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Telstra has been announced as Australia’s leading local partner for providing software defined (SD) solutions and services across the country.
According to technology research firm Information Service Group (ISG) Provider Lens Network — Software Defined Solutions and Services report, Telstra was rated out of 40 providers in five SD areas to be the leader in four of these areas.
Areas covered in the report include managed (SD) WAN services, software defined networking (SDN) transformation services (consulting and implementation), enterprise networks technology and service suppliers, edge technologies and services and secure access service edge (SIX).
The telco was beaten only by multinationals Infosys, Orange Business Services and Wipro, which were leaders in all five areas.
Meanwhile, Datacom Australia is a leader in two areas and Data#3, Dicker Data, Macquarie Telecom and Versa are leaders in one area each.
In addition, Datacom Australia and Empired are among other international players named Rising Stars – companies identified by ISG as having a “promising portfolio” and “high future potential” – in one place each.
The highlighting of leading Australian companies within the SD market comes as ISG says “many” Australian businesses are adopting SDN during digital transformation projects.
The COVID-19 pandemic in particular has been a major reason for companies to rethink work models, supply chains and business requirements. To support this, organizations are building software-defined-everything (SDx) architectures, the company says, which in turn is creating the need to increase network capacity and re-evaluate network configurations and security.
“The need for greater flexibility, automation and security is challenging the rigid IT architectures in Australian companies,” said Troy Williams, digital lead for ISG Asia Pacific. “Many are now moving from traditional networking to SDN.”
The report claims that the pandemic has created a need for faster migration to the cloud, more distributed networks, greater use of collaboration tools and moving applications from on-premises data centers to in cloud-hosted environments.
As a result, SD-WAN solutions are sought to support software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service environments.
“Australian companies need to develop a greater understanding of how SDN works hand in hand with cloudification, mobility and digital business transformation,” ISG said.
“Over the next five years, creating next-generation businesses in Australia may require new network ecosystems that incorporate a wide range of technologies, including multi-cloud architectures, SASE, AI [artificial intelligence]-assisted network automation and 5G/Wi-Fi 6 convergence.”
In addition to its success in the SD market, Telstra has also been identified by ISG as a leader as a Microsoft partner and for private and hybrid cloud, as announced in April and earlier in July, respectively.
Meanwhile, SD Rising Star Empired was highlighted in May as the leading ServiceNow partner based locally in Australia, as well as the leader in managed services for Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 services.
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