U.K. telecom group BT will now offer Riverbed’s SteelCentral Visibility solution as a service to enterprises, to monitor and control applications in the cloud, according to an Oct. 4 press release.
Because most people are collaborating through various services that are now moving over to the cloud, BT said “it’s never been as important to have a clear view and control of what’s happening on the corporate network to ensure great user experiences and manage operational risk.”
The new application monitoring service, provided through the cloud, gives clients a “comprehensive, integrated and unified solution for monitoring and managing the entire digital experience,” the release said. In addition, the software gives clients timely information about how application data crosses their wide area network (WAN).
Visibility is offered in three pricing packages – bronze, silver, and gold. Variations of the packages include consultancy, reporting, design, and implementation as well as global support, the release said. BT added that a base service can be deployed and “then built up” to what the enterprise requires.
“We’ve designed this new 24/7 service, leveraging Riverbed’s technology, to give global enterprises a managed and cost-effective way to deliver the very best user experience as part of their digital transformation journey with BT,” Neil Sutton, vice-president at BT, said in the release. “It makes it less risky to model and adopt cloud and hybrid networks or key business applications and helps customers implement new technology strategies such as Big Data analytics and IoT with confidence.”
These new developments come shortly after BT extended its global managed services around Cisco’s software-defined WAN, and after the company announced it was planning to add two new Cisco-based solutions to its portfolio.
“Services like SD-WAN actually open up new doors,” Jim Sabey, head of connect and compute sales specialties at BT, said to CDN during Cisco Live! 2018. “To be quite frank, we only have three points-of-presence (POP) in Canada. So if you go after a traditional network Canada, more than likely, three POPs for BT isn’t going to win it, especially with the incumbents. We probably can’t provide you that underlay … but we can provide the overlay and that single pane of glass experience and manage your network holistically. It’s got our account managers and account teams very excited.”
