SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
Businesswire | May 12, 2023
Great Plains Communications (GPC), the leading Midwestern telecommunications provider with a growing, privately owned 16,500+ mile fiber network reaching 13 states, is deploying Ciena's (NYSE: CIEN) Coherent Routing solution and WaveLogic 5 Nano (WL5n) technology. This deployment will increase GPC’s network capacity, reliability, and resiliency to adapt to the continually increasing bandwidth needs of business, carrier, and residential customers.
With the enhanced capabilities made possible by the network upgrade, GPC can: • Support 5G and xHaul services for fiber-to-the-tower (FTTT) customers up to 10Gb/s—10 times the previous capacity • Provide high-performance, scalable 400G Data Center Interconnect (DCI) services to large cloud and data center operators • Ensure the utmost resiliency of Layer 2 VPNs with Segment Routing for the protection of packet services
“We strive to continuously improve our network to meet rising bandwidth demands with greater scalability and agility,” said Tony Thakur, Chief Technology Officer, Great Plains Communications. “GPC is committed to providing a customer experience that meets or exceeds the changing needs and expectations of our customers, whether it’s ultra-fast 5G, cloud computing, or high-bandwidth applications like streaming video and gaming—and Ciena’s coherent routing, switching, and optical technology plays a key role in this.”
“As a leading regional service provider in the Midwest, Great Plains Communications always has an eye to the future—especially when it comes to technology advancements and the growing traffic curve,” remarked Kevin Sheehan, CTO of the Americas, Ciena. “With Ciena’s innovative Coherent Routing solution, GPC can support voracious network demand and shifting traffic patterns, fulfilling the needs of its business and residential customers with new in-demand, high-bandwidth services for 5G, cloud connect, and more.”
Managed by Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) multi-layer domain controller, GPC’s network leverages Ciena’s Coherent Routing solution comprising the 5164 Router and 8110 Coherent Aggregation Router with WL5n 100G–400G coherent pluggables, as well as the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by WaveLogic coherent optics, for optical transport. Installation, turn-up, and test services for the network were provided by Ciena Services to accelerate time to market, and Ciena will perform ongoing maintenance services to ensure the network operates at peak performance.
Additional Information:
• At International Telecoms Week 2023, hear Ciena CTO Steve Alexander speak on Monday, May 15, at 3:05pm (Stage 2) – Subsea fireside chat: What’s the next evolutionary step for subsea cable technology
• GPC will be attending International Telecoms Week 2023 to meet with current and prospective customers
About Great Plains Communications
Great Plains Communications is one of the largest privately-owned digital infrastructure providers in the Midwest and is headquartered in Blair, Nebraska. It has over a century of experience providing business and residential customers in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and Southeastern Indiana communities with forward-thinking, fiber-based technology services including high-speed internet, Ethernet, video, hosted and traditional voice solutions. The company also takes pride in its progressive approach to accommodating the unique needs of all regional and national telecommunications carriers, LECs, ISPs, wireless carriers and other service providers utilizing superior engineering and custom-build strategies. At the core of its service offering is an extensive, MEF-certified 16,500+ mile regional fiber network that reaches 13 states: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The network offers community access rings, last-mile and middle-mile solutions, all fully supported by the company’s 24x7x365 Network Operations CenterAbout Ciena Ciena is a global leader in networking systems, services, and software. We build the most adaptive networks in the industry, enabling customers to anticipate and meet ever-increasing digital demands. For three-plus decades, Ciena has brought our humanity to our relentless pursuit of innovation. Prioritizing collaborative relationships with our customers, partners, and communities, we create flexible, open, and sustainable networks that better serve all users—today and into the future.
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VIRTUAL DESKTOP TOOLS, SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
prnewswire | April 03, 2023
Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), today announced new integrations with Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom) that connect Netskope's Borderless SD-WAN and SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) with Zoom UCaaS to deliver one of the most reliable, optimized connectivity and enhanced security solutions for effective user collaboration. Through these Netskope integrations, organizations using Zoom can now significantly enhance the user experience while staying compliant with privacy and security regulations.
Unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) users often struggle with low reliability, high latency, and network disruption, all of which limit worker productivity. In addition, organizations face security challenges, including risks coming from users and sites that communicate directly over the internet, compliance with critical privacy regulations, and the complexity and inefficiency present in many branch and remote access solutions.
To solve these challenges, Netskope Borderless SD-WAN enables highly reliable, optimized access to Zoom by automatically identifying and prioritizing Zoom connections, and improving network performance with on-demand remediation. Netskope also simplifies remote maintenance of Zoom Phone behind Netskope SASE Gateway with built-in secure inbound access service. In addition, Netskope SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) continuously monitors Zoom environments to discover and remediate any misconfigurations that could weaken security, helping maintain compliance with industry standards and regulations.
"As a world leading UCaaS provider, Zoom continues to prioritize security coupled with a seamless user experience to make sure that our customers realize the productivity they need, whenever and wherever work happens," said Brendan Ittelson, Zoom CTO. "Zoom can deliver top-notch connection, performance, and security in partnership with Netskope's fully converged, context-aware SD-WAN and SSPM."
Optimizing Zoom connectivity
Netskope Borderless SD-WAN helps ensure highly reliable, optimized access to Zoom and delivers consistent high-performance access for users working from home, or from a branch office, or from a non-office location such as a coffee shop. As part of the Netskope platform, Borderless SD-WAN employs a unique approach to deliver high-quality performance while simplifying overall operations. Netskope Borderless SD-WAN:
Provides full visibility and ML-driven insights with application and real-time path monitoring
Includes Netskope quality of experience (QoE) smart defaults for over 60,000 applications, and automatically identifies and prioritizes Zoom sub-applications
Improves Network performance with on-demand remediation, sub-second failover, and cloud-onramp to Zoom
Simplifies remote maintenance of Zoom Phone behind Netskope SASE Gateway with built-in secure inbound access service
Provides unified policy with a consistent experience for users across remote users, branches, and multi-cloud
Maximizing Zoom performance with consistent QoE
Netskope Borderless SD-WAN can easily identify Zoom Meeting, Zoom Phone, and Zoom Room connectors among traffic from tens of thousands of different workloads regularly egressing from an organization's network. Netskope offers smart defaults that automatically prioritize traffic and minimize latency, jitter, and loss to deliver consistent quality of experience. Netskope Borderless SD-WAN also ensures application performance without compromising payload security, even over a single, unstable broadband internet connection.
Strengthening security posture and maintaining compliance
Tight integration with Zoom APIs enables Netskope SSPM to provide visibility and insights into configuration settings, compliance status, and security posture. Netskope SSPM supports a broad collection of rules and compliance standards out-of-the-box, as well as the ability to add custom rules based on the data that Netskope gathers about connected Zoom accounts. Compliance administrators can modify and deploy policies to detect violations based on popular benchmarks and standards such as CIS, HIPAA, PCI, CSA, GDPR, AIPCA, ISO, and more. Security alerts include actionable remediation instructions to quickly bring Zoom deployments back into compliance and close any remaining security gaps.
"Like so many organizations, we rely on Zoom communications for daily business use and productivity," said Timothy Johnson, Assistant Vice President of ITS Operations, A.T. Still University. "The ability to maintain security, maximize the user experience, and minimize disruptions caused by latency, jitter, and loss between users and apps on unstable links with advanced remediation capabilities of Netskope's Borderless SD-WAN solution are what this compelling integration between Netskope and Zoom expertly delivers."
"Together, Netskope and Zoom provide organizations with the ability to deliver the collaboration experience users are expecting, while doing it in a secure way that does not interrupt business and helps them stay compliant with industry standards and regulations," said Parag Thakore, Senior Vice President, Borderless SD-WAN, Netskope. "We are proud to work with Zoom and together look forward to a continued expansion of how our solutions integrate."
About Netskope
Netskope, a global SASE leader, is redefining cloud, data, and network security to help organizations apply zero trust principles to protect data. Fast and easy to use, the Netskope platform provides optimized access and real-time security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. Netskope helps customers reduce risk, accelerate performance, and get unrivaled visibility into any cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of customers, including more than 25 of the Fortune 100, trust Netskope and its powerful NewEdge network to address evolving threats, new risks, technology shifts, organizational and network changes, and new regulatory requirements.
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VPN
Businesswire | May 11, 2023
OpenVPN is proud to introduce Device Identity Verification & Enforcement (DIVE) to their cloud-based solution, CloudConnexa™ (previously known as OpenVPN Cloud). This powerful new feature will take your ZTNA structure to the next level.
With the rapid growth of remote and hybrid workforces, providing secure access from a mix of BYOD and corporate-owned devices has become a critical component of ZTNA. DIVE on CloudConnexa gives Administrators the power to leverage one of the key principles of ZTNA — least privilege — granting access only to the resources a user should have, exclusively from the devices they are authorized to use.
"The growth of remote workforces and the rise in mobile devices accessing company networks makes providing the appropriate access based on user and device identity a critical component of ZTNA," says Francis Dinha, CEO of OpenVPN. "The DIVE feature on Cloud Connexa makes it easy for admins to verify device identities before granting network access."
DIVE boosts the ZTNA essentials Cloud Connexa already provides — hiding your applications from public view, using digital certificates for users and devices — by giving Admins the option to manually add authorized device identities (UUID) as well as lock digital certificates, automatically, to specific devices. A user trying to access the network with an alternate device, even with an authorized connection profile, will be blocked. By limiting authenticated user access to trusted devices with unique device identities, DIVE minimizes your attack surface and reduces the risk of unauthorized network access when you use Cloud Connexa.
"Even if an authorized always-on IoT device's connection profile is compromised,” explains Dinha, “a bad actor will be unable to connect using the stolen profile. This additional layer of security is invaluable to IoT network security.”
With DIVE on Cloud Connexa, admins can finally build ZTNA using defined access control policies for users and devices. This means organizations now have more power than ever to strengthen their security posture, reduce their attack surface, and make sure their network is truly secure.
About OpenVPN, Inc.
Unlike older approaches that require a mixed bag of networking and security products, CloudConnexa from OpenVPN consists of a simplified, cloud-delivered service for a fraction of the cost. And if you prefer a self-hosted solution, Access Server gives you complete control over the solution’s deployment, configuration, and management.
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