tw telecom: 3 Steps Towards Application Aware Networking

A number of carriers have already introduced the concept of application-aware networking to their business customers. KDDI, Telstra, Belgacom and Reliance, are among those I covered in the past.

tw teleom, a US carrier providing managed data, Internet and voice networking solutions to businesses and large organizations throughout the U.S, is now joining the list adding bandwidth on demand and self-provisioning and reporting portal to the service. 

Sean Buckley reported to Fierce Telecom in June on the presentation of Larissa Herda (pictured), CEO and Chairman, tw telecom and Michael Rouleau, Senior VP of Business Development at the recent Cowen and Company 40th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (webcast -here) in which they ".. outlined the details of its new intelligent network initiative that will allow customers to dial up bandwidth and enact better control over their applications .. although the new automated capabilities are still in beta testing, the service provider did reveal that there are three phases to the intelligent network drive targeted at its IP/VPN and Ethernet portfolio: enhanced management, dynamic capacity and application aware network":

• ".. With enhanced management, the customer will be able to see the performance of the circuit in the metro, long-haul and remote office end
   
• ..the dynamic capacity (see the prototype user interface below) feature will enable the customer to increase their capacity in real-time in an on-demand basis. Currently in beta, this feature allows a business customer to go into a portal to double or triple their capacity. The system will tell them how much it will cost on a per Mbps hour basis to increase that bandwidth, and when the customer hits submit the system will check if the capacity is there, provisions the circuit and provides that capability all without any impact on their regular service
    
• Finally, with the application-aware network, a customer will be able to get more control of what's going on in their network so they can prioritize in real-time certain applications over others and apply network resources to those mission critical applications". 

Source: tw telecom investor presentation, May 2012

See "tw telecom sets stage for network service automation" - here.