BT International has expanded its Global Fabric network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform to provide enterprise CIOs with what it assures will be predictable, high-performance routing and consistent security enforcement at scale.
The enhanced security comes from integrating Security Service Edge (SSE) technology from Cisco, Fortinet, Netskope and Zscaler. By doing so, BT International believes it can support multinational customers’ rapid deployment and scaling of artificial intelligence (AI) agents, cloud applications and autonomous digital workflows.
Global Fabric is designed to connect the multiple clouds businesses use for their applications and data with users, such as customers and employees, and will allow them to take advantage of the new wave of digital automation AI, making it easier and quicker to securely connect employees, customers and devices to apps and digital services.
BT is confident that Global Fabric customers will benefit from scalable, secure, high-capacity and resilient connectivity, ready to meet the growing and complex demands of networks. It added that whereas with legacy networks, setting up or making changes to connectivity services could take weeks, with Global Fabric, it happens in an instant, helping businesses manage unpredictable, AI-driven spikes in data traffic.
Running on the network underlay will be an AI-powered digital orchestration layer. Global Fabric will be deterministic, with BT supplying a predictable application experience by selecting the optimal end-to-end paths for customers’ applications and workloads as they move to and between multiple clouds and users.
Options will include a BT-enhanced internet service, point-to-point Ethernet, multipoint Ethernet and MPLS, and these will be offered in bandwidth increments of 1Mbps up to 100Gbps. Connectivity will be interchangeable on the same port, offering greater flexibility than current networks.
Global Fabric’s core network hardware is installed in carrier-neutral facilities such as large datacentres where cloud providers, software-as-a-service companies and network operators provide access to their services.
Changing traffic patterns
Putting the expansion into context, BT said that as organisations adopt AI at scale, traffic patterns across the network are dramatically changing. It noted that a growing number of users, AI agents, applications and devices are demanding more bandwidth, lower latency and access to multiple clouds from more locations. As a result, it said, many CIOs now find that traditional network and security architectures lack the performance, scale, visibility and control needed to support these new demands.
By providing optimised connectivity between Global Fabric and SSE solutions from leading suppliers Cisco, Fortinet, Netskope and Zscaler, BT International claims it can enable customers to select more predictable, high-performance routes for their traffic, improving application responsiveness and delivering the best user experience.
This is said to be made possible by Global Fabric’s cloud-centric architecture. Unlike traditional SSE deployments, where traffic may cross many third-party internet networks before reaching a security inspection point, Global Fabric provides more direct connectivity to a supplier’s security and cloud ecosystems.
By integrating SSE with Global Fabric, BT International says it can offer customers: enhanced software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and SSE (SASE) service quality via internet exchange point (IXP) peering; stronger supplier ecosystem integration with peering enabling tight integration with infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, SaaS providers and security suppliers; improved network resilience and path diversity between Global Fabric sites and SSE PoPs; improved quality of experience for users; and consistent global security and networking experience.
Other key technological highlights of the expanded platform include an AI-ready foundation; increased flexibility and choice; and enhanced performance. For example, direct, low-latency connectivity is possible to leading supplier SSE ecosystems at strategic cloud locations while the fabric enables multinational organisations to deploy their preferred managed SASE/SSE framework. The platform also bypasses third-party ISP hops via direct Internet Exchange Point (IXP) peering to optimise application responsiveness.
The capability is the latest step in the evolution of the platform, which is intended to offer consistent security, optimised application performance and proactive network management in a single controlled environment built on a brand-new network underlay.
Yash Jethani, principal analyst of research firm ISG, said: “The convergence of networking and security is ultimately about enabling trust at scale. Global enterprises increasingly require a cloud-delivered operating model that provides resilient connectivity, consistent security enforcement and simplified operations across users, applications, AI agents and digital ecosystems worldwide. The ability to deliver that trust consistently across markets will be a key competitive differentiator.”
Matt Swinden, managing director of strategy and product at BT International, said: “Agentic AI is changing what organisations need from networks. AI agents depend on secure, reliable access to applications, data and cloud services in real time, creating new demands for performance, resilience and security.”
