FEATURE: SDN
national Internet traffic exchange. It is
at a fast-growing stage and intends to
serve the entire region evenly.
Internet access is made available by
Angola Cables. The connection of Angola
Cables network to large Tier-1 Internet
operators enables connection to the
main international Internet backbones.
Angola Cables peering index number
ASN37468, ensures an efficient and fast
network, interconnected to the major
traffic exchange points in the world.
Angola Cables is building the South
Atlantic Cable System, the first subsea
cable in the Southern Hemisphere
directly connecting Brazil to Africa. The
company is also building the Monet
subsea cable which will connect Brazil to
the EUA, and it has also been working
on the construction and management
of the Fortaleza Data Centre in Brazil.
Angola Cables key customer base
includes WIOCC, Internet Solutions,
Vodacom, NOS, PCCW, Akamai, Cloud
Flare, Unitel, Mstelcom, Nucom, and
Angola Telecom.
Challenges ahead
Global, large scale and wholesale
providers of connectivity like Angola
Cables face a host of challenges. These
are around the inability to predict
data growth and capacity volumes
with a degree of accuracy. This is
putting pressure on telecommunication
vendors to provide solutions that
are agile, open, flexible and ready
for the demand requirements in the
immediate future.
According to Joe Marsella, CTO EMEA
at Ciena, for years now, networks
have experienced unrelenting growth
in traffic, driven by consumers and
enterprises. Large increases in network
capacity along with associated
decreases in cost per Gbps have become
a necessity. The continued evolution
toward enterprise cloud-based services
has driven the need for reliable and
secure high-bandwidth connectivity
from and between data centres. In
addition, end users are increasingly
requiring on demand and dynamic
service offerings.
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However, the current mode of operation
is no longer sustainable. It is no longer
possible to predict the network impact of
applications that have yet to be invented,
traffic patterns arising from augmented
and virtual reality applications, the
billions of devices that have yet to be
connected, nor the full implications
arising from the evolution to 5G.
“The network needs to be able to not
only scale for massive capacity growth,
but also needs to be able to be more
agile and programmable to align with
enterprise customer business growth
and handle increasingly unpredictable
nature of traffic requirements. As a
result, we are seeing more customers
embrace IT technologies that leverage
the network’s underlying software
programmability to deliver such things
as analytics and virtualisation, as a way
to better adapt to changes that are
occurring within both their network and
their business,” says Marsella.
Partnering with Ciena
Angola Cables has recently selected
Ciena’s GeoMesh, 6500 Packet-Optical
Platform, equipped with the WaveLogic
Ai coherent optical chipset, Ciena’s
Blue Planet Manage, Control and
Plan software and cloud-based SLA
Portal, for its Monet submarine cable
system. Angola Cables selected Ciena’s
GeoMesh and Blue Planet solutions
to support its new service launch on
the Monet subsea cable. Ciena’s 6500
Packet-Optical Platform, equipped
with the WaveLogic Ai coherent optical
chipset, will provide wavelengths at
capacities greater than 200G between
its point-of-presences and without the
need for regeneration.
Additionally, Ciena’s GeoMesh spectrum
sharing capability provides cost-effective
connectivity, while enabling wholesale
customers to manage network traffic
without potential disruption from other
users on the open cable system. With
Ciena’s Blue Planet Manage, Control
and Plan software and cloud-based
SLA Portal, Angola Cables can better
manage and maintain bandwidth and
provide customers a real-time view of
network behaviours that impact service
level agreements. It will also utilise
Ciena Specialist Services for training and
NOC supervision. Angola Cables will be
amongst the very limited number of
operators that will be able to actively
manage the capacity requirements of
its clients.
“With Ciena’s solution, we can quickly
adapt to changing network needs
through upgrades or downgrades that
are needed to meet customer demands.
The Ciena solution also gives us the
opportunity to offer our end customers
a pay-as-you-grow option where they
only pay for the capacity that they need,
when they need it,” explains Nunes.
Nunes puts Ciena’s global solution
role play into perspective. “It is this
concept of choice, whether you choose
a complete solution for your needs
or whether you choose best-of-breed
components to build your own solution,
that enables network operators to
decide for themselves what they deploy,
how they deploy it, and how exactly
they leverage their network to satisfy
their customers’ needs and deliver the
required customer experience.”
“By developing and applying
technologies that facilitate openness and
choice, we are helping network operators
scale their networks to meet growing
demands, lower costs, enable faster time-
to-market and offer a more profitable
service delivery vehicle to ultimately grow
their business,” Nunes concludes. n
“The current mode
of operation is no
longer sustainable.
It is no longer
possible to predict
the network impact
of applications
that have yet to be
invented.”
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