Verizon joins hands with Ericsson over virtual network services

Verizon has selected Ericsson to provide enabling technologies for Verizon Virtualized Managed Network Services offerings that will be rolled out globally. The offerings give enterprises flexibility to dynamically combine virtualized features from a catalog of offerings, such as security packages, WAN optimization and data center load balancing.

Shawn Hakl, Vice-President, Networking and Security Solutions, Verizon, says, “This work extends Verizon’s longstanding relationship with Ericsson and builds on the successful launch of our mobile offering that leverages Ericsson’s cloud orchestration solution to provide VPN capabilities from mobile devices. We will now apply Ericsson’s innovative cloud-enabling software and consulting services to provide a wide range of secure virtual networking services to our enterprise customers.”

Ericsson is providing end-to-end dynamic orchestration, closed-loop service assurance and virtual network function (VNF) onboarding and testing. The solution is based on Ericsson’s orchestration solution in conjunction with consulting and systems integration services. Ericsson Cloud Manager, including model-driven configuration management, and Ericsson Order Care provide the orchestration engine, while the VNF Factory enables efficient onboarding and validation of VNFs into Verizon’s ecosystem, substantially reducing cost and time-to-market for new services.

These services have been launched across industries that include healthcare, finance, retail, government, transportation and energy. Verizon is one of the largest operators in the world, working with 99% of the Fortune 1,000 companies.

As part of Verizon’s Managed SD WAN and Host Network Service offerings, Ericsson’s solution enables Verizon to holistically govern, manage and orchestrate hybrid networks in real time, turning legacy networks into elastic infrastructures that are lightweight, programmable and infinitely adaptable.  Verizon will also leverage Ericsson solutions and services to stimulate a partner ecosystem in which third parties provide VNFs that can be tested and onboarded to Verizon’s VNF catalog for bundling by Verizon and selection by enterprises. The introduction of additional virtual functions from other partners in the Verizon SDN ecosystem will allow enterprises to deliver user experiences that are better optimized, more secure and with greater resiliency. Self-service ordering and configuration, end-to-end automation, and flexible payment models will support efficient service delivery.

Jean-Philippe Poirault, Head of Business Unit IT & Cloud Services, Ericsson, adds, “Our latest work together in NFV Orchestration ensures that Verizon will gain a competitive jump-start based on flexibility, speed and scale for proactively meeting the needs of enterprise customers worldwide.”