Delivering on SD-WAN: How to choose the right partners
As SD-WAN matures the relative strengths and opportunities for telcos and vendors are becoming clearer. Where should telcos focus, and how will that affect their choice of SD-WAN platform?
As SD-WAN matures the relative strengths and opportunities for telcos and vendors are becoming clearer. Where should telcos focus, and how will that affect their choice of SD-WAN platform?
Telcos were quick to respond to changing customer needs as the COVID pandemic forced all kinds of businesses to shift to remote working almost overnight. Now we outline a six-point plan for telcos to evolve their initial WFH propositions into best-in-class services that address a range of security, reliability and performance needs.
Telco cloud continues to be deployed worldwide. A wave of recent deployments has been driven by 5G launches, and multiple factors may soon drive large-scale open RAN deployments
Born of a unique partnership between Deutsche Telekom and Cisco, ngena leverages the networks of partners worldwide to provide a global enterprise connectivity platform. How did it come about, how successful has it been, and what does it teach us about innovation in telecoms?
The number of deployments of NFV and SDN continues to grow – but while some markets are moving on to the next phase, others are just getting going.
Asia-Pacific is the leading region in the global NFV/SDN market: highest volume of deployments and consistent record of innovation. The region points the way ahead for the global market.
We outline three possible pathways for SD-WAN evolution. Part 3 of a three-part mini-series exploring SD-WAN technology from an enterprise perspective.
We outline existing flavours of SD-WAN available on the market. Part 2 of a three-part mini-series exploring SD-WAN technology from an enterprise perspective.
We highlight the main networking challenges that SD-WAN is designed to address. Part 1 of a three-part mini-series exploring SD-WAN technology from an enterprise perspective.
New NFV/SDN deployments in North America are increasingly driven by 5G, with a striking role for open source and telco self-builds. Globally, our tracker includes details of nearly 500 NFV/SDN deployments between 2011 and May 2019.
SDN and NFV deployment is growing deeper but not broader: the long tail lags behind the pioneers.
This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on Asia-Pacific, alongside European and North American data to March 2018. Telcos in developed Asian markets have made a great start, and the region has outstripped Europe and North America in live SDN / NFV deployments – but can NFV scale to Asia as a whole?
This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on North America, alongside additional European data. 2016/7 has seen the rise of SD-WAN, enabling smaller operators to compete in the WAN market with NFV leaders AT&T, Verizon, Masergy, CenturyLink, etc. By contrast, fewer consumer use cases for NFV have yet been established.
STL Partners has compiled a new quarterly-updated tracker service of commercial deployments of NFV and SDN by leading telcos worldwide, providing an Excel database accompanied by an analytical report. The first update, devoted to Europe, found operators and vendors focusing on core network virtualisation and SDN/SD-WAN have so far led the way, as timelines on more systematic transformation programmes have been extended.
The big prize in enterprise managed services today is supporting industries’ digital transformation. With the growing ‘softwarisation’ of networking, this creates more impetus for vendors to compete with telcos as part of a shifting ecosystem. But does vendor software risk cannibalising the telco network?

Network Slicing is a way to run multiple networks on one infrastructure. In theory, it could mean that telcos could run mobile broadband and IoT networks over the same physical network, and also offer greater agility within those networks. We explore the theory and its challenges, examine use cases, what would be needed to make it happen, and look at five business case scenarios.
Although the B2B market could deliver significant revenue growth, most telcos’ enterprise businesses are not delivering their full potential. In this report we analyse the reasons why and outline how telcos can build a successful B2B strategy.