The collaboration will enable the two companies to develop pan-African SD-WAN managed services. BringCom has rolled out pan-African Ethernet and MPLS network services with points of presence (PoPs) in Los Angeles, Washington DC, London, Djibouti, Nairobi, Kampala and Lagos. Versa Networks’ SD-WAN deployment will be rolled out across the continent, including multi-carrier connectivity across East and West Africa, in partnership with SimbaNet and ISOCEL Telecom.
“With the Versa deployment, we’re demonstrating the power of SD-WAN combined with network security and service providers looking to leverage high-performance virtual environments that rely upon totally automated and programmable WANs to deliver reliable communications services,” said Fabrice Langreney, president and CEO, BringCom.
The project will leverage Versa’s FlexVNF software, which uses SD-WAN connectivity, integrated with diverse security services inclusive of ordering and provisioning via BringCom’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) portal. The Versa headend, monitoring and analytics capabilities will be deployed in BringCom data centre facilities in Virginia at first before moving to East and West Africa for production-level traffic. In addition, the BringCom-Versa project will also use Versa cloud deployment capabilities and future iterations will instantiate any 3rd party VNF via FlexVNF service chaining.
“Our carrier-grade and cloud-native software makes it easy for telco managed service providers and SaaS operators to deliver secure software-defined branch connectivity to multi-tenant customers,” said Atchison Frazer, worldwide head of marketing, Versa Networks. “The African continent is an important, fast-growing market for us, and SD-WAN will play an important role in helping enterprises and organizations provide better services, while boosting business continuity and economic growth throughout the continent.”
In related news, last month BringCom completed its deal to buy Datanet, a privately-owned East African network service provider, for an undisclosed fee. The deal, first announced in May, was completed after BringCom received final approval from the Ugandan regulator Uganda Communications Commission.
