The ICT solutions arm of Japanese incumbent operator NTT, NTT Com, has launched what it says is the first suite of cloud services that enterprise customers can activate themselves and pay for on a per-usage basis. NTT Com said the new services will enable enterprises to eliminate lengthy contract tie-ins, and establish new offices or short-term project support with minimal fuss.

The services are built on a Network Functions Virtualization platform developed by Virtela Technology Services, which NTT Com acquired in January this year, and will be launched commercially in July.

“While many industry experts and service providers have long been speaking about the potential of NFV, we are excited to become the first service providers to commercialize NFV-enabled services on a global scale,” said Takashi Ooi, VP for Enterprise Network Service at NTT Com. “Leveraging NFV technology in our Local Cloud Networking Centers worldwide, we can now deliver varieties of network functions – such as firewall and application acceleration for branch offices – from our network cloud. This eliminates the ‘one device, per service, per location’ model, resulting in significant cost savings for our customers.”

Allowing customers to access and manage their services through an SDN-enabled portal, said NTT Com, would mean service deployment times could be cut from months to minutes and configuration changes from weeks to real time.

“And it is not only about saving capital and operational costs,” said Ooi. “NTT Com’s services transform enterprise WAN to enable customers to stay agile and responsive to the ever-changing business environment.”

NTT Com listed the new services as follows:

1. Cloud-Based Application Acceleration: Optimizes application performance over the IP-VPN network, enabling global IT consolidation and faster access to cloud-hosted applications (*30-Day Free Trial available)
2. Cloud-Based Firewall: This service offers Firewall, IPS, and URL Filtering options, and enables secure Internet access at branch offices using the nearest of 50 Local Cloud Networking Centers distributed globally
3. Cloud-Based IPSEC VPN Gateway: Establishes quick enterprise network connections from public cloud or any site with Internet access
4. Cloud-Based SSL VPN: Enables remote workers or partners using any device to access the enterprise network

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