Verizon Enterprise Beefs Up Virtualized Portfolio with Ericsson

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has selected Ericsson to provide enabling technologies for its virtualized global managed network services offerings, including software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) services.

The enabling technologies will allow Verizon customers to take advantage of self-service ordering and configuration, end-to-end automation and flexible payment models. The self-service offerings will give enterprises the ability to dynamically combine virtualized features from a catalog of service options, such as security packages, WAN optimization and data center load balancing for tighter service integration and better performance.

Ericsson is providing to Verizon end-to-end dynamic orchestration, closed-loop service assurance and virtual network function (VNF) onboarding and testing. The solution is based on Ericsson’s orchestration offering in conjunction with consulting and systems integration services. Ericsson Cloud Manager, including model-driven configuration management, and Ericsson Order Care provide the orchestration engine while the VNF Factory enables efficient onboarding and validation of VNFs into Verizon’s ecosystem, while reducing its time to market for new Verizon enterprise services.

“This project grew out of Verizon’s long-standing relationship with Ericsson, and builds on the successful launch of our mobile offering that leverages Ericsson’s cloud orchestration solutions to provide VPN capabilities for mobile devices,” said Shawn Hakl, vice president of networking and security solutions, Verizon. “We are jointly developing on Ericsson’s innovative and comprehensive platform to enable a wide range of secure virtual networking services to our enterprise customers.”

Verizon also will use additional Ericsson solutions and services to stimulate a partner ecosystem for enterprise-oriented Virtual Network Functions (VNF). Third parties will provide VNFs that can be tested and on-boarded to Verizon’s VNF catalog for bundling by Verizon and selection by its enterprise customers.

Jean-Philippe Poirault, head of Business Unit IT & Cloud Services at Ericsson, added, “Our latest work together in NFV orchestration will help Verizon to continue to lead the industry with its hybrid managed networks at scale. Verizon offers the flexibility, speed and scale required for proactively meeting the needs of enterprise customers worldwide.”


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