On Thursday, VeloCloud Networks announced it had struck a deal with communications provider MetTel to deliver SD-WAN capabilities over the cloud into MetTel’s SD-WAN and MPLS services.
New York-based MetTel provides managed communications services to enterprise customers by converging all of its communications offerings, which include voice, data, wireless, and cloud services nationwide, over its proprietary network.
The goal of SD-WAN, or hybrid WAN, services is to cut down on the use of the more expensive MPLS services by providing a choice between public Internet or private MPLS circuits based on an enterprise’s need at the time. For instance, critical corporate documents can be sent via the private MPLS while less sensitive content can be routed over the public Internet. MetTel’s SD-WAN offering augments customers’ MPLS networks by using either cable operator or DSL broadband circuits.
Using cloud delivery, MetTel employs VeloCloud’s gateways to securely enable tunnels across MetTel’s MPLS network from a customer-premises device. By using VeloCloud’s Dynamic Multi-Path Optimization feature, MetTel can offer tailored services for enterprise and cloud applications, network impairment remediation, and sub-second brownout and blackout protection for real time applications.
Additionally, MetTel is using VeloCloud’s multi-tenant orchestrator so its customers can implement policy-based automation and virtualized services provisioning.
“This is a SDN-based solution and is moving quickly toward NFV,” says Gary Gluzman, MetTel’s executive director of product development. “The orchestrator manages the WAN routing, quality-of-service, and VPNs from the cloud.”
Gluzman says his company’s deployment is unique because it deploys VeloCloud’s gateways at the edge of its private backbone, and uses the SD-WAN technology as another enabler into large private multiservice networks.
With MetTel’s managed SD-WAN and bonded Internet platform, the two companies say they can simplify deployments and reduce costs by delivering only the amount of bandwidth that is needed by each end customer.
SD-WAN deployments have been ramping of late, including Cisco’s deployment last month with Verizon.