In today’s fast-moving technology environment, it is vital to be able to respond quickly to change. Whether that change is expanding your business to new locations or supporting a distributed workforce, every part of your enterprise network needs to be able to quickly scale up or down to deliver what you need, when you need it.
To meet this need for our customers, Lumen recently launched our Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform—a disruptive new approach that is revolutionizing the way businesses deliver and consume network functionality. Read on to find out more about Lumen Network-as-a-Service, our first service offering on the platform, Lumen® Internet On‑Demand, and why it has industry experts talking.
The problem with legacy networks
Too often, businesses rely on decades-old legacy network technology that wasn’t built for our digital, cloud-centric world. These systems, typically offered by traditional telecom providers, create challenges for several reasons.
- They’re hard to buy. Businesses need fast provisioning of data center connections, but the buying experience for new connections and ports is non-digital—and it can take up to 90 days to complete.
- They’re hard to manage. That limits control and flexibility. Customers are forced to pay standard monthly rates regardless of how they use the service.
- They’re hard to use. Connectivity isn’t always reliable, and interfaces often don’t integrate well with other apps and solutions.
Lumen NaaS solves for these challenges by providing the same level of agility in networking that enterprises currently enjoy within their on-demand, cloud-centric app environments. This cloud-like agility enables businesses to keep pace with innovation, meet rapidly changing business needs and optimize network performance and user experiences.
NaaS through the Lumen lens
Lumen NaaS, which launched July 31, 2023, evolves the way customers purchase, deploy and manage network services, starting with our flagship dedicated internet service, Lumen® Internet On‑Demand. Key capabilities of this service include:
- Ability to scale capacity in minutes
- Bandwidth from 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps
- A consumption-based billing model
- Real-time visibility into service performance and network usage
- Rapid enablement of new capabilities
Lumen NaaS offers radical flexibility—fire up any port, with any service, at any time, in minutes not months—so you can do everything digitally in just a few clicks. Turn up new services for a day, a week, a month or for as long as you want and deprovision them instantly when you no longer need them.
Going forward, Lumen NaaS will leverage a broad set of partners to expand these capabilities, including data centers (such as Equinix and Digital Reality), cloud, technology and managed service providers. Over time, Lumen NaaS offerings will expand to include security and network services like DDoS, SASE, SD-WAN and Edge services, which customers will be able to purchase and activate in minutes via our digital portal or APIs.
IDC’s quick take
But don’t take our word for it. According to a recent IDC Link commentary, “Lumen® Internet On‑Demand is well articulated and can bring immediate value to customers.”1 The IDC Link notes, “This is a positive step that will help establish Lumen as an important provider of NaaS. Its road map will expand NaaS into networking services such as SD-WAN, security/SASE, and other Edge services that witness a strong uptake in the future. Lumen needs to move quickly to capture these opportunities.”1
Looking ahead, IDC experts expect that this initial focus on Internet On‑Demand, “will help establish Lumen as an important provider of NaaS services,” as we gradually build out our NaaS offerings.1
Want to know more about Lumen NaaS? Read IDC’s full insights below and sign up for a free Internet On‑Demand account.
SIGN UP FREE READ IDC ARTICLE1IDC Link, Lumen launches NaaS Platform with Internet On‑Demand offering, August 01, 2023.
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