Orange and Equinix say that the France-based international communications services provider will expand its Orange Telco Cloud footprint via Equinix Metal, Equinix's “bare metal as a service” platform. The collaboration will accelerate the deployment of Orange's New Generation International Network (eNGINe). Orange expects to provide business and wholesale customers Telco Cloud points of presence (PoPs) instantaneously to support such services as SD-WAN, CDN, 5G roaming, and voice services with an expected latency below ~10 msec.
Orange expects to bring these capabilities to market via Equinix Metal in Amsterdam, Madrid, and Seattle by the end of this year.
Orange operates 40 SDN PoPs around the world within its Telco Cloud Platform and plans to increase that number to more than 100 "Telco Cloud PoPs" by 2024 as part of its eNGINe initiative. Each PoP can host virtualized network service functions such as voice, 5G, CDN, SD-WAN, and security services, as well as connect customers to content and cloud service providers. The use of Equinix Metal will accelerate and lower the cost of enabling these PoPs, the collaborators believe.
"We are delighted to partner with Equinix to deploy Orange Telco Cloud PoPs technology on top of Equinix Metal," explained Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president, international networks at Orange. "By embracing an 'as a service' infrastructure model and focusing investment in our SDN and VNF capabilities, Orange can provide a fully flexible and elastic solution to customers, speed up the deployment of our planned 100 Telco Cloud PoPs, and quickly adapt capacity to meet demand. This confirms Orange's position as a trusted infrastructure partner, optimizing application performance with secured and consistent connectivity, regardless of end user location, and supporting cloud management and transformation."
"This partnership between Orange and Equinix is a smart move, enabling Orange to enhance its existing platform and its ability to facilitate reliable, agile digital capabilities for its customers—all while being able to more quickly meet customer demand by using Equinix Metal,” commented Courtney Munroe, vice president for telecommunications research at IDC, via a joint Orange/Equinix press release. “IDC research shows that enterprises look to telcos and digital infrastructure providers as key partners for hybrid IT infrastructure and cloud networking requirements. Furthermore, the enhanced Telco Cloud Platform will improve Orange's operational efficiency, and flexibility, and most importantly will allow it to offer enhanced low latency performance and on-demand requirements for enterprises around the world."
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