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Lumen Lede

Solving a business dilemma through virtualized services
October 21, 2020

Lumen rolls out Adaptive Network Services for an on-demand customer experience

 

There’s a business dilemma taking place across the country. Data-hungry applications, smart technologies and the Internet of Things are on the rise, with businesses scrambling to quickly respond to the demand and stay competitive. This is the challenge of the 4th Industrial Revolution – a time of emerging technologies.

According to a June 2020 Quadrant Strategies survey*, more than 90% of businesses believe that the ability to quickly acquire, analyze, and act on data will be a key factor in determining whether they will be a technology leader in the future.

In addition to the need to stay ahead of the curve and be competitive, businesses are growing. They are adding new locations and creating networks between them, and these locations are often crowded with multiple hardware devices for separate network functions and IT applications. Numerous hardware devices increase operational costs and complexity. What’s a business to do?

The Lumen Solution

SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) are two small abbreviations, but two very big technologies. SDN and NFV enable the transformation of business networks from static, inflexible architectures, to systems that are agile, flexible and run by software. These virtualized network services are key to business success, and Lumen is delivering them through its new Adaptive Virtual Services (AVS) platform. AVS helps businesses achieve that virtualization by providing a universal and on-demand experience across business premises, networks and the cloud. 

You can learn more about the Lumen virtual services platform here: Lumen® Adaptive Virtual Services Overview

How Lumen AVS Simplifies Business Operations

With AVS, businesses can reduce the amount of equipment they use. This leads to lower hardware costs, fewer moving parts and fewer maintenance requirements for IT teams. Here’s what else the Lumen AVS platform does: 

  • It allows businesses to future proof their networks. They can quickly adapt to the ebb and flow of business needs and market demand by using on-demand virtual network services (VNS) to easily turn their network services up or down.
  • It empowers digital business by providing a software-defined networking experience that adapts to business demands and offers greater agility, efficiency and control.

Once the Lumen universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE) is in place, businesses can deploy virtual network functions (VNFs) remotely through automation. This enables reduced turn-up time from several days (with traditional hardware) to just minutes and gives businesses the freedom to add a Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), security, routing and other services – all deployed as software – when ready.

“Today's business and IT leaders are turning to technology to drive growth, resiliency and innovation for their organizations, and they’re being asked to absorb this with little to no additional budget or resources,” said Matt Holway, Lumen director of adaptive virtual networking and analytics. “To accomplish this, the network must be agile to support moves, adds and changes with little or no IT intervention required. Adaptive Virtual Services simplifies the IT environment and improves agility to quickly adapt to business demands with a software-defined experience. This is what we mean when we say Lumen’s purpose is to further human progress through technology.”


 

 

 

“Lumen already has nearly a decade of operating experience with commercial NFV services. Adaptive Virtual Services now extend that NFV expertise from the network and cloud to enterprise sites and data centers. Lumen took important learnings from NFV to make Adaptive Virtual Services cost-efficient and open to hosting third-party software, both aspects that are key to enterprises.” 

Brian Washburn, Research Director, Service Provider Enterprise & Wholesale, Omdia

   

 

 

The capabilities within Lumen’s Adaptive Virtualization Services portfolio are strongly differentiated by its built-in Cloud Applications Manager (CAM). This provides customers with flexibility for deploying uCPE applications, and agility for delivering VNFs efficiently when and where they are needed, It also mitigates the DIY complexity of managing multiple vendors, and offers zero-touch provisioning capabilities that are mission-critical during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Rajesh Ghai, Research Director, Carrier Network Infrastructure, IDC

   

 

“Lumen’s Adaptive Virtual Services portfolio deployment is very timely, as NFV-based services are gaining traction with customers over a single, VNF-specific appliance approach. The Adaptive Virtual Services enable IT managers to meet their diverse requirements for networking and security more effectively as they deal with the increasing pressure of shrinking budgets. Lumen’s managed, hosted OS orchestration capability is unique to the company with no other provider offering that capability today.”

Roopa Honnachari, Industry Director, Business Communication Services & Cloud Computing, Frost & Sullivan

 

*Lumen, Global Trend Report: How the 4th Industrial Revolution is Changing IT, Business and the World, June 2020