From wavelength division to software definition
Equipment vendor Nokia has announced two major contract wins from the opposite ends of its product range and different sides of the globe. In Western Europe it has signed a frame agreement with Eurofiber Group while in North Asia it is working with one of ‘big three” IT services companies in South Korea, where SK C&C will use its cloud managed software defined network service, Nuage Networks.
Eurofiber is an open network infrastructure builder for the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. The new agreement, covering all Eurofiber affiliates, involves optical networks in France and a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) city network in Germany in a joint venture with Vattenfall. In Belgium, both companies have agreed to renew the nationwide DWDM network. Meanwhile, the Eurofiber Cloud Infra unit has selected SR Linux from Nokia as its switching platform.
“Eurofiber has an ambitious growth agenda in Western Europe. A fully integrated high capacity DWDM network and future-proof, secure datacenter equipment are the main technological enablers to realise these ambitions,” said Eric Kuisch, Eurofiber Group’s chief operating officer.
On the software side of the business Nokia has announced that SK C&C has deployed its managed Nuage Networks solution, Nokia Cloud Managed SD-WAN Service. Nokia said the network connectivity between branches and the cloud will benefit from better security, network visibility and cost efficiencies. The cloud service promises to define the network for advanced networking services, including application aware routing, multiple WAN uplinks per site and a full gamut of centrally managed network and security policies.
Nokia has promised to cut both the start-up and running costs with its cloud hosted, multi-tenancy SD-WAN as-a-Service. The deployment and maintenance services are provided by Nokia Cloud Managed SD-WAN Service distributor, Dongkuk Systems.
The security is better than a traditional WAN because of the multiple uplinks, said Jangsoo Shin, Head of Hybrid Cloud1 Group at SK C&C: “That means more network availability at less cost.”
All digital transformation projects will need strong network foundations, according to Saurabh Sandhir, the General Manager of Nuage Networks at Nokia. “We link the business application users in the branches to the business applications in the private and public cloud,” said Sandhir.