Colt, Ciena to offer enterprise managed services

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Ciena Corporation, a network provider, and Colt, a an information delivery platform based in Europe, on Friday announced a partnership to extend Colt’s portfolio of managed security services.

The two companies will enrich the performance, reliability and security of Colt’s managed High Speed Services portfolio with sophisticated, integrated wire-speed encryption capabilities from Ciena’s Packet-Optical Transport portfolio, said a press release.

It will enable Colt’s enterprise customers to secure and protect their critical business information and intellectual property.

Colt is deploying solutions from Ciena’s 5000 Series throughout its regional managed metro networks to power its assured encryption data connectivity services, in 14 major European markets — including Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

The new offering from Colt and Ciena simplifies the deployment of secure network services for enterprises by combining market-leading optical transport technologies with powerful, standards-based encryption functionality in a single, integrated infrastructure. Eliminating the need for standalone network elements dedicated solely to the encryption function, the solution simplifies network design and management.

Ciena’s 5000 Series offers FIPS-certified, in-skin encryption capabilities that are protocol agnostic and operate independently from applications. This allows Colt to run multiple protocols, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Infiniband and OTN, over the same encrypted link.

It helps reduce the number of protocol-specific encryption appliances needed in a customer’s network and lowering their operating costs.

The new offering also limits latency generated in the process of encrypting data to just several microseconds, significantly lower than traditional encryption solutions.

The ultra-low latency capabilities of the solution aides in the reliable and secure delivery of mission-critical applications, such as those found in financial or transaction-oriented networks where assured services delivery offers a critical competitive advantage.

“With increasing numbers of our customers focused on regulatory compliance and mitigating security breaches, especially in sectors such as financial services or government, we’re seeing enormous growth of interest in high-speed, encrypted data connectivity services,” said Stefano Maifreni, solutions manager, Managed Networking, Enterprise Services, at Colt.

He added the partnership will allow Colt to further extend its managed security portfolio and gives them the opportunity to exploit the advantage of a low-latency, integrated encryption solution.