Indian 4G telecom network operator Reliance Jio Infocomm, CenturyLink, Deutsche Telekom, and SK Telecom announced The Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance (ngena).
The announcement was made at the ongoing GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC 2016) in Barcelona, Spain.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, a telecom venture promoted by Mukesh Ambani, is expected to launch 4G LTE services in India in 2016 after bagging the initial BWA spectrum in 2011.
ngena plans to launch international network services for business customers in the first half of 2017. Recently, ABI Research said the size of the enterprise communication market by 2020 would be around $200 billion. BT, AT&T, Verizon Wireless are some of the telecom network players in the global enterprise market.
There will be more than 20 additional service providers within the ngena alliance. The foundation of ngena is still subject to applicable merger control clearance.
In addition to global coverage, ngena will provide service catalogue to its alliance partners, enabling them to deliver a unique network service experience for enterprise customers. ngena services will delivered through network function virtualization and automation to become efficient.
The global alliance will enable fast provisioning, even in remote places. With ngena, the alliance partners aim for profitable growth in global network access and transport services, a $50 billion market that is growing by 3.5 percent annually.
The ngena alliance follows a new disruptive business model enabled by Cisco cloud and virtualization technology.
Timotheus Hottges, CEO Deutsche Telekom, said: “Services based alone on the public Internet are not secure or reliable enough for real-time applications such as logistics, manufacturing and telemedicine.”
“A network without sufficient service quality is a risk that customers do not want to take. That’s why our alliance aims to provide multinational enterprise customers with a secure, powerful, global network service faster than before,” Timotheus Hottges said.
ngena will target multinational companies which seek to purchase their telecommunications services securely from a single source. The partners will define unified service levels for the entire global grid. Cisco technology will help enable seamless interconnectivity and standardized interfaces between heterogeneous networks of the alliance members.
The alliance will benefit from increasing network convergence and the spread of Software Defined Networks (SDN) and cloud technology. The Ethernet protocol will ensure that the networks of different providers are compatible with one another. The physical and virtual network assets will be managed through hubs in Europe, America and Asia using automated provisioning.
The alliance partners will deliver VPN functionality, Application Performance Management (APM), WAN/LAN management and optimization up to additional built in services such as Unified Communication & Collaboration (UCC), advanced security services, platform APIs for adoption of industry-specific use cases (e.g. WLAN analytics for retail).
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
