CHICAGO – Monday, April 22 – Nitel, a leading nationwide next-generation technology services provider, today announced that it is expanding its SD-WAN offerings to include Cisco Secure SD-WAN managed service. The new service offering leverages the Nitel Connect SD-WAN platform to more efficiently route select traffic and improve the predictability of the network’s middle mile.
The integration of Cisco Secure SD-WAN technology augments Nitel’s already-robust multi-platform SD-WAN strategy. The new offering gives Nitel partners an industry-leading solution with several key advantages:
- Powerful VPN segmentation for secure IoT and guest network use-cases
- Intelligent pathing to multiple cloud access points
- Holistic “single pane-of-glass” management environment with deep analytics
- Compatibility with millions of Cisco ISR and ASR series routers
Cisco was positioned in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure for its SD-WAN offering.*
“Cisco SD-WAN and the Nitel network provide businesses with the valuable combination of private-network reliability, cloud optimization, and integrated security,” said Gordon Thomson, vice president, Global Enterprise Networking Sales at Cisco. “As a managed service, this offering will deliver cost-effectiveness and application performance by monitoring, maintaining, and managing the network continuously. It makes embracing a hybrid multi-cloud WAN strategy extremely simple.”
Nitel SD-WAN customers will be able to take advantage of the Nitel Connect SD-WAN Platform for select internet traffic. As a private nationwide backbone, the platform will:
- Eliminate middle-mile inconsistencies of sending traffic over the public internet
- Enable direct connection to leading UCaaS and cloud providers via Nitel peering and fabric interconnections
- Allow for virtualization of firewalls and other network functions
According to Nitel’s VP of product, Todd Miller, “The Nitel Connect SD-WAN Platform is a key component of our vision for SD-WAN moving forward. It will enable customers to bring together all network functions – from routing and optimization to security and connection to cloud partners – under a single platform,” He continued, “The platform solves significant performance issues found in internet-only SD-WAN deployments. Enabling the flow of traffic over our network will allow us to create predictability within the middle mile, ensuring performance, reliability and security.”
*Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure, Joe Skorupa, Andrew Lerner, Christian Canales, Mike Toussaint, 18 October 2018.
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