PCCW Global plans expansion to deliver enterprise, edge applications, NFV and IoT enablement to customers

• Integrated Canonical and CPLANE NETWORKS solution will deliver high-performance, elastic infrastructure

• Removes the complexity of multiple systems and OpenStack APIs streamlining service integration and leveraging existing services

• Platform will provide the ability for OpenStack tenant networks to integrate with PCCW Global’s MPLS VPN and Global Internet Access (GIA) services

HKT (SEHK: 6823) –HONG KONG / CAMBRIDGE and LONDON, U.K., May 11, 2017

PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications service provider, is collaborating with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu and CPLANE NETWORKS, the leader in multi-site OpenStack cloud orchestration, to create new cloud services for its customers.

Implementation at PCCW Global’s two next generation data centers in Reston, VA, US and Hong Kong is currently underway, with plans to expand to other strategic cities around the world over time. Cloud services provided in these centers are designed to enable “self-service” provisioning to accelerate service deployment for customers as well as seamless integration with and easy consumption of existing PCCW Global integrated communications solutions.

Mr. Bret Rehart, Chief Network and Information Officer of PCCW Global, said,

“As applications continue to move closer to the network edge, the demands for workload agility and mobility are becoming increasingly important for our customers. Customers have needs for new applications for NFV and Internet of Things (IoT) and want them faster, at the right location, and tailored to their specific needs. Our aim is to provide dynamic network and cloud based services that not only automatically flex in response to our customers’ policies and service level commitments, but also self-adjust based on rapidly changing network conditions. The approach we have taken, working with Canonical and CPLANE NETWORKS, will enable us to deliver a level of performance, scalability and automation that would otherwise be unachievable with traditional service configuration solutions.”

The delivery of additional value-added services such as security, video or application suites can be easily added on-demand as well as integrated with connectivity to public clouds and other infrastructure to create enhanced, enterprise-level services, a truly hybrid private to public cloud offering.

Using Ubuntu OpenStack and CPLANE’s Multi-Site Manager, Canonical and CPLANE NETWORKS will deliver unmatched performance and scalability for a truly global OpenStack cloud.

Canonical’s Juju Charms will also extend the Canonical / CPLANE OpenStack solution by providing an automated mechanism to deploy base OpenStack cloud services, and enables a full ecosystem of value-added services for enterprise and edge applications, NFV and IoT enablement.

Mr. Brandon Williams, Chief Executive Officer of CPLANE NETWORKS, said,

“The two great market forces of today, the proliferation of mobile / IoT devices and the conquering wave of public clouds, are growing at a phenomenal rate. But they are growing apart; the first is becoming more distributed and fragmented while the latter is becoming cheaper and more centralized. Canonical and CPLANE NETWORKS have bridged this gap with a hyper-distributed cloud solution for service providers. PCCW Global will be the first to market with an edge-cloud offering for the applications that will power this new frontier.”

Mr. Anand Krishnan, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Cloud, Canonical, said,

“Canonical in partnership with CPLANE NETWORKS is enabling PCCW Global to deliver new cloud services. These services will be supplied to the edge of the network, meeting customer’s growing need for services at scale and speed with the economic benefit of an automated OpenStack deployment. Using Ubuntu OpenStack, the most widely deployed OpenStack in production clouds today, and CPLANE NETWORKS’ Multi-Site Manager, Canonical and CPLANE NETWORKS are delivering unmatched performance and scalability for a truly global OpenStack cloud.”

About HKT

HKT (SEHK: 6823) is Hong Kong's premier telecommunications service provider and leading operator in fixed-line, broadband and mobile communication services. It meets the needs of the Hong Kong public and local and international businesses with a wide range of services including local telephony, local data and broadband, international telecommunications, mobile, and other telecommunications businesses such as customer premises equipment sales, outsourcing, consulting, and contact centers.

HKT offers a unique quadruple-play experience in Hong Kong delivering media content on its fixed-line, broadband Internet access and mobile platforms jointly with its parent company, PCCW Limited.

HKT also provides a range of innovative and smart living services beyond connectivity to make the daily lives of customers more convenient, whether they are at home, in the workplace, or on the go.

About CPLANE NETWORKS

CPLANE NETWORKS is a software-only solution that automates and manages the orchestration of large scale and hyper-distributed cloud infrastructure. Built on a telco-grade service provisioning platform, CPLANE orchestrates cloud infrastructure (virtual and physical) for OpenStack and other virtualized infrastructure managers (VIMs). CPLANE delivers high-performance virtual cloud networks within data centers and manages the orchestration of customer-centric clouds that span multiple sites, all with integrated network connectivity between sites and to public clouds. CPLANE’s orchestration platform manages large-scale clouds within enterprise and service provider data centers as well as thousands of highly-distributed micro-sites for NFV and latency-sensitive mobile edge applications such as IoT.

About Canonical

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for container, cloud, scale-out and hyperscale computing. 65% of large-scale OpenStack deployments are on Ubuntu, using both KVM and the pure-container LXD hypervisor for the world’s fastest private clouds. Canonical is trusted by many of the largest telecoms in the world like AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Tele2, and Verizon to help deploy and manage NFV/VNF solutions on OpenStack.

Canonical leads the development of Juju, the model-driven operations system, and MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service), which creates a physical server cloud and IPAM for amazing data centre operational efficiency. Canonical provides enterprise support and services for commercial users of Ubuntu. Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.