Telstra has enhanced its global SDN platform the Telstra PEN Platform with the launch of PEN Exchange and PEN Marketplace.
Jim Clarke, Telstra’s head of international products and pricing, said the two new enhancements were designed to satisfy customers’ needs for secure, high bandwidth on-demand, and built on the expansion of the Telstra PEN Platform to the optical layer across 26 PEN points of presence worldwide in 2015.
“The launch of our new PEN Exchange is the natural next step in our SDN strategy and means we now have the unique capability to dynamically connect network circuits between PEN Exchange customers, linking different people and business sites easily and cost effectively.
PEN Exchange enables organizations to identify and connect their network circuits on-demand with other PEN customers, driving faster, easier and more secure digital partnerships. “With provisioning time measured in minutes rather than months, PEN Exchange customers can also use a new application programming interface, which triggers additional capacity depending on their changing bandwidth needs,” explained Clarke.
PEN Marketplace is an online portal designed to make it quick and easy for customers to order virtual network functions, including firewalls and routers, in real-time from different vendors and for different business needs. Customers can manage their applications virtually across multiple countries simultaneously.
“Being able to order virtual applications based on specific business requirements at specific times, means customers can also avoid overprovisioning and consequently, unnecessary costs,” he added.
Clarke said the additions expands the company’s capability to meet the choice and flexibility its customers require to meet bandwidth hungry applications fueled by distributed computing, big data and mobility.
Gartner predicted that by end of 2016, more than 10,000 enterprises worldwide will have deployed SDN in their networks, a tenfold increase from end-of-year 2014.