The best is yet to come.Building networks fit for the digital age.

Contents.

Foreword by Chet Patel........................................................................

What does the network of the future look like? ..................................

Dynamic Network Services – BT’s roadmap for the network of the future........................................................................................

Choosing a network partner for the future..........................................

Last word: get ready to network like never before...............................

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Defined by software, not hardware, the network of the future is like nothing we’ve seen before. First, it’ll make much more use of ubiquitous internet connectivity, in addition to secure and resilient private connections, and automatically route traffic the best way for business outcomes.

Second, by swapping physical kit such as routers and firewalls with downloadable software functions and generic hardware, networks will be simpler, faster to change, easy to scale and cheaper to run. Using less energy and materials, is also better for the environment. And it’s fundamental to unlocking digital transformation for organisations in every industry.

Third, it’ll put the CIO in the driving seat, with a sat-nav for the network that lets you direct traffic according to the route and destination you choose, add locations or reconfigure connections, all fully controllable from your console.

What does the network of the future look like?Foreword.

We’re on the brink of the digital age – a radical coming together of the physical and the digital, the Internet of Things, underpinned with universal connectivity for all. Its impact will be immense and the speed of its approach is breathtaking.

While it took many decades for steam power, electricity and telephony to change the way people live and work, each day we can see the rapid transformational power of digital technology in our personal and professional lives. Already, many of us expect to find Wi-Fi and mobile coverage everywhere, to connect to the internet with the same ease and confidence as flicking a light switch.

The prospect this offers for human progress is exhilarating. Even in communities that may lack basic sanitation or reliable power supplies, individuals are already beginning to access education, banking, healthcare and other life-enhancing digital services.

It’s been called the fourth industrial revolution. It’s been called digital disruption. We’re calling it the Digital Possible, because it’s so full of opportunities to enrich the world, change the way people collaborate and communicate across the globe, and of course, reshape the way we all do business.

CIOs and their boardroom colleagues know their organisations need more flexibility and agility to succeed in this digital future. They’re already taking advantage of cloud-based IT services and applications. But there, remains an obstacle: CIOs are struggling to get their infrastructure to deliver the rapid response, easy collaboration and constant innovation the digital business needs.

The arrival of software defined networking and network function virtualisation give us a whole new way to build and manage corporate networks that are fit for the digital age. It’s the sum of the parts; secure and resilient fixed networks plus digitally delivered software to create a dynamic network service.

By using software instead of hardware to create and control the network, SDN/NFV makes wide area networking more flexible, affordable and easier to manage. It lets you fine-tune the network to match your organisation’s needs at any time.

With our Cloud of Clouds strategy, we are already enabling businesses to take full advantage of cloud computing and services. Now, with our new secure and resilient networking vision and our Dynamic Network Services roadmap, we’re helping CIOs extend all the flexibility and agility of the cloud to their global communications infrastructure, and build a business that can flourish in the digital age.

Chet Patel,President, Global Portfolio and Marketing.

What will it mean in practice? • For the CIO: more self-service

and less manual engineering.

• For the CFO: more flexible commercial contracts and lower operational costs.

• For the CEO and the business at large: the freedom to run with new ideas, to innovate without restriction.

Here are just some of the broader business benefits we anticipate.• Reshape and grow your business in any direction or location. With a much

more flexible infrastructure, you’ll be able to expand/change your network easily and quickly, in line with market demand or business needs.

• Accelerated innovation in the business. Easily set up temporary, pop-up connections for digital pilots and local projects to encourage digital experimentation.

• Deliver a great end user experience. The network will automatically route traffic for the best results. (Critical data travels in seconds on high-speed links, while lower priority traffic and applications travel over the internet).

• Reach previously unreachable locations. You can safely bring any location (local, global, national) with internet connectivity into the corporate network.

• Make sure your data doesn’t go somewhere it shouldn’t. You can set up rules to control what goes where and make sure you comply with regulation.

• Create a network tailored to your business. No need for the cost and complexity of a bespoke solution.

• Management of your entire network without the overhead of a specialist network team. You can set up new sites and make changes in real-time, from your own self-service dashboard.

• Get better value from your network. Automation and self-service bring down costs and boost efficiency in the IT department.

• Keep applications and core systems up to date. Updates are delivered virtually from a central store to every location. No need to call out an engineer.

• Get secure, easy access to cloud services. BT’s network connects to major third party cloud providers, giving customers greater security and performance. And our Cloud of Clouds approach combines flexibility with control.

• Free up more time for the CIO to be the strategic and innovative technology leader the boardroom expects.

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Back to the future.Do you remember what the telephone used to be like? Fixed to the wall with a cable, it provided very reliable and high quality voice calls round-the-clock. But that’s pretty much all it did. Adding a new extension or answering service took time and money.

Compare that with what we can now do from our smartphone. Think about all the physical things it replaces: cameras, clocks, calculators, compass, CD player and speakers, along with cabling and power supplies. All that hardware is now software. We easily switch from one thing to another, quickly adding and deleting services.

That’s the future of networking.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) – the basics.Software defined networking and network function virtualisation replace traditional branch routers with software-based functions, making separate, standard internet connections act like a private, dedicated circuit.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides software-based control of network connectivity, making it much quicker and easier to make changes.

Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) turns network hardware into software functions that run on standard server technology.

Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) applies SDN techniques to virtual private networks (VPNs), the core corporate network at the heart of every major organisation.

Software defined networking brings all the flexibility and cost benefits of the cloud to corporate networking.

Dynamic Network Services – BT’s roadmap for the network of the future.

To bring about the network of the future, we’re investing in our own network and developing a richer set of services for customers, based on SDN/NFV technology. We’re also wrapping these with new self-service models and more flexible commercial contracts.

It’s the sum of its parts.Secure and resilient fixed networks + digitally delivered software = Dynamic Network Services from BT.

Investment in our own network includes:• more capacity. Our global network already reaches more

than 198 countries and territories via some 5,000 Points of Presence (PoPs). We’re increasing its capacity to give customers the faster speeds they need to transfer large amounts of data. Already, 100M/bits is now the average port size that we deliver, and we’re getting more and more requests for 10G/bits services.

• more access options. Because every corporate network is unique, we have a broad range of access options from Ethernet and optical fibre to IP connectivity, so you can create the right hybrid solution. And we not only provide near-complete global internet coverage, but also manage multiple ISP relationships on your behalf.

• more data centre locations connected. As part of our Cloud of Clouds strategy, we’ve extended our network connectivity to 250 data centre locations, so customers can connect to either their own equipment, or cloud-based application providers, in a fraction of the time it’d usually take. And at a much lower cost.

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Connect Intelligence IWAN.Our Connect Intelligence IWAN service was the first truly global solution that included Cisco IWAN. It offloads traffic onto the internet, freeing up bandwidth, whilst speeding up applications across your network. It comes with a management wrap that ensures it works from day one, and gives you great visibility into network performance and day-to-day control. BT is one of Cisco’s key strategic partners and we’re already working on new developments in this area.

Bandwidth and virtual services on demand. We’re introducing NFV and SDN at our cloud service nodes so you’ll be able to orchestrate changes to your network capacity and applications from a self-service portal. If you urgently need more bandwidth, you can order it in a couple of clicks. Similarly, you’ll have access to a BT apps store where you can order and activate network functions such as firewalls, network acceleration and optimisation. It means you’ll make changes in minutes that previously took weeks.

Agile Connect – our new SD-WAN service.We are bringing to market a bold new SD-WAN service, Agile Connect. Offering control of both on-premise and network applications, Agile Connect will be an economical way to benefit from self-service and automatic network configuration. We expect it’ll appeal to customers who want to balance cost with security, performance and scale. Agile Connect will integrate with our new virtual CPE offering, Agile CPE (vCPE), to provide ‘branch-in-a-box’ service, enabling the CIO to introduce new networking where and when appropriate.

Agile CPE. No longer will you need to buy, install and maintain separate network hardware from every vendor. Our Agile CPE offering using virtual CPE will replace today’s physical routers, application optimisers and firewalls (and their associated delivery and installation costs) with network applications hosted on-site on a single generic device. It’ll let you deliver a unique set of virtual services from multiple vendors to individual sites.

More flexible commercial models.Different times call for different commercial models and we’ll be introducing more pay-as-you-go, utility-style payment options. You’ll also be able to ‘try before you buy’ our network-embedded applications.

Our Dynamic Network Services roadmap includes investments in:

Dynamic Network Services in action.

For retailing.• Set up a new network in days and connect a new store in minutes to deliver store applications and back office services

through the cloud.

• Scale the network to meet seasonal demand without complication or delay.

For financial services.• Flex bandwidth based on traffic demand to deal with market volatility or periods of high volumes of trading.

For manufacturing.• Eliminate the threat of any service disruption by delivering core updates via network separation.

For distribution and logistics. • Build networks across remote areas and isolated locations, more simply and cheaply.

For mergers and acquisitions.• Overcome the challenge of integrating networks and applications by bringing together multiple WANs or simply

expanding existing branch network solutions into the new estate.

An intelligent hybrid network has the potential to give the CIO greater control of their overall network and its performance and security, freeing up resource for their teams to focus on strategic challenges that drive key business benefits.

Martin Tatham, Chief Architect, Global Services.

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Last word: get ready to network like never before.

BT’s vision is to give CIOs more control over a network which is more adaptable, more flexible and with lower hardware costs. We’ll enable them to deploy both network and software services in minutes, anywhere in the world. We’re going to combine the best elements of existing networks with the benefits of a truly cloud-based, intelligent solution.

Keith Langridge, Vice President of Network Services.

Choosing a network partner for the future.

There’s a strong wind of change blowing through corporate networking. But in the move to put together a communications infrastructure that’s right for the digital age, we mustn’t lose the essentials of what makes a great network – resilience, capacity, security and global reach. And the know-how to make the new work with the old.BT has been in the networking business a long time. We were in at the beginning of several generations of new communication technologies and SDN/NFV is no exception. We worked on its creation and continue to develop the technology in partnership with other global telcos and leading IT vendors to make sure it delivers for our customers.

In the network of the future, ‘how you do it’ will be as important as ‘what you do’, and in this, choosing a network partner will be critical. So here’s why we think BT is the right partner for any business that’s ready to rebuild its network for the future.

• We’ve been a leader in networking since it was invented.

• We own and operate one of the world’s largest high performance networks, reaching 198 countries and territories.

• Around the world, major corporations, governments and public agencies trust the security and resilience of our network with their most critical data and services.

• We can offer truly hybrid packages that combine the best of old and new technologies to make a networking solution that fits each customer.

• Our customers can manage all their global network services in one management wrap, all through a single portal.

• Dynamic Network Services sits at the heart of our Cloud of Clouds strategy. Together, they give organisations a clear way to embrace all that’s best about networking in the digital age.

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We don’t want old-style fixed network infrastructure to prevent businesses from making the most of new opportunities.

The existing network shouldn’t hamper investment in new ideas and technologies because of the expenditure required to upgrade it. The existing network shouldn’t be a ticking time bomb – a risk to the business. We want your network to be the rock on which you can build an agile, smart and responsive organisation that makes the most of the possibilities of the digital era.

Software defined networking gives us all the freedom to reposition, reinvent and renew our networks – to network like never before.

And wherever your business is in its network lifecycle, our Dynamic Network Services roadmap and investments will help you advance into the world of software defined networking and shape your infrastructure for the digital future.

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September 2016