New NTT Com SD-WAN Platform Stems from Virtela Acquisition

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NTT Communications is rolling out a software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) platform that partners can resell.

The NTT subsidiary on Tuesday introduced its SD-WAN Service Portfolio, which the company calls the “first fully software-defined network.” NTT says its architecture distributes the platform using more than 75 local cloud centers to reach more than 190 countries.

Michael Suby, Frost & Sullivan’s Stratecast vice president of research, says the new offering has the performance and adaptability needed to help businesses “transform their networks.”

“NTT Com is raising the bar in the telecom industry by reaching a global, 100 percent software-defined network milestone and in offering a ubiquitous overlay of SD-WAN network, application acceleration, and security services for enterprises around the globe,” Suby said.

Virtela’s Ron Haigh

The main technology for the platform comes from Virtela, which NTT acquired in 2014 to be its global enterprise network business unit. Virtela President Ron Haigh tells Channel Partners that Virtela’s SD-WAN capabilities were a long time in the making.

“One of the reasons NTT acquired us was for the software-defined networking technology that we had been developing for about 10 years prior to the acquisition, and together we’ve been working together as one team to accelerate the development of our software-defined networking capabilities,” he said.

Main elements of the Service Portfolio are real-time analytics, cloud connectivity and a secure Internet gateway. Other features include customer premises equipment flexibility, local ISP selection and routing, application acceleration and customer support.

Haigh says flexibility is a major differentiator for the solution, as it supports “an array of SD-WAN technology vendors.”

“The fact that we can deliver these SD-WAN services like security services, application acceleration services from within our core network – within our SD-WAN cloud, if you will – or we can deliver them on the customer edge or any combination of those two … I don’t think anybody else really has that capability,” he said.

Additional NTT Group subsidiaries – NTT Data and Dimension Data – will also offer the service.

“CIOs are increasing interested in software-defined networking technology. NTT Data is a frontrunner in offering innovative solutions and is looking forward to helping clients take advantage of NTT’s SD-WAN Service Portfolio,” says Marv Mouchawar, NTT Data’s president of strategic business units.