Reacting to the pressure being applied on enterprise networks through artificial intelligence (AI) and rapidly increasing data movement, Lumen Technologies has launched Intelligent Internet, designed to give customers a digital internet experience that lets them buy connectivity in minutes and scale bandwidth up or down as AI, cloud and business needs change.
As AI and increasingly dynamic workloads put new demands on networks, Lumen said many enterprises are rethinking whether traditional connectivity models can keep pace, representing a broader shift toward connectivity that is more elastic and aligned with how modern businesses consume technology.
Lumen quoted research from IDC revealing that 37% of enterprises saw bandwidth needs grow by more than 50% year over year (YoY), while 29% struggled to align their networks with AI workloads.
Yet, said Lumen, enterprise internet is still largely purchased as fixed capacity, forcing businesses to forecast bandwidth months in advance and provision for peaks that may never come.
Lumen claimed that Intelligent Internet changes that by letting customers adjust capacity as their needs evolve as enterprise connectivity begins to catch up with the cloud era, adding that organisations have been able to scale compute and storage on demand, while internet connectivity remained largely fixed, for years.
“Businesses can easily scale compute and storage up or down as their needs change. Enterprise internet should work the same way,” said Jim Fowler, Lumen chief technology and product officer.
“AI is making demand harder to predict, not easier. Lumen Intelligent Internet gives businesses the ability to respond in real time instead of paying today for capacity they might need tomorrow. We’re redesigning internet service for enterprises with a new model that gives customers greater control over connectivity, capacity and cost as their businesses change.”
Lumen Intelligent Internet is said to be able to drive this change by giving businesses the ability to buy, scale, and manage connectivity with far greater flexibility and real-time control, offering a more flexible model for enterprise internet.
Intelligent Internet will look to offer businesses a digital, programmable experience first delivered through Internet-on Demand which enables users to manage services digitally, provisioning and adjusting connectivity through Lumen Connect or APIs. It offer features designed to make enterprise connectivity easier to buy, activate and manage, including pre-ordering with a new fabric port and term-based pricing that combines predictable costs with on-demand flexibility
Another key element is the ability to match capacity to demand, scaling bandwidth up or down as business needs change, resulting in predictable monthly rate costs with built-in flexibility, offering the freedom to adjust capacity when needed.
The new system is said to be able to maintain secure enterprise-grade control of network and IP services, while DDoS Essentials help protect against large-scale attacks and Lumen Defender blocks known threats.
Early deployments are said to have demonstrated the value of on-demand connectivity. Companies are varied as iVision, SABIS, Skyway Studios and the New York Yankees have already used Intelligent Internet to gain greater flexibility and control over their connectivity.
For the example of the New York Yankees – a sports team that has predictable and enormously divergent day-to-day needs for bandwidth – the baseball team has been using Lumen Intelligent Internet to spend accordingly on peak capacity for game days, then “dramatically” reduce bandwidth and costs when Yankee Stadium is closed to the public. Built on Lumen’s global internet backbone.
Lumen Intelligent Internet is available now to enterprise customers at more than 10 million US business locations, with bandwidth scalable up to 100 Gbps.
