* Equant enables customers to mix and match among its WAN and access techs
Equant is offering customers the ability to mix and match among its suite of WAN and access technologies to create a single, integrated VPN through a new product that it calls Adaptive VPN.
Equant Adaptive VPN allows customers to combine WAN technologies such as Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS), frame relay, ATM, Internet and IPSec. Customers can also mix and match among different access types including leased lines, broadband, Internet/IPSec, Ethernet, satellite and mobile.
With Equant Adaptive VPN, customers choose the best technologies for each of their sites and applications, while Equant integrates and manages these technologies in a single, customized infrastructure. Customers can manage their premise equipment themselves or they can outsource the management of their routers to Equant.
Additionally, Equant is now offering a service called LAN VPN through which the company will provide fully integrated LAN and WAN services with end-to-end QoS.
“Adaptive VPN lets customers pick the best technology site by site but then have it look like a single VPN from a management perspective,” explains Dan DaCosta, director of global marketing, network solutions for Equant. “Customers should see a lower cost without the complexity because we would mask it from them.”
DaCosta says Equant has been building adaptive VPNs for customers for several months, but that these were customized networks. For example, Equant created a VPN for a Latin American cosmetics company that combined MPLS at major sites with IPSec at smaller sites. Now Equant has decided to turn this type of custom work into an off-the-shelf product.
“With one-off networks, the individual customer has to bear the cost,” DaCosta says. “Now we’ll have quicker designs and faster implementations. It could be a matter of starting implementations in weeks vs. months.”
To support its Adaptive VPN offering, Equant has installed VPN bridges in its IP network to make it easier to tie different network technologies together. The VPN bridges are Cisco routers that terminate MPLS and IPSec. Equant says it has deployed a few of these bridges in each of its regions including North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Customers of Equant’s Adaptive VPNs will receive end-to-end visibility and reporting so that they can see network across multiple technologies. Previously, they would have received separate network statistics for each WAN technology.
Equant’s Adaptive VPN and LAN VPN services are available in 180 countries with IPSec, 140 countries with MPLS and 65 countries with DSL.
“If a company built its own hybrid network and is backhauling its own traffic, it could see significant reductions with Adaptive VPN,” DaCosta says. “You could easily see that customer saving 10%, 15% even 20% between a self-built and designed hybrid network vs. us doing an Adaptive VPN with outsourced routers.”
