Explore, Expand and Enable with Optus Cloud-N Solution

By Optus Wholesale

Get set for a tectonic shift as the International Data Corporation (IDC) claims our industry is in the middle of a technology transformation that takes place once every 20–25 years. This transformation is driven by what IDC call the third platform i.e. a world shaped by Cloud, mobile, social and Big Data. In order to succeed in the next era IDC says businesses need to rapidly react to customer data in order to boost business, technology agility is key and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) may be instrumental to drive network agility.

This shift to the third platform has also seen the emergence of Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) solution models where businesses simply buy what they need and pay for it as they need it. More importantly XaaS services tend to be available On Demand.

Across all key markets in North America, Europe and APAC there is a shift towards services-on-demand models and it appears to be here to stay. As data consumption explodes across the globe, what this means for service providers is an increasing market expectation to deliver dynamic–based changes in real time, without downtime.

If you’re window shopping for agile network connectivity, let us save you some time. Optus Wholesale is currently the only known service provider in Australia to-date that offers three grades of services to our wholesale clients – best effort, business grade and carrier bandwidth on demand connectivity using Software Defined Networking technology (SDN). Enter stage left with Optus’ Cloud-N solution which enables our clients to achieve true scalability, flexibility and security – all at the flick of a self-service switch.

“The flexibility that the market enjoys with the cloud will be expanded to their networks using Optus Cloud-N. In traditional static networks, if a customer needed additional bandwidth, it would take two weeks to do it. With Optus Cloud-N, it’s a few seconds to log-on, a few seconds to provision. What this means for our clients is that our solution may reduce their cost of sale, reduce overhead, reduce service time to the customer and access revenue faster, ” says Optus Wholesale’s Head of Marketing and Strategy, John Castro.

Based on the Open Network foundation definition of SDN “the control and data planes are decoupled, network intelligence and state are logically centralised, and the underlying network infrastructure is abstracted from the applications”. By utilising SDN technology, Optus is able to gain unprecedented control and automation to develop solutions with higher level of flexibility compared to services using traditional network design.

So if we sound like excited kids on our first day of camp, it’s because we are that pumped about the Optus Cloud-N solution. The Optus Cloud-N solution offers enormous flexibility to our clients. It provides Layer 2 Carrier Ethernet bandwidth on-demand, the ability to take up multiple grades of service and the option to change the grade of service mix throughout the day.

“Optus Cloud-N provides private connectivity and has strict performance targets that we give to clients, making it more secure, with more uptime, and greater reliability of supply – particularly when using high-traffic voice and video applications,” says Castro.

For Optus Wholesalers customers targeting Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), large corporates and Government clients Optus Cloud-N adds significant value. Particularly for clients who on-sell or require flexible solutions to connect private and public cloud services as well as hybrid cloud environments. Optus Cloud-N is particularly attractive for public and private sector clients with strict privacy protocols to protect sensitive data.

It’s pay-as-you-go, it has a future scheduling capability to increase or decrease data loads, and is packaged in a very intuitive self-service portal. It is available as a white label product, whereby Optus Wholesale customers can brand the services as their own. If bandwidth changes are required, there is no interruption to service, regardless of scale.

“By creating an even more flexible technology platform, we believe that with the surge in cloud adoption our solution is well placed to help our customers be more agile in the evolving Anything-as-a-Service landscape. This means that our clients can get on with doing what they do best – delivering value for themselves and their end-consumers,” says Castro.

Part of Optus’ commitment for relentless improvement, means the launch of the Optus Cloud-N solution today is just part one of a bigger story. Optus Wholesale now offers Optus Cloud-N between Equinix Sydney and Melbourne and plans to extend this to other leading public cloud major data centres. Watch this space for further enhancement announcement to Optus Cloud-N in the near future.

“Smarter innovative network solutions are part of the Optus Wholesale strategy. The Optus Cloud-N solution is this promise, made real,” says Castro.

References:

IDC: Enable Your Network and Data Centre for Digital Transformation: Five Considerations to Build a Future-Proof Platform. August 2015

Open Networking Foundation, www.opennetworking.org