NTT Launches Globally Available SD-WAN Services Portfolio Tapping Connectivity From More Than 1,000 ISPs

NTT Communications has unveiled its SD-WAN service portfolio, giving partners and enterprise customers access to technology from 10 of the leading SD-WAN providers on the market today, according to NTT.

The massive SD-WAN portfolio covers more than 190 countries, tapping the networks of NTT's 1,000 plus global and regional service provider partners. The overlay SD-WAN service will run on NTT's 100 percent global software-defined network, the Tokyo-based ICT provider said.

Solution provider partners that design network architectures for the clients today will be well suited to sell NTT's SD-WAN Service Portfolio and will have immediate access to the solution set, Ron Haigh, President of Virtela, NTT Communications' global enterprise network business unit, told CRN.

[Related: NTT Communications To Solution Providers: We're Open For Business]

NTT declined to name the SD-WAN providers it is partnering with today but said it was working with 10 "established leaders and emerging providers," according to Haigh. NTT is also using software defined networking (SDN) technology from its 2014 acquisition of SDN services provider Virtela .

The new SD-WAN services work in conjunction with NTT's ISP partners, of which the provider has more than 1,000 global relationships, giving global and regional enterprises "any flavor of connectivity" they need at their branch offices in a fully redundant fashion – making for an especially unique offering, Haigh said.

"Our services portfolio gives customers a lot of flexibility in a lot of dimensions, including the different types of connectivity that customers can take advantage of to connect their branch offices to their global network," he said. "It's really game-changing."

NTT also said that businesses can bring their own network to the solution, which NTT can manage on behalf of the customer or channel partner.

"We can fully integrate any existing network connectivity that the customer already has," he said. "There's so many different kinds of connectivity that customers want to be able to use … and they won't have to manage hundreds of different connections to ISPs around the world."

NTT's SD-WAN platform is distributed around the world through more than 75 local cloud centers close to customer branch offices. These data centers are optimized for network, mobility, and security services, and can help businesses scale out their networks, Haigh said.

The SD-WAN platform also can deliver services from customer premises equipment located at their branch offices, according to NTT.

NTT SD-WAN services will give partners, and end customers access to NTT's homegrown streaming network analytics in real-time for better insight into application performance and network security than they have had before, Haigh said.

"This gives enterprises visibility into not only how the network is behaving, but how applications [are] performing and how that impacts the end user experience," Haigh said. "it's a very rich reporting tool that allows [enterprises and partners] drill into any issues."

Using NTT's SD-WAN services set coupled with its SDN-injected network will allow business customers and channel partners to quickly turn up SD-WAN services where and when they are needed via an online portal.

"That's just another capability we are offering,' Haigh said. "More control over a business' network environment, letting them utilize their network resources more efficiently, and allowing them to transform their network to meet their changing connectivity needs."