So let's start with an overview of UCPE, or universal CPE, and SD-WAN, which stands for software defined wide area networking. So universal CPE, or universal customer premise equipment, this area has been gaining a lot of attention recently. But what does it mean? So as enterprise customers continue to adopt cloud services, comm service providers are able to replace multiple fixed function appliances, or CP equipment, with virtual CPEs, VCPs, or universal CPEs. The promise to improve the speed of service provisioning, and to reduce capital expenditure and operational expenditure costs. With a single virtual CPE platform, customers can support multiple functions, typically delivered as VNFs, or virtual network functions. Examples of these functions may include WAN routing, virtual private network, firewall, intrusion protection systems, session border controllers, and perhaps most importantly, software defined WAN, or SD-WAN. Many service providers see universal CPE as a way to gain the benefits of NFE and bring this to their enterprise customers. So if SD-WAN is such an important use case for universal CPE, let's take a look at it and think about what it does. Software defined wide area networking, or SD-WAN is a specific application of SDN, or software defined networking technology applied to WAN connections. Which are-- and let's remember that WAN connections are what are used to connect enterprise networks, so branch offices, to data centers, typically, and typically over large geographical distances. So a WAN might be used, for example, to connect a branch office to a central corporate network, or to connect data centers separated by a large distance. In the past and today, these WAN connections often used technology that required special proprietary hardware. The SD-WAN movement seeks to move to a more cloud network controlled situation using a software approach. For enterprises, SD-WAN offers increased flexibility, simplifies their IT operations, and it can achieve more rapid and elastic deployments. And ultimately, for an enterprise, they're looking to reduce the cost of their leasing private service provider provided connections, typically NPLS connections. So all of these things can result in cost reduction, business agility, a faster time to enable connectivity to a branch, and reduced operational costs. For a com service provider, SD-WAN can address a disruptive threat. Many enterprises were already looking at SD-WAN as a way to reduce their dependency on NPLS service provider provided NPLS connections, and to use the internet for their connectivity. And comm service providers, by proactively offering SD-WAN services, can address that potential competitive threat. It also offers the ability to simplify operations for a comm service provider. Today, to deploy a routing, firewall, and WAN acceleration functions to an enterprise customer, would require three appliances to be shipped, or even worse, sent to an enterprise customer, followed by an engineer visit to configure and install those devices. So it offers comm service providers flexibility, speed, and an ability to meet their customers' requirements in those areas. So why is SD-WAN important in the first place? Well, one of the reasons has been a dramatic shift in traffic patterns from enterprises over recent years. So if we go back a little bit in time, the vast majority of traffic from an enterprise would have been client to server. So was served by their service provider provided NPLS circuits, and the majority of their traffic was going from their enterprise branches, to their corporate network, or to their corporate central data centers. With the emergence of so many cloud provided services, salesforce.com, Outlook 365 would be good examples, there has been a pretty dramatic shift in traffic patterns from enterprise sites, where their traffic is going to the internet, rather than to their corporate data centers. Now this is one of the spurs for the need to pretty dramatically change the way that WAN connectivity was offered to enterprises from service providers. It also offers the ability to centralize control, to use SDN techniques to centralize the control of policy. And it can improve, offer a way to quickly improve route selection and network response time. It offers the ability to provide a level of automation of service provisioning, the configuration of those services, and the overall orchestration of the end to end solution, by abstracting that into rules and policies which can be applied from a control points. And ultimately, it offers the ability to drive business productivity and operational efficiency.
