comstor will offer Cisco-
powered cloud services, including
backup as a service (BaaS), disas-
ter recovery as a service (DRaaS),
infrastructure as a service (IaaS),
desktop as a service and database as
a service. CloudHPT is the first Cisco-
powered cloud built in the UAE for the
Middle East.
“We look forward to combining
our talent, technology, expertise with
Westcon-Comstor to grow our footprint
in the Middle East and North Africa,
build relations with valuable partners,
and provide our Cisco-powered cloud
solutions throughout this region,” said
Christopher Dalala, director, CloudHPT.
“It’s almost impossible today for
our customers to ignore the opera-
tional agility and the cost savings of
cloud services,” said Renton Dsouza,
divisional director, Comstor Middle
East. “The addition of Cisco-powered
cloud by CloudHPT to our portfolio will
help our resellers generate recurring
revenue by offering these services
to their customers. We’re pleased to
expand this portfolio with CloudHPT to
continuously demonstrate the power
of cloud.”
International Agents
Colt Expands
SD-WAN Across
Europe
C
olt Technology Services has expanded its
managed SD-WAN to 13 countries across
Europe. The expansion will reach even
more countries in 2017.
Channel
Vision
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