By Bruce Christian
Rebranding, network/portfolio extensions and a customer win marked news from the INCOMPAS competitive telecom event this week.
UPN Extends Fiber Network to IP Pathways Iowa Data Center
Unite Private Networks (UPN), a provider of high-capacity, fiber-based communication networks, now offers a full suite of carrier-grade, high-bandwidth Ethernet, IP, dark fiber and data transport services to customers in IP Pathways’ Urbandale, Iowa, data center.
“We look forward to providing advanced connectivity options for customers that require IP Pathways extensive infrastructure capabilities and UPN’s high-capacity network,” said Travis Noble, vice president of Enterprise Sales at UPN. “Our secure, reliable and low-latency network offers connection speeds ranging from 100 Mbps to 100 Gbps and we are certain Iowa businesses will benefit from this partnership.”
IP Pathways President Joe Shields added, “We are very excited to welcome UPN into our Urbandale data center. Businesses are rapidly moving out of the data center and business and colocating their IT assets in facilities like our Tier 2, carrier-grade facility. UPN offers our customers high performance, high speed connectivity to our data center and allows them to unleash the power of our data center, cloud and managed IT services.”
IP Pathways provides IT hardware and software, data center, cloud and managed and professional services solutions to business customers throughout Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. The company’s highly-certified and nationally recognized IT engineering team architects, implements, monitors, supports and manages private and hybrid cloud solutions.
UPN provides high-bandwidth, fiber-based communications networks and services to schools, governments, carriers, data centers, hospitals, and enterprise business customers throughout a 20-state service area. Service offerings include dark and lit fiber, private line, optical Ethernet, Internet access, data center services and other customized solutions.
Headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., UPN has been providing customer-focused communications solutions since 1998.
For more information, visit booth 423 in the Expo Hall or go to www.uniteprivatenetworks.com.
Call One Implements CDG’s MBS Consumer Billing Solution
Communications Data Group (CDG) announced the implementation of its online MBS billing system at Call One, a Chicago-based CLEC that specializes in professional consulting services and unified communications solutions for mid-market businesses.
After signing a multi-year contract, Call One’s MBS implementation had an aggressive timeline, and included successfully migrating Call One’s data and developing concurrent enhancements to the MBS system.
Once completely developed, Call One will have total automation of communication among all its internal systems and the billing and provisioning systems.
“Our development and support staffs jumped right into the conversion and committed to it – like they always do” said CDG’s President and CEO, Bob Labonte. “But considering the timeline and scale of the project, they had to take their game to the next level for this implementation. They did just that.”
According to Call One’s President, Alan Burkhard, “the efficiency and professionalism of the CDG staff throughout the rapid MBS implementation was outstanding. Our staff is enjoying the new system, including features that include being able to review unbillable usage prior to billing. We are looking forward to fostering our relationship with CDG and contributing our ideas for future system enhancements and third-party integrations.”
CDG offers scalable, accurate billing and operational support solutions for voice, video and data for retail and wholesale telecommunications carriers and service providers. Options include: interconnect, CABS, mediation, customer care, plant, trouble, service provisioning, e-care, task management and third-party financial, mapping and facilities management products. Service bureau, online and licensed options are available.
Call One is a full-service technology/telecommunications company for mid market firms. Working with more than 60 leading carriers, Call One consolidates and unifies voice, data and mobile communications – giving its clients more time to focus on their core businesses.
For more information on CDG’s products and services, visit booth 219 in the exhibit hall or go to www.cdg.ws.
HyperCube Rebrands as West Telecom Services
West Corporation is integrating all of its business units under a single brand – “West.”
The West subsidiary formerly known as HyperCube has been rebranded as West’s Telecom Services business unit. The new organizational structure unifies the business units on an operational level and gives customers a seamless sales experience across all of West’s functional areas.
For example, West Telecom Services customers can now bolt on E-911 service with their wholesale origination or termination services.
West says it operates the world’s largest conferencing provider and is a leading provider of emergency communications. To leverage these and other strengths, its operations have been consolidated under these lines of business:
- Unified Communications and Conferencing Services – West delivers on-demand audio conferencing, web collaboration tools, video webcasting and other cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions. Scott Etzler leads this division.
- Interactive Services – Through automated alerts and notifications, West gives organizations a variety of ways to reach and notify their customers, subscribers and constituents. Skip Hansen sits at the helm of this unit.
- Safety Services – West provides the location database for the majority of the 911 calls made in the United States, playing a critical role in connecting citizens with first responders. Ron Beaumont leads this organization.
- Telecom Services – A licensed CLEC and competitive provider of tandem services, West is an independent provider of toll-free origination services. Beaumont continues to lead this division, as well.
- Specialized Agent Services – Focused on the healthcare market, West is a provider of healthcare advocacy products and services to employees of large organizations. This unit is led by Mick Mazour.
With a restructured organization and streamlined business processes, the Telecom Services division at West is poised to help its customers create more efficient and effective communications connections.
West Corporation helps to manage and to support essential communications with services that include unified communications services, safety services and interactive services such as automated notifications, telecom services and specialty agent services.
For more than 25 years, West has provided reliable, high-quality, voice and data services. It is a global organization with sales and operations in the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the United States.
For more information, visit West Telecom Services’ in meeting room 2 in the exhibit hall, go to www.west.com or contact telecomsales@west.com.
New Encryption Solution from Ciena Decreases Data Breach Risks
In today’s web-scale world, where more applications reside in the cloud, businesses need the assurance their data are secure at rest and in-flight.
An industry first and backed by Ciena’s coherent optics, the WaveLogic Encryption solution offers new optical-layer encryption capabilities to match high-capacity infrastructure needs from 10G to 100G, 200G and beyond, from metro to ultra-long haul distances. This solution provides simple-to-implement, always-on, data encryption.
Security solutions exist to protect data at-rest. However, high volumes of critical data are continuously in-flight, traveling beyond the walls of the data center and across large networks. Additionally, an increasing number of government-mandated regulations for data protection have made securing in-flight data a higher priority in networks.
“High-profile security breaches are commonplace in the news today,” said Sterling Perrin, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. “Service providers tell Heavy Reading repeatedly that security risks are the number one concern when they talk to their enterprise customers today.
“These concerns are only rising as more and more data moves to the cloud. And, while encryption inside the data center or enterprise campus is well established, service providers are now realizing that encryption of in-flight data is an important component of their holistic security strategy,” Perrin said.
He explained, “By integrating security functions directly into its coherent chipsets, Ciena’s WaveLogic Encryption provides protection from breaches for all high capacity links, something we believe will be well-received by both service providers and their end customers.”
With Ciena’s WaveLogic Encryption solution, data can now be secured as it leaves the private cloud and protected as it traverses across the network, across any distance, without sacrificing the end-user experience.
Ciena’s WaveLogic Encryption solution addresses all infrastructure needs and provides added network security for service providers and large enterprises, such as financial service firms, healthcare and government organizations. The solution is Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) certified and meets the highest security standards recognized globally in the industry.
“Safeguarding critical data has become a major priority in today’s web-scale world. Previous infrastructure solutions have been cumbersome to manage and burdened by separate boxes, impacting throughput and latency,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president and COO for Ciena.
“Our new WaveLogic Encryption solution is simple to deploy and provides a strong and effective defense with an additional level of protection to enable end-to-end security,” Locoh-Donou added.
Powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipset, the solution provides software programmable modulation to enable 100G encryption with QPSK modulation and 200G encryption with 16QAM modulation – an industry first.
WaveLogic Encryption is simple to deploy and protocol agnostic, meaning it simultaneously encrypts any traffic type coming into the network, including Ethernet, fiber channel, OTN, IP, SONET, and SDH. It encrypts the entire wavelength before the data leave the building or data center, and transports it transparently with virtually no added latency, making efficient use of network resources and maintaining quality of end-customer experience.
Additionally, Ciena’s software-based MyCryptoTool features a dedicated management user portal that provides full control to the end enterprise user or security officer to manage all security parameters.
“In the EU, as with the rest of the world, data security is high on the agenda,” said Geert Degezelle, managing director of Telindus. “New regulations and legislation are coinciding with expanding bandwidth needs, making it vital that we support our customers with solutions that provide additional security measures by encrypting data in-flight. As Ciena’s encryption solution helps to ensure the best possible safeguards with no impact on service or latency we are already seeing take-up of these new capabilities, in fact we are currently deploying the 200G encryption solution for a customer in the Dutch finance sector.”
Telstra’s Director for Transport and Routing Engineering David Robertson added,
“We are proud to offer a world-class network experience to our customers. As part of that commitment, we are constantly exploring new ways to secure our network and protect our end customers’ data – not only at the application layer, but also at the network layer.
“Following our successful 200G Encryption network trial with Ericsson and Ciena, and with the ability to now implement WaveLogic Encryption, a FIPS-certified solution, across our network, customers can be assured they are receiving best-in-class connectivity and service,” Robertson said.
Ciena collaborates with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. The company leverages its expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPn architecture for next-generation networks.
It enables a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment.
For more information, visit Ciena at booth 201 in the exhibit hall or go to www.ciena.com.
