Nuage Networks, the Nokia venture focused on software-defined networks (SDN), is continuing its strong push in the software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) market thanks to recent contracts with several of the world's largest service providers including BT, China Telecom, Telefonica, and Telia. TELUS announced that it has joined forces with Nuage Networks to launch TELUS Network as a Service (NaaS), an innovative new SD-WAN solution that enables businesses to virtually build, manage and cloud-optimize their networks quickly, easily and cost effectively through a flexible self-serve platform.
Nuage Networks SD-WAN solution, Virtualized Network Services (VNS), is increasingly the choice of global carriers and enterprises looking to automate and optimize their WAN environments and IT processes. Nuage Networks SD-WAN reduces costs, increases business agility and provides the massive scalability needed to meet cloud-driven requirements and surging data-driven demand.
SD-WAN exploded onto the enterprise space just over a year ago, and has grown quickly due to the tangible returns gained by relying on software to automate IT, optimize network traffic, accelerate VPN deployments and reduce WAN overhead. According to market research firm IDC, by the end of 2017 about 70 percent of enterprise customers responding to a global survey said that they will have evaluated or deployed SD-WAN. In addition, over 40 percent of enterprise respondents to a recent IDC survey indicated that they plan to implement integrated SD-WAN solutions obtained from communications service providers. Overall, IDC estimates that the SD-WAN products and services market will be worth more than US$6 billion in 2020, up from about $575 million in 2016.
Deployments by carriers around the world of the Nuage Networks SD-WAN solution substantiate IDC's research. Customers are selecting the solution over competitive offerings because it can:
- Automate end-to-end enterprise service delivery between datacenters and branch offices while offering seamless connections to public cloud services.
- Enable more value-added services by deploying third-party Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) at enterprise branch locations on top of open, virtualized "branch-in-the box" platforms.
- Complement with a powerful network analytics and performance monitoring solution (Virtualized Service Assurance Platform, or VSAP) and software-defined security (Virtualized Security Services, or VSS) that provides industry-leading insight and remediation capabilities.
Service providers also cite Nuage Networks and Nokia's strong reputation, ability to offer global support and world-class integration services as key differentiators against competitors.