Windstream has introduced its SDNow (Software Defined Network Orchestrated Waves) for wholesale content and service provider customers, marking the next stage in the company’s SDN migration evolution.
Leveraging the company’s ongoing SDN deployment strategy, SDNow introduces optical wave services based on multi-vendor service orchestration and automated provisioning across the Windstream long-haul core network.
Initially available at five major third-party carrier neutral data centers in Chicago, Dallas, Ashburn, Miami and Atlanta, Windstream plans to expand SDNow to 50 additional locations this summer.
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Hyperscale web content and application companies in need of high capacity long-haul transport services can use Windstream Wholesale’s SDNow solutions to accommodate their growing bandwidth needs, leveraging quick access to cloud resources.
Mike Shippey, president of Windstream Wholesale, said in a release that SDNow will enable content and carrier customers to automate service requests.
“Consumers of SDN-provisioned services will see improvement in their customer experience through the removal of human touch-points in the service fulfillment process, and improved accuracy through automated standard configurations,” Shippey said.
Using a DevOps-style approach to automation development, Windstream can abstract the complexity of service delivery and offer a simplified view of the multi-vendor optical layer, according to the statement.
Windstream Wholesale plans to introduce additional services in 2017, integrating additional third-party SDN controllers and enabling true intent-based service orchestration across many layers of the Windstream network.
Although the SDNow offering is new, Windstream set the pace for its SDN plans last year when it employed Ciena’s Blue Planet to automate how it delivers wavelength services across its multi-vendor optical network.