Consolidated Communications Goes Cross-Country With VMware's VeloCloud

Illinois-based operator Consolidated Communications is taking SD-WAN cross-country with supplier partner -- now part of VMWare -- deploying the new service to customers in its 24-state market.

Doug Abolt, vice president of commercial product management at Consolidated Communications Inc. , says the service provider launched the new SD-WAN service to meet the demand of enterprise customers who are quickly migrating their business applications to the cloud. Most of Consolidated's enterprise customers -- predominantly in the financial, healthcare, hospitality, government and education verticals -- are currently using MPLS or switched Ethernet, says Abolt. (See Consolidated Communications Starts SD-WAN Service.)

"SD-WAN is not a circuit type but it does improve the ability to turn sites up quickly and -- even for a small site such as a branch office that doesn't require fiber-based service -- they can have consistent, reliable performance for that small business site," says Abolt. As cloud adoption moves down-market to smaller businesses, SD-WAN offers greater flexibility for cloud service access, he adds.

Abolt says customers will have the option to choose from three SD-WAN service packages: basic, advanced or premium. The premium service includes managed service setup, enhanced network visibility, options for multiple backup services, and access to dedicated service experts at Consolidated's VIP customer care center.

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading

This is an edited version of a story that was originally published on Telco Transformation's sister site, Light Reading. To see the full story, click here.