Summary Bullets:
• BT is establishing how its Global Fabric Platform stands out in the NaaS marketplace with its extensive reach, focus on managed services and tooling and automation around routing and security.
• BT also has a very unusual proposition to stand out with its sustainability features, including its Carbon Network Dashboard
BT recently held an event in Sydney showcasing the latest updates to its Global Fabric Platform. Almost a year since the company announced its answer to the emerging network as a service market, BT’s positioning and differentiation in an increasingly crowded landscape is starting to crystalize.
BT has invested in expanding its ecosystem of on-net cloud providers, data centers and SaaS partners, elevating it above carrier competitors in terms of ecosystem reach. BT claims Global Fabric will be able to access 74% of global on-ramps for the three leading hyperscalers, reaching 72% of AWS’s footprint, 85% of Azure’s, and 65% of Google Cloud platforms once roll out is complete. This enables BT to pre-integrate with 630 cloud products for easy setup of connections into leading SaaS providers or Office365, as examples. The platform also extends to 700 data centers worldwide through partnerships with leading providers like Equinix and Digital Realty but also with Tier 2 providers in key markets (e.g., Next DC in Australia). BT’s reach puts it above carrier peers in total on-net locations and is aligned more with the reach of pure-play NaaS specialists like Epsilon, Console Connect, and Megaport. This extensive reach helps customers enhance performance such as network latency and avoid variable costs associated with egress to public internet. However, unlike the pure-play NaaS providers, BT also has a strong focus on offering services that extend beyond middle-mile connectivity. For example, it offers Global Fabric as a fully managed service (as well as co-managed and DIY). It has also built in tooling for enhanced control and automation, seeking to enable routing based on criteria like data sovereignty or energy consumption.
Overall, BT is trying to stand out through its focus on sustainability. It claims the Global Fabric platform is 79% more carbon efficient than its traditional MPLS. Further, while not directly part of the Global Fabric platform, BT offers all Global Fabric customers access to its Carbon Network Dashboard product, free of charge. The Carbon Network Dashboard is a service that uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), CLI method, and Rest API to extract power data from devices, which then can be overlayed against data from local power grids related to carbon intensity (e.g., emissions from power generation in Singapore), to calculate a per device carbon impact. The platform monitors these figures in real time and can highlight the most carbon intensive points in a network and make recommendations on device replacement and other ways to limit emissions. BT is continuing to work with different device vendors to ensure their products can be on-boarded to the platform and compatibility will continue to expand.
Nearly a year since its launch BT is now establishing what makes the Global Fabric Platform stand out from other recent NaaS offerings. However, competition is fierce and will get more intense as other competitors are introducing similar offerings (e.g., Orange Evolution Platform and Singtel CUBS). Providers continue to compete around which clouds, data centers and other ecosystem partners can be reached on-net, flexible commercial terms, available connectivity types, and where PoPs will be available. BT offers some differentiators, but the market is still emerging, and market adoption is still limited. More market engagement around customer wins and case studies can help raise BT’s profile in this competitive space.
