BT has announced its Global Fabric platform, a new network-as-a-service (NaaS) offering focused on boosting employee connectivity amid increased use of AI.
The firm said Global Fabric will make it easier and faster to create secure connections between staff, customers and devices with digital applications and services hosted on multiple clouds.
Such digital applications and services include, among other things, artificial intelligence tools that will become an increasingly important part of the IT infrastructure. Describing its new service, BT said it was prepared to meet the demands of innovative AI technologies.
The company compared its new offering to legacy networks where changes to connectivity services can take weeks to configure and deploy. By comparison, the changes made to Global Fabric happen “in an instant”, according to BT, and will help businesses manage spikes in data traffic that may be caused by AI or generative AI tools.
BT also presented a demonstration of Global Fabric's 'digital management portal' which will allow IT teams to learn about configuring and optimizing the platform. Staff will be able to experiment with application programmable interfaces (APIs) to integrate Global Fabric into their broader toolset.
“BT's Global Fabric will help customers move to the cloud,” said Colin Bannon, CTO of BT Business.
“It will give them the option to choose the best cloud locations in the world to interconnect with their customers, partners and suppliers, making it easier for them to do business not only today but also tomorrow,” he added.
After a two-month live testing period, the platform is now operational and the first Global Fabric services will be launched in early 2025.
The telco has so far installed “points of presence” in more than 45 major data centers, and customers without access to those data centers will be able to request new links before early next year.
Other companies are similarly focused on NaaS: HPE's bid for Juniper Networks Earlier this year, for example, the company attempted to compete more effectively in the NaaS market, with Juniper CEO Rami Rahim arguing at the time that the collaboration would lead to a boost in AI-native networking.