Cincinnati Bell’s CBTS wins NaaS deal with Major League Baseball's Reds

Cincinnati Bell’s enterprise division CBTS is extending its Network as a Service (NaaS) solution to the Cincinnati Reds, furthering the telco's SD-WAN vision.

By adopting CBTS’ NaaS service, Cincinnati Reds front office executives and scouts are able to watch players and prospects in real time at any one of the team’s seven locations across the United States.

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CBTS’ NaaS solution, which is built on Cisco Meraki technology, allows the Reds to create pop-up networks at each of the team’s minor league facilities and spring training facility, accessible through Meraki’s Auto Virtual Private Network technology.

“MLB is an extremely competitive landscape, and leveraging NaaS technology from CBTS will give the Reds an important edge as we work to develop top talent and scout across our organization,” said Brian Keys, vice president of technology for the Cincinnati Reds.

Using the Cisco Meraki platform allows Reds officials to access the network and evaluate minor league players through a live video feed. Before adopting CBTS’ solution, Reds scouts had to wait for videos of those players to be transmitted digitally, which is a time-consuming and expensive process.

CBTS sourced the necessary internet connectivity at each Reds location from its network partners and deployed the solution. The division provides 24/7/365 monitoring and management of the network.

With its NaaS offering, CBTS 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.