AT&T Caters to Customers That Prefer a Full Cisco NFV Stack

For its business customers that want to use virtual network functions (VNFs) but prefer a Cisco-based infrastructure, AT&T is providing the Cisco 5000 Series Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) hardware and Cisco software. ENCS will provide AT&T customers in nearly 90 countries and territories with a fully virtualized platform based on the Cisco Enterprise NFV architecture. And these customers will also get access to a library of VNFs. The first two VNFs AT&T will provide are for routing and security. AT&T already offers an NFV platform for businesses its FlexWare platform , which is available in more than 200 countries. But Josh Goodell, vice president for edge solutions at AT&T, said there are key differences between ENCS and FlexWare. “FlexWare has a very similar virtual platform vision, but the ecosystem of VNFs has been growing and will continue to grow,” said Goodell. FlexWare offers routing VNFs from Juniper and Cisco. In addition, FlexWare includes security VNFs from Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, Juniper Networks, and Fortinet. It offers a WAN optimization VNF from Riverbed. And it now includes a VNF for SD-WAN from VMware/VeloCloud.