CHICAGO -- International Telecoms Week -- Among the hundreds of network operators here for this massive deal-making event are at least a couple of newer disruptors who are taking advantage of virtualization and artificial intelligence to create much faster and easier ways of delivering services to enterprises.
One, PacketFabric LLC , is offering connectivity-as-a-service that it claims can turn up either point-to-point or cloud connections of one gigabit to 100 gigabits in a matter of seconds from a portal. The other, Netrolix LLC , is offering what it dubs an AI-WAN, which is an over-the-top service combining network data with artificial intelligence to guarantee the best network routes for wide area network connections.
Both companies are going after enterprise customers and offering high bandwidth services for cloud connections and more in a business model that makes the network consumable as the cloud is today: on-demand, easy-to-use and flexible.
PacketFabric has put together its multi-terabit network connecting 150 data centers in 17 US metro market, buying dark fiber, some lit fiber and some spectrum from network operators. The spectrum play allows PacketFabric provide the lasers to an optical network provider's line system so PacketFabric controls upgrades by swapping out lasers, Chad Milam, president and COO, told Light Reading.
The company designed its own software to run that greenfield network and it was purpose-built to enable automation on an end-to-end basis. PacketFabric then offers a portal that delivers network connections essentially on demand, either between data centers or directly into most commercial cloud offerings via its PacketCOR service, says Jezzibell Gilmore, a co-founder and now senior vice president of business development.
The business model is also designed to be frictionless: Enterprises click through a master service agreement, which is seven pages of "normal-font type," Milam says, and once financially vetted, can be ordering services immediately without long-term contracts. Pricing is published on the web, and Gilmore says it's competitive. Service Level Agreements are also easily accessed and understandable.
"We had the luxury of developing a greenfield network with greenfield software -- there is no software written out there to run a network to do things like this, and no network that is currently built with automation as a mindset, as the principle and vision for the network," Gilmore comments. "PacketFabric had the luxury of doing both, with no customers at the beginning and an investor willing to help us achieve that."
— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, 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.