October 19, 2018

Bell unveils ‘Virtual Network Services’ for cloud based applications

The launch seeks to provide on-demand network functions such as security and routing, by deploying software so that clients can get rid of hardware woes.

virtual network services

Data center facilitator Bell have launched Virtual Network Services (VNS) for cloud-native customers in order to simplify hardware issues faced by customers. By launching this VNS, Bell will respond to customers’ on-demand needs by transforming and centralizing hardware-based networks in virtualized, software driven networks.

According to Bell, clients end up buying a lot of hardware with the increasing need for storage and capacity. This behaviour, Bell claim, culminates into buying another set of router and network services only to face multiple-hardware management issues.

With this new VNS, Bell claim that users will be able to leverage Universal Customer Premise Edge equipment (uCPE), a tool through which clients are able to go into their portal online and turn different features in the  VNS off or on. They say that this equipment will allow customers to completely forget that they are dealing with large-scale hardware.

Jeremy Wubs, Senior Vice-President of Bell Business Markets, commented:

Clients consistently buy multiple services and end up with multiple pieces of equipment. They need a network with routing capabilities so they have a router, they need some security so they buy a firewall, they need low balancing so they buy a low balancer and it’s frustrating for clients because they end up with multiple pieces of equipment in each of the locations.

Bell say that since applications are becoming complex and businesses are moving their functions to the cloud, it was important for them to provide this offering to their clients. They also added that a few more network services are in the pipeline.

Wubs added:

Some of those will be in the area of security, routing (…) so these are the typical areas you would expect to see in the world of virtual network services. We will have a release of new capabilities every quarter that are available to the client.

As per industry patrons, virtual services are all set to grow in the next few years. Big players like VMware have already started investing, especially after they launched their own virtual cloud network in Malaysia a few months ago.