Verizon Business to offer dynamic bandwidth

Verizon Business will offer network managers the ability to expand and contract the amount of bandwidth they use on an almost real-time basis to handle monthly or seasonal peaks in VPN traffic.

The new service, called Private IP Dynamic Bandwidth, will be available in April. It is part of a suite of new and expanded services designed to help Verizon Business customers create application-aware IP networks that are tailored to their traffic patterns and needs.

With Private IP Dynamic Bandwidth, customers can change the numbers of ports and the amount of access they want via a Web-based customer portal. The change requests have been automated and are processed on a near real-time basis.

“This service is ideal for businesses that are seasonal in nature,” says Michael Marcellin, director of IP and Ethernet Networking for Verizon Business. “Now you have the flexibility to make changes in near real-time and change back. You pay for what you use. So you might only need two days of extra bandwidth instead of the whole month…It’s more and more of a requirement of customers to have that flexibility.”

Other new services available in April include:

* Automated Bandwidth Monitoring, which provides real-time monitoring and reporting of bandwidth utilization across an MPLS network. This tool features automated scheduling of bandwidth changes to handle regular traffic patterns. Customers can set thresholds for real-time management of bandwidth.

* Application Priority, which allows network managers to assign classes of service to business applications. With this tool, network managers can mark and prioritize packets by user, application or protocol. It provides reports for prioritized bandwidth usage and response times.

Until now, Verizon Business offered network analysis and performance monitoring to its largest customers on a custom basis. With its latest set of off-the-shelf tools, Verizon Business is offering these capabilities to small and midsized businesses at a lower cost.

“Now we have a network-based suite of tools that are more cost-effective for our managed services customers,” Marcellin says.

For example, Verizon Business is offering 30-day, 60-day and 90-day network assessments that provide customers with a detailed view of their current WAN environment. At $10,000 for a 90-day engagement, these software-based assessments cost around a third of what Verizon Business charged previously for custom assessments.

Verizon Business also offers network performance tools that provide real-time and historical reporting about application performance. This offering has been available since February 2005.

Verizon Business also has an application analysis tool that has been available for nine months. This reporting service allows network managers to track application performance. They can use this tool to assign resources to the most important business applications while controlling or eliminating unauthorized applications.

For more on the new network tools from Verizon Business click here.