Comcast CMCSA 40,20 -0,01 -0,02% is embarking on an SD-WAN journey using Versa Networks to provide for their enterprise customers. They announced their SD-WAN beta for mid-market and enterprise customers at Interop ITX.
“Our SD-WAN solution pairs a carrier-grade, hosted SDN environment with widely available gigabit service. Together, our SD-WAN and gigabit bandwidth solutions herald a new generation of networking that provides the bandwidth, scalability, reliability and flexibility needed to power the cloud applications that are transforming business operations.” – Kevin O’Toole, SVP of Product Management, Comcast Business.
This uses their cable network infrastructure, but wraps it as a Business Internet 1000 service, using DOCSIS 3.1 modems. This is very much a network process simplification play. The Comcast internet cloud provides a single network over which to run the site-to-site VPN connections. Cloud applications connect directly using that same link, but breaking out via their peering points. These have direct peering with a number of providers such as Microsoft, as well as the consumer Netflix and Twitch.
The trial will run during the summer, with a full product launch towards the end of the year. If you’ve got offices in the Comcast service area, and are looking at SD-WAN, then perhaps this is one route you may want to choose.
Thanks to LightReading for the heads up via Comcast Woos the Enterprise with SD-WAN.