Optus Business has announced its first software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) offering, powered by Riverbed.
Optus Fusion SD-WAN is supported by Riverbed’s Steel Connect platform and provides organisations with improved network management capabilities by monitoring the health of every network path reinforced with application awareness capabilities.
It provides insights on how a network is performing and where bandwidth is being used.
These insights allow businesses to improve and prioritise data flow between branches, as well as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure cloud environments, to immediately address business needs.
Optus claims its solution is “one of the first SD-WAN solutions in Australia that can be deployed as an ‘over-the-top’ managed service across any business network – regardless of provider or connection”.
“Business is moving at an unprecedented pace and, in an effort to remain relevant, organisations have deployed technologies from multiple providers," Optus Business director, Enzo Cocotti, said.
"To ensure the long-term success and ROI of these strategies, Optus Fusion SD-WAN allows businesses to independently manage their networks in real-time, while also gaining the ability to instantly connect to the cloud."
In May 2016, Telstra added a SD-WAN service supported by Cisco’s Intelligent WAN (IWAN) technology. Telstra’s SD-WAN allows traffic to be routed based on the application profile over multiple networks including private MPLS and the public internet.
Most recently, Telstra established a strategic partnership with US-based VeloCloud, which saw Telstra Ventures invest in VeloCloud at its last funding round.
Telstra announced at the time that the first step would be to offer VeloCloud technology to customers in mainland China.
“This investment is consistent with Telstra’s overall network strategy, with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) increasingly playing a role in offering greater network flexibility and agility for our enterprise customers,” Telstra Ventures managing director, Mark Sherman, said in a blog post.
“We expect SDN will continue to transform enterprise networking around the world and VeloCloud SD-WAN can help companies achieve more agile and responsive networks, as well as reduce costs,” Sherman added.
In June, NTT Communications ICT Solutions (NTT ICT) rolled out its SD-WAN service for fashion and homewares boutique, Blue Illusion. This was the first time the company’s SD-WAN was deployed in Australia.
Blue Illusion adopted SD-WAN to deploy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) across its 127 stores globally, including Australia, for greater communication through higher speeds and network redundancy.
