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Telstra strides into enterprise SDN with VPNs, dynamic WANs

It's the Big T's usual play: own the network, build services, insist integration delivers a better experience

Australia's dominant carrier Telstra has sniffed the software-defined winds and decided to label some services as software-defined networking (SDN), with Cisco's help.

There's nothing startling about the carrier's initial three services, the first of which is a vanilla virtual private network that can connect physical locations and devices securely. Telstra has built a portal so you can whip up VPNs rather more quickly than was previously possible, if you have the right customer premises equipment in place. A couple of years ago that portal might have been called “customer self-service”. Now it's software-defined networking and it will apparently energise a small-to-medium business. Go figure.

The second offering is a little more ambitious, comprising an on-demand cloud firewall that Telstra says articulates the beginnings of a network function virtualisation (NFV) play. There's a bit more of SDN's and NFV's potential on display here, as it will initially be possible to summon a Cisco ASA Firewall but Telstra is already saying it will add a Palo Alto Networks firewall to its range.

The third play, due later this year, is the most interesting as it will deliver elastic WAN on demand to connect users own bit barns and Telstra's sheds around the region. The Register asked Telstra how that's different to Megaport's services or Equinix's data centre interconnects and was told that's a question it gets asked a lot. The answer? Telstra owns the network, even the submarine cable, so feels it can can do quality of service at more sophisticated levels than its rivals.

Telstra has connected ten Australian points of presence to 25 in Asia. One will soon be able to buy layer 2 ethernet connections between them all, from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps. Different quality of service settings will be yours for the taking, depending on the depth of your pockets.

There's not a lot in the announcement that appears to be bleeding edge: VPNs and firewalls as-a-service are standard fare. Elastic WANs and data centre interconnects are new but Telstra's not forging a path here. The carrier is, however articulating a strategy for its recent Pacnet acquisition that shows it understands the needs of enterprises considering regional cloud adoption. And it can now say it does SDN and NFV. And in 2016, what self-respecting carrier would not want to be able to say that? ®

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