Int’l Bytes: Sparkle, GCX, Ericsson, Fortinet

Some network expansions and contract wins from around the international network scene that are worth a look:

Sparkle has expanded its network reach back on its home turf. The international arm of TIM Group has added a new point of presence in Rome, Italy. The new PoP is located at Tecnopolo Tiburtino in the eastern part of the city, and complements Sparkle’s other three locations in the metro area. Sparkle has been steadily building out more network depth worldwide.

Global Cloud Xchange has won a contract renewal with Société Générale de Surveillance. The new multi-year agreement will support SGS’s network transformation from a legacy design to one based on SD-WAN technology over the next few years. SGS’s network spans 1000 locations in 140 countries, so the upgrade will be a major undertaking leveraging a range of technologies and expertise.

Ericsson offered up some details about its efforts in the Chinese markets. Their contract wins with all three of the major providers in China has boosted their market share, however in the short term they expect those victories to come along with initial gross margin declines due to high initial costs. They will also be writing down some assets related to earlier versions of their gear in the time leading up to commercial deployment.

And Fortinet has won a significant SD-WAN deal down in New Zealand. Spark NZ is deploying the company’s Secure SD-WAN technology as part of an effort to improve application experience and enable network automation. The deployment covers some 2,500 locations around the country connecting both customers and its own retail locations. Spark is also leveraging Fortinet’s training and certification program to better empower its own employees.

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Categories: Internet Backbones · SDN · Wireless