Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) has been selected to offer its portfolio of customer-location IT solutions to BT. This allows the global communications services provider to offer a broad range of new managed services to help its multinational enterprise customers deploy applications and services in an agile and flexible way.

BT will offer the Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform (VEP), a family of networking-specific universal Customer Premises Equipment (uCPE), as a converged networking, IoT and IT application platform. With the Dell EMC VEP, BT can help customers automate, simplify and accelerate the flow of data for their critical on-premises workloads.

As an uCPE edge device available in different form factors and performance levels, the Dell EMC VEP helps service providers offer both consolidation of hardware and choice of applications at distributed customer locations. It reduces the need for dedicated appliances or servers at every location, offering a common platform to host services such as SD-WAN, security functions, IoT gateways and distributed applications, making the deployment of key applications quicker and easier.

By combining the Dell Technologies industry-leading on-premises platforms with BT’s networking and security expertise, BT customers can benefit from a robust and secure end-to-end digital infrastructure. This will enable integration of WAN, W-LAN, SD-WAN, and Cloud under a single operational and security framework, greatly simplifying deployment and management of IT infrastructure while allowing customers to maintain control and agility.

In addition, BT will support extended Edge use cases through Dell Technologies industry-leading server, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure.

BT is already working with several customers to onboard their business-critical applications on to the new platform.

Many enterprises are investing in hybrid compute and distributed IoT models to ensure performance, security and availability of their digital infrastructure. Using software-defined architectures, virtualization, open standards and APIs, they can respond to new market opportunities more quickly and efficiently while hardening their critical data and applications against disaster, disruption and digital threats.

“BT helps multinational organizations deliver great user experience by managing and integrating services globally and at scale,” said Scott Cowling, network solutions director, Global, BT.  “As their trusted advisor, we recognize they want choice when it comes to deploying technology to achieve their goals. With Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform, we are providing not only choice, but also ways to de-risk technology decisions and speed up and remove complexity from their global network service deployments.”

“Partnering with BT on its wide-reaching Dynamic Network Services program will help provide customers more choice, security, resilience, service and agility in the roll-out of networks based on the latest software defined networking (SDN) and edge networking technologies,” said Kevin Shatzkamer, vice president, Service Provider Solutions, Dell Technologies

Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform

Built with advanced intelligence for network virtualization and software-defined architecture, the Dell EMC VEP family helps both service providers and enterprises modernize and future-proof WAN operations. The VEP features Intel processors specifically designed to improve network performance including Intel® QuickAssist Technology to accelerate encryption and Intel Data Plane Development Kit to accelerate packet processing. These features help enhance compute resources and provide efficiency for growing security workloads.

The VEP is available in two model series, each with a range of configurations to help customers in both large and small locations:

• VEP4600 series – a higher-performance, modular version that can handle the virtualization of several network functions — ideal for central locations
• VEP1405 series – a compact, low-cost, low power consumption fixed-form factor option ideal for remote locations

For large operators and enterprises with multiple locations, Dell EMC can help smooth procurement, deployment and support through its global supply chain, manufacturing scale, logistics and support services with a single point of contact and accountability.

Additional resources

• The disruptive nature of the Edge, a blog from Andy Rowland, head of digital manufacturing, Global, BT.
• To find out more on how Dell Technologies and BT are further collaborating to help customers implement winning IoT strategies for Industry 4.0, click here to register for the upcoming webinar.
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