Charter Communications' Spectrum brand is continuing its evolution as a managed SD-WAN provider, announcing a new solution called Enterprise Network Edge (ENE) that is enabled by Spectrum partner Fortinet and positioned as an “all-inclusive” secure SD-WAN and LAN switch combination designed to ease the growing complexity of enterprise IT management.
ENE aims to simplify management by giving customers cloud-based portal access to advanced security and SD-WAN capabilities via Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, which quickly reroutes and prioritizes traffic in the event of security breaches. ENE also provides a portfolio of connectivity options and co-management capabilities. Fortinet, which has been a Spectrum partner since 2019, has been observed by research firm Dell’Oro Group and others as a top vendor supporting service provider SD-WAN offerings.
The ENE platform also supports hybrid WAN configurations across various locations in recognition of the likelihood that customers may continue for the foreseeable future to have a mix of legacy WAN and new SD-WAN infrastructure.
On the LAN level, ENE includes LAN Management, which enables networks to improve traffic flow on their LANs, expand capacity, centralize administration and extend network protection.
The new solution also includes Virtual Edge and Remote Access to support secure connectivity and application-aware routing between users and public clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
“Enterprises are looking for network providers to take a consultative approach and to design customized solutions that are optimized for their specific business needs,” said Frost & Sullivan’s Roopa Honnachari, VP of Research for Network and Edge Services, in a statement. “With the launch of ENE, Spectrum Enterprise now has a wide range of managed services and connectivity options targeting the enterprise market that could accelerate the adoption of next generation SD-WAN services as companies get back to business as usual.”
However, “business as usual” may mean something different than it did before. SD-WAN adoption already was on the rise before the Covid-19 pandemic began, but providing increasing numbers of remote workers with full, high-quality access to corporate applications and resources has changed the nature of enterprise IT management, and increased focus on application performance and security.
“Organizations require a reliable, secure and high-performance network in order to support demanding software applications,” Bob Schroeder, VP of Enterprise Data Product Management at Spectrum Enterprise, said in a statement. “Enterprise Network Edge provides the support, flexibility, security and efficiencies that cloud-first and large-scale clients need to ensure effective digital experiences while moving to hybrid network architectures and distributed operating models across locations, clouds and users.”