NTT Com delivers SDx for McLaren at Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix

NTT Communications is delivering a software-defined-everything (SDx) connectivity on a temporary basis for the McLaren Formula 1 (F1) Team during the F1 Japanese Grand Prix 2018. The McLaren garage at Suzuka Circuit will have high-speed, route-optimized connection to the cloud. In addition, the NFV infrastructure and uCPE will benefit from high-speed connection to a multi-cloud, including NTT Com’s Enterprise Cloud, a hybrid cloud environment supporting traditional and cloud-native ICT for highly secure and stable operations with designed-in flexibility and agility.

NTT Com said its “Suzuka Special” network will speed up trackside communication for faster, more flexible in-race strategizing, including cloud-based telemetry data analysis, a key to successful F1 racing. The network will be deployed at Suzuka Circuit, Japan and the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, UK as well as in the team’s cloud infrastructure network in Europe. The new NFV infrastructure will comprise a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), WAN accelerator, unified threat management (UTM) and web proxy. NTT Com will deploy universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) at both Suzuka Circuit and the McLaren Technology Centre by utilizing a white-box CPE base, which will facilitate flexible installation of required software. NFV infrastructure, namely UTM, web proxy and uCPE, including SD-WAN and WAN accelerator software installed in the white-box CPE, will be used to establish an Internet gateway and SD-WAN at the F1 race track for an extra-fast network for solving network latency.

Tatsuya Yamashita, Head of NTT Com’s Technology Development Division, said: “McLaren has been using NTT Com’s SD-WAN service with zero downtime for the entire 2018 season, beginning at the Australian Grand Prix. We are now delighted to introduce our new NFV infrastructure for the Japanese Grand Prix. The superior ICT solutions NTT Com is providing as a trusted technology partner are not only giving McLaren a competitive edge in F1 racing, but also are providing us with invaluable insight into potential solutions for our general enterprise customers’ digital transformations.”