Networking company Ciena and Colt have entered into a partnership to extend Colt’s portfolio of managed security services.
The two companies will improve the performance, reliability and security of Colt’s managed High Speed Services portfolio with integrated wire-speed encryption capabilities from Ciena’s Packet-Optical Transport portfolio, they said.
Colt said that it is deploying offerings from Ciena’s 5000 Series throughout its regional managed metro networks to power its encryption data connectivity services, in 14 major European markets – including Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
The company said that the new offering eliminates the need for standalone network elements dedicated solely to the encryption function.
Ciena’s 5000 Series offers FIPS-certified, in-skin encryption capabilities are protocol agnostic and operate independently from applications, said the company. This allows Colt to run multiple protocols, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Infiniband and OTN, over the same encrypted link.
Colt Enterprise Services Managed Networking solutions manager Stefano Maifreni said that with increasing numbers of customers focused on regulatory compliance and mitigating security breaches, the company is seeing enormous growth of interest in high-speed, encrypted data connectivity services.
"Our new partnership with Ciena allows Colt to further extend our managed security portfolio and gives us the opportunity to exploit the advantage of a low-latency, integrated encryption solution," Maifreni said.
Ciena Northern and Eastern Europe sales vice-president Peter Newcombe said that with enterprises placing more value on the security of their intellectual property and data there is an opportunity to help them safeguard critical data for compliancy requirements, to maintain the integrity of firms’ business models and protect company brands.
Newcombe added: "The unique encryption capabilities offered by Ciena’s 5000 Series give operators like Colt the opportunity to take early share in the growing security-oriented networking market and quickly establish competitive advantage, allowing them to attract new customers in key vertical sectors such as finance, healthcare, military, government or education."
