Rafael Francis discusses how Ciena has enhanced its Enterprise Edge solutions to help customers stay ahead of the shifting landscape to cloud-driven operations.

The enterprise wide-area network (WAN) has been business-critical for decades, and for the most part, the architecture hasn’t changed dramatically – until recently.

Traffic patterns have moved away from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Enterprises are even more dependent on internet connectivity. And over the past few years, an increasing number of users have been working away from corporate sites to home and remote locations. Enterprises have come a long way, and so have we.

At Ciena, a lot has happened since we announced our agreement to acquire Vyatta technology. We’ve been on the road, meeting with enterprise and Managed Service Provider (MSP) customers to best understand how we can help them stay ahead of this evolving landscape.

As a result, we’ve significantly expanded our Enterprise Edge solutions and partner-enabled capabilities – from the branch to the cloud!

Here’s what you need to know.

Expanding “internet” horizons

As internet connectivity continues to take center stage in the WAN, we have added fiber-based and fixed wireless internet capabilities to our Vyatta Service Edge portfolio.

Our new application-aware connectivity further augments WAN designs with dynamic path selection across multiple diverse links at a site, including public internet, private, and fixed wireless. This provides cost-effective connectivity that meets a wide range of enterprise performance needs, while reducing operational costs.

For MSPs, Direct Internet Access (DIA) is the workhorse of enterprise internet connectivity, and the global market is growing! However, with each connection being sold for less than the previous generation, the monthly recurring charge to enterprises is declining. As this market matures, there’s a growing demand to differentiate internet services to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Our software-defined edge solution has been at the center of many of these projects and as a result, we’ve gained a greater understanding of what MSPs need to be successful.

We have fine-tuned the cost-performance levers of our solution to redefine mainstream internet connectivity offerings, such as DIA, making it a higher-value service leveraging carefully selected application-aware capabilities. It's not just cost-efficient, the solution is also optimized to provide high-performance connectivity to the cloud securely.

But, cost-performance optimization is not the only benefit of our approach.

What’s more, it also makes lifecycle management for enterprises easier, seeing as sites can switch from one configuration to another and match changing needs rather than adopting a ‘rip and replace’ approach. For enterprises, such as retailers, with more uniform configurations across a wider spectrum of sites, the same configurations can be replicated and subsequently changed based on their needs.

Ultimately, by leveraging a proven telco-grade software architecture, enterprise customers have the flexibility to easily incorporate software-defined, policy-based networking components to their operations through a centralized customer portal.

So, what else have we done at the enterprise edge?

Vyatta is cloud marketplace ready

Ciena has solidified its presence by making Vyatta Network Operating System (NOS) available in the Azure cloud marketplace, with more cloud marketplaces on the way. This move not only signifies a strategic shift but also unlocks the potential to enhance the efficiency of our customers’ cloud spending through private offers.

You’ll hear much about that from me in the very near future.

We’ve significantly expanded our Enterprise Edge solutions and partner-enabled capabilities – from the branch to the cloud

Security in a cloud world

As enterprises move further down this internet-based and cloud transformation road, we have enhanced our partner-enabled Security Service Edge (SSE) capabilities to better position enterprises to take advantage of work-from-anywhere and cloud-based cybersecurity use cases.

Enterprise Edge: from vision to value

Ultimately, there are no cookie-cutter approaches that make designing a WAN and cloud for your enterprise easy; it’s more like having your suit tailored versus buying one off the rack.

Ciena’s strengths lie in our business services leadership, a strong software-defined edge position, strategic alliances, and our ability to integrate the right blend of solutions to deliver business value. Our technical expertise simplifies the user experience, ensuring our customers' success.