Sources close to the deal say OBS, the division formerly known as Equant, currently bases its Application SLA offering on technology from Ipanema rival Packeteer Inc, but the optimization/acceleration technology merely underscores an app-specific SLA, rather than forming the basis of a managed service.
Paris-based Ipanema, meanwhile, already had a relationship with OBS’s parent France Telecom, which deployed its technology for domestic WAN customers prior to the reorganization of the group structure, in which OBS took responsibility for all the business services inside of France as well as internationally.
The sources said that in selecting Ipanema over Packeteer or other vendors to support the managed service, OBS was swayed by what the French ISV calls its cooperative optimization capability. This refers to the fact that the individual devices deployed at each corporate site, which Ipanema calls its IP/engines, can talk to each other independently, without going through a central hub, for the purposes of optimizing comms in an any-to-any MPLS network. Also said to be important in the decision was Ipanema’s ability to carry out optimization at remote sites without deploying any of its technology locally, or what it calls tele-optimization.
Ipanema is about to launch an additional management overlay to its flagship Ipanema Management Software Suite to enable it to offer a service provider flavor of the product, with integration into back-end OSS/BSS systems such as RADIUS and TACACS for user authentication for support of multiple customers from a single infrastructure.
The OBS announcement will mean three of the four global players in managed WAN services based on their own infrastructure will also have a managed optimization capability. BTGS has the AOS module in its Application Assured Infrastructure service offering, and in May Verizon Communications Inc launched its Application Acceleration Suite, which is provided on a white-label basis by optimization/acceleration service provider Netli Inc. That will leave AT&T Inc still to define its strategy on managed WAN optimization and app acceleration.
