NTT i3 teams with Dimension Data and Intel to deliver CloudWAN

NTT Innovation Institute (NTT i3), the Silicon Valley innovation centre for the NTT Group, and Internet Solutions (IS), a pan-African telecoms service provider to public and private sector organisations announced that they are collaborating with Intel for the delivery of CloudWAN.

CloudWAN is designed to enable the rapid responsiveness and efficiency required by enterprise customers as they expand operations worldwide, including their IT infrastructure. CloudWAN helps organisations to efficiently scale and evolve to address business changes across the technology stack, encompassing SD-WAN and NFV technology into a common environment designed to provide enhanced visibility and control across the entire network.

By combining NTT i3's CloudWAN SD-WAN controller and ecosystem with Intel's next-generation server chips on the new Purley platform, CloudWAN is intended to provide businesses with an efficient path to the flexible deployment and management of software at the edge of their network. With CloudWAN, Intel provides the silicon for the high performance boxes required for software defined networks.

CloudWAN's single console unifies the management of network infrastructure, function and applications, enabling IT departments to proactively plan for changing network requirements while also managing the existing infrastructure. In addition, enterprise cloud operators offering a range of enterprise applications from multiple vendors or cloud-native workloads are able to consolidate application silos into a common data infrastructure.

CloudWAN delivers capabilities including:

1. A unified virtual network for linking public and private clouds and bare metal infrastructure.

2. Management of infrastructure, network functions and applications from a single cloud-based console.

3. Extensible network functions enabled via software that interoperates with the core virtual network.

4. Integration of business applications and services from the cloud to the edge of the network.

5. A micro-service architecture for connected devices.

6.An ecosystem of network function providers that allow CloudWAN to be implemented in existing enterprise IT environments.

CloudWAN is also designed to enable cost-efficiency via reduced set-up and service costs and lower bandwidth expenses through the use of alternate transport networks, as well as simplified device management with network functions delivered as-a-service on a single appliance and simplified network monitoring, debugging and troubleshooting processes.