Orange and BT have prepped new virtualisation services as they look to offer more flexible networks to customers.
Orange Business Services will launch “Easy Go Network”, its network as a service offering, into 75 counties by the end of 2016.
The service, which has been trialled by select Orange customers for the past year, allows businesses to provision virtual network functions through an online portal. A plug and play router is able to be set up within minutes, with customer care, ordering and reporting all available online.
Potential use cases include retailers that need flexible services for the likes of concessions or pop-up stores. Orange said new sites can be established in less than five minutes and enterprises have full visibility over network usage.
The operator is working with Fortinet to bring another VNF, its enterprise firewall, to customers. Orange said it would deliver intrusion provision, content filtering, and anti-spyware and malware defences.
The France-based telco said it wanted to bring additional virtualised functions, such as app optimisation and Wi-Fi management tools, to market during 2017.
Pierre-Louis Biaggi, Vice-President, Connectivity Business Unit at Orange Business Services, said: “Easy Go Network is an evolution of our enhanced hybrid network strategy. It is designed to help businesses anticipate and address their digital needs fast and within budget. We are using an open-standards based approach to develop our SDN and NFV strategy, and we are planning to launch a universal CPE for larger sites next year. Our ultimate goal is an adaptive network, which we will bring to our customers within the next three years.”
Meanwhile, BT has picked Nokia-owned Nuage Networks to help its enterprise customers take advantage of self-service VPNs, flexible bandwidth and virtual services through a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).
It will be launched in early 2017, sitting alongside its existing IP and ethernet VPN products, and will be aimed at companies using cloud-based IT networks.
It recently launched a Connect Intelligence IWAN service, which it said helps enterprises automatically route and optimise network traffic.
Further products will be announced in the coming months, BT said, which will help companies control network connectivity and applications through SDN-automated infrastructure, either via a portal-based or centralised account-driven service management solution.
Chet Patel, President of Global Portfolio & Marketing, BT, said: “This is an important stage in a journey that will ultimately give BT customers unparalleled choice, security, resilience, service, and agility in the roll out of high performance networks designed for the age of the cloud.”