Verizon announced it has expanded its Virtual Network Services offering with the addition of x86-based whitebox options leveraging OpenStack to its universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) portfolio.
Verizon’s uCPE offering means that enterprises do not need to invest in separate, dedicated hardware appliances to deliver key virtual network functions (VNFs) such as software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), security, routing, WAN optimisation, or any network function that can be virtualised.
Verizon is seeking to simplify the transition to software-defined, application-centric network deployments for organisations of any size by expanding its Virtual Network Services uCPE options from vendor-specific platforms to an open hardware, open source whitebox architecture.
Verizon’s uCPE portfolio targets applications ranging from solutions suitable for small retail sites up to large data centre deployments and leverages commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and a globally distributed open source architecture. This allows enterprises to rapidly deploy services globally using Verizon’s application library.
The uCPE solution features service chaining and enterprise orchestration functionality that enables automated onboarding and provisioning, with future orchestration releases to offer service assurance capabilities for fault and performance monitoring, closed-loop healing and a VNF factory. The enhanced life-cycle orchestration capabilities are designed to enable enterprises to implement near real-time SDN technologies.
Verizon noted that the combination of COTS hardware and a distributed deployment of OpenStack allows customers to decouple hardware from software and removes the need for proprietary hardware. This capability can help customers to reduce costs and simplify the physical network architecture, as well as allowing them to choose the most suitable hardware and applications for their individual requirements.
