NTT Leverages Virtela to Take NFV Global

In a move that will likely shake things up among global telecommunications operators, the Japanese giant NTT has unveiled a commercial NFV product set globally. NFV, or network functions virtualization, is one of this year’s big buzzwords… or buzz-acronyms I guess. But its actual arrival beyond the testing or trial stage was supposed to be a while off yet.

Basically, they will be offering enterprises the ability to take all their firewalls, SSL and IPSEC tunnels, and other boxes that would normally be deployed at each branch office, put it in the cloud, and enjoy instant activation, and on-demand pricing. That’s not a big revelation in and of itself, as it has been the whole idea behind NFV. The key is that NTT has it ready for prime time now when most seem to be at a testing stage. They could get a strong headstart if it proves up to the task of real world enterprise networks.

NTT’s NFV capabilities are built off of Virtela’s managed/cloud networking capabilities. NTT bought Virtela along with RagingWire last autumn, and they certainly seem to have hit the ground running with it.

Virtela and RagingWire were not the only purchases NTT has made along the way as it builds its nextgen SDN-powered global infrastructure. I doubt they are done, and I speculated last week that NTT could be a bidder for an asset like Rackspace in competition to the usual suspects folks mention.

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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · SDN