Colt Technology Services has announced its enhanced universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) solution, which brings the benefits of Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) to enterprises.

This expanded functionality provides a network operating system and hosting environment for Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), such as SD WAN and firewalls, all running on standard off-the-shelf servers, with both provider managed and customer managed NFV applications being run on this platform. 

This brings the following benefits of virtualisation to the CPE equipment at the customer site: 

1) Colt’s uCPE proposition further puts the network in the hands of the customer, giving them the flexibility to license, manage, monitor functions in service provider or customer managed modes with a choice of network options.

2) Universal CPE enables a move towards virtualisation and edge computing. Colt’s uCPE capability is bringing the cloud from data centres to customer premises, enabling virtualisation at the edge, and represents a paradigm shift in how enterprises consume networking services.

3) Having the applications now run as software on a common server infrastructure, allows for much easier automation and orchestration, than in the past with closed, proprietary hardware boxes.  

Masato Hoshino, Head of Asia and Representative Director and President at Colt, said: “By enhancing our uCPE offering we are aligning Colt with the future of networking. This approach allows us to deliver virtualised services from the broadest range of suppliers under end-user control. It will also enable Colt to achieve faster product development, cost savings and operational efficiency. Colt strives to be a trusted partner as our customers continue along their digital transformation journey’s, and by evolving our uCPE proposition, we are empowering our customers to respond faster to new business opportunities.”