GCI Goes Big with Juniper SD-WAN Deployment

Last week at SD-WAN Expo, GCI (News - Alert), Inc.’s Alex Eissler joined the panel discussion “The Economic Benefits of SD-WAN,” where the session explored financial nuances of this up-and-coming technology. This week, the Alaskan managed services provider announced further enhancements to the GCI portfolio.

GCI announced the deployment of Juniper’s Contrail SD-WAN to expand market presence as well as its portfolio of services provided via CloudFlex SD-WAN. The newly deployed Juniper solution instantly offers a boost to the GCI portfolio of offerings.

“Service providers simply cannot rely on selling only connectivity to drive growth in a world where customers demand contextual services that add real value to their business or personal lives,” said Sally Bament, vice president, service provider marketing at Juniper Networks (News - Alert). “Those that don’t move up the value chain will get left behind in this evolving reality, but it’s not as simple as flipping a switch. And the network shouldn’t be a hindrance to getting there. We’re thrilled to work with GCI on reinventing their network and infusing automation so it can play a crucial role in the next generation of telecommunications.”

CloudFlex is powered by a combination of Contrail Service Orchestration, the NFX250 Network Services Platform, the vSRX Virtual Firewall and the SRX Series Services Gateway (News - Alert). With the Juniper Contrail SD-WAN in place, the GCI can extend beyond a previously hardware-centric network to provide services into new markets within the United States. The Juniper components alleviate the need to install physical appliances on site, offer enhanced automation and is expected to cut service fulfillment costs and provisioning time.

“GCI is ushering in a new era of what it means to be a digital service provider and looked to Juniper as a partner to deliver managed services even more effectively,” said John Barnhardt, vice president of business product development at GCI. “CloudFlex enables GCI to provide our customers with new services faster than ever before with the convenience of using just one appliance versus a whole server rack.”

SD-WAN is not a transitional technology, it is a vital component of this age of digital transformation empowering the level of application performance, agility and scalability required to succeed in this highly competitive time.