orange and equinix have announced that the former has expanded the geographic footprint of its Telco Cloud model in Amsterdam, Madrid and Seattle thanks to Equinix’s Bare Metal as a Service capability, Equinix Metal. In this way, Orange seeks to accelerate the deployment of its New Generation International Network.
With this model, the operator will be able to offer its customers different Telco Cloud Points of Presence (PoPs) on demand. With them, it will offer various essential services, such as SD-WAN, CDN, 5G roaming and voice services. All with an expected latency of less than 10 milliseconds. By integrating with Equinix’s Bare Metal as a Service, located in close proximity to its existing networks, Orange is able to quickly meet the growing needs of its customers, completing the service rollout from its earliest stages in a matter of weeks, rather than in mes.
Equinix Metal enables Orange to accelerate its next-generation services without the upfront capital expense and hassle of global supply chains. In addition, the operator retains full choice and control over the technological infrastructure and digital transformation projects.
Through its Telco Cloud platform, Orange offers optimized levels of end-to-end performance, security and flexibility. The operator already has 40 SDN PoPs in the world, and its goal is to exceed one hundred Telco Cloud PoPs by 2024. This goal is part of its eNGINe (New Generation International Network) transformation program.
Each Telco Cloud PoP can host virtualized network service features such as voice, 5G, CDN, SD-WAN or security services. Also connect customers with the main providers of content and services in the cloud. With its Telco Cloud PoP architecture, customers can manage applications in the cloud with fast, reliable connectivity and choose from an expanded offering of tailored, on-demand services.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin, Vice President of Orange International Networkshas shown that the company is satisfied «with this partnership to deploy Orange Telco Cloud PoPs technology through Equinix Metal. By adopting an ‘as-a-service’ infrastructure model and focusing investment on our SDN and VNF capabilities, Orange is able to provide a fully flexible and elastic solution to customers, accelerate deployment of our planned 100 Telco Cloud PoPs and quickly scale capacity to meet demand. This confirms Orange’s position as a trusted infrastructure partner, optimizing application performance with secure and consistent connectivity, regardless of end-user location, and supporting cloud management and transformation.«.
For its part, Zachary Smith, Director of Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinixrecalled that the company has «a rich 20-year history of collaboration with Orange and we are pleased to see them accelerate innovation for their customers by becoming the first provider to combine their extensive global network footprint through Equinix with the new possibilities offered by our investments in capabilities of automated digital infrastructure. We are excited to see them expand this offering to other markets in 2023.«.
