Here are two key use cases that demonstrate how Ciena and Atos’ technology and partnership delivers no-risk network transformation in practice, and the potential benefits. 

Use case 1: Layer 3 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

The near-ubiquitous adoption of cloud services means that the Virtual Private Network (VPN) market is now worth an estimated $30 billion. After all, services in the cloud depend on fast, reliable secure connections between cloud data centers and customer sites, making VPNs the order of the day. 

But creating VPN connections for customers at layer 3 requires operators to integrate multi-vendor network components and domains, and to provision resources and configure network components manually. This can result in reduced business agility, long service lead times, slow time to revenue, costly turn-up errors, increased customer churn – and the list goes on. 

Transforming VPN delivery with Atos and Ciena

The good news is that transformative network solutions from Atos and Ciena address these traditional technology and business challenges, streamlining layer 3 VPN turn-up across multi-vendor and multi-regional networks. We achieve this with pre-integrated, best-of-breed network infrastructure and OSS components – including an order management system and inventory database that maintains inter-domain path connectivity. 

Critically, the Atos ecosystem, with Ciena Blue Planet, allows operators to quickly order, modify or delete services for customers, and automate resource provisioning and service configuration. With complete integration into the OSS, customers can even provision services themselves using a self-service portal, making the process an entirely zero-touch experience for Ops teams. 

With network virtualization, orchestration and automated provisioning, new customer connections can be deployed in hours, rather than weeks or months. The results are greatly reduced staffing costs, faster time to revenues, and improvements to the bottom line. 

Use case 2: Virtualized Managed Services

By allowing operators to retire costly proprietary network elements and adopt lower-cost, standardized infrastructure, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is changing the way managed services are created and delivered. No longer is inflexible infrastructure a barrier to time to market. With NFV firmly on every operator’s transformation agenda, the value of the global market for virtualized network functions is expected to top $15 billion by 2020. 

While the cost and efficiency benefits of NFV are well known in theory, though, many virtualization projects experience long lead times and high costs, with only a very limited portfolio of Virtualized Managed Services attempted. In most cases, the culprits are high-touch delivery, serialized service provisioning processes, manual chaining of VNFs and connectivity, and errors resulting from manual provisioning and turn-up processes. 

Transforming Virtualized Managed Services delivery with Atos and Ciena

Once again, Atos and Ciena virtualization and automation solutions allow operators to overcome these typical challenges and bring VNFs into operation much more quickly and cost effectively. The Atos NFV partnership with Ciena Blue Planet seamlessly integrates best-of-breed virtualization components, for example, OpenStack and VMWare VIM platforms, and VMware virtualization software, OpenContrail SDN Controller, and industry leading VNFs such as Fortinet Firewall. The Atos and Ciena solution reduces risk and complexity by providing a known, tested best-of-breed solution to ensure everything works together seamlessly, the Ciena Blue Planet software platform provides intelligent network orchestration and process automation, across multi-vendor components, from end-to-end. 

Once again, northbound integration with OSS components is critical for fast and simple turn up of Virtualized Managed Services, which depend on multiple physical and virtualized network components. OSS systems can also be integrated with a self-service portal to empower end-customers to provision and scale services for themselves in near-real time. 

Future proof your network with Atos and Ciena

As well as transforming the infrastructure and processes to deliver key customer-facing services, Atos and Ciena can also help future proof your network long-term. 

“To support operators’ transformation agendas without the risk of downtime or disruption, Atos and Ciena provide a fast, risk-free route to transformation based on Atos’s best-of-breed NFV partnership of physical and virtual network components, IT and networking know-how, and sophisticated network orchestration capabilities.” - Rafael Luis Lopez, vice president of global solutions, TMT, Atos

“To support operators’ transformation agendas without the risk of downtime or disruption, Atos and Ciena provide a fast, risk-free route to transformation based on Atos’s best-of-breed NFV partnership of physical and virtual network components, IT and networking know-how, and sophisticated network orchestration capabilities,” explains Rafael Luis Lopez, vice president of global solutions, TMT, Atos. 

The analytics capabilities of Atos Codex and Ciena’s Blue Planet platform give crystal-clear visibility of physical and virtualized network components, how they are performing, and when additional resources will be required to remain compliant with service SLAs. In this way, Atos and Ciena enable better, and more informed capacity planning decisions, stay ahead of the bandwidth demand curve, and deliver the best QoS for end-customers. 

What to learn more? Come visit us at Mobile World Congress or read more here.

Read about the value of the Atos and Ciena partnership, skillsets, and technology stack for operators here.