Fierce Telecom reports on Cincinnati Bell Business‘ (CBB) new SD-WAN play—Network as a Service (NaaS). ATC is fully briefed on this product and excited about its potential as a lower cost alternative to MPLS.
Here are the highlights on what Fierce Telecom has to say:
- CBB is hoping to make businesses’ migration to the cloud a snap with their new NaaS product, a fully managed solution that bundles integrated SD-WAN capabilities to connect multiple, remote business locations.
- NaaS enables customers to leverage CBB to deliver a fully managed network.
- The service provider will bundle various functions, including cloud integration, security, switching, Wi-Fi, management, monitoring and SD-WAN. Customers pay a single, predictable monthly price for equipment and support.
- The NaaS offering is based on Cisco’s Meraki technology and is designed for both SMB and midmarket companies with 1-1,000 employees. It can also accommodate enterprise organizations with over 1,000 employees.
- At a later date, CBB will introduce a complementary product set that allows businesses to purchase NaaS integrated with SD-WAN or purchase either of them individually.
- What’s compelling for CBB and its business customers is that it requires a low capital requirement because it can run over any broadband connection, whether that connection is provided itself or through a cable competitor. A growing multi-site customer can quickly add new locations to their network without the expense incurred by expensive MPLS solutions.
- CBB can deliver the SD-WAN offer as an over the top option that can be offered in any location.
- Customers that are purchasing the SD-WAN and NaaS offerings today are bringing their own broadband connections, but CBB is considering a strategy to aggregate broadband services. CBB is providing the necessary management and monitoring capabilities to ensure the connections work properly.
- While the initial attraction for NaaS and SD-WAN will be with small businesses, the service provider foresees potential interest from large companies that have retail locations.
- Like other SD-WAN and NaaS players, CBB is also seeing interest from large companies that have multiple retail locations.
- CBB is seeing a need for retail establishments that reside in strip malls and larger malls where there’s no presence of fiber requiring these services.
Read the full article here.
