NETWORKS

Crossbeam Systems continues to make strong inroads into the service provider market as demand for its X-Series security platform continues to grow. 2010 was a milestone year, with 11 of the top 12 global carriers relying on Crossbeam to deploy a consolidated, scalable and high-performance security architecture that protects their networks and provides the infrastructure they require to efficiently deliver cloud-based security services.

Successful deployments of Crossbeam’s technology in 2010 include Telefόnica SA’s O2, the UK’s leading mobile phone operator; NTT Communications (NTT Com), the international and long distance service arm of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation); and Portugal Telecom, the largest telecommunications provider in Portugal. Moreover, during the last twelve months, leading telecommunications carriers in North America, Latin America, Australia and Europe expanded their existing Crossbeam deployments.

“Service providers face enormous pressure to consolidate their data centers and run leaner, more cost-efficient operations while simultaneously accommodating the explosion in data traffic volumes and customer demand for fast, secure services,” said John Grady, senior research analyst, Security Products and Services, IDC. “Vendors who offer more consolidated, virtualized security models that can address these requirements are seeing increased demand for their solutions.”

Crossbeam’s X-Series security platform was developed to meet the rigorous performance, availability and scalability demands of service providers and mobile operators, enabling them to reliably manage traffic over high-speed networks as security and network demands change. Crossbeam virtualizes the delivery of best-of-breed security applications from leading partners, including Check Point, IBM, Imperva, McAfee, Sophos, Sourcefire, Trend Micro and Websense, at the industry’s lowest total cost to operate—up to 70 percent lower than competitors.

Carriers have come to rely on Crossbeam to address the cost and complexity of managing security within their networks, helping them to:

• Bolster smartphone security: Compounding the explosion in the number of smartphone users is the fact that each device can open multiple, concurrent Internet sessions, requiring network operators to scale to protect millions of concurrent sessions. To address this issue, O2 turned to Crossbeam, which offered the only solution that could easily handle the more than 6 million sessions operating concurrently on O2’s networks.
  
  “When you look at high-performance firewalls, there are very few vendors that can effectively do network address translations (NAT) under heavy traffic loads,” said Ian Waggott, head of technical security for Telefόnica O2. “Crossbeam’s X-Series running Check Point’s firewall was by far the best solution on the market, delivering high availability and throughput under real-world conditions, even with NAT enabled.”

• Consolidate and optimize their security infrastructure: Carriers are eager to reap the promise of security virtualization to cost-effectively scale their data centers and improve efficiencies, without sacrificing performance. Crossbeam was selected by NTT Com because it can deliver the scalable, high-performance security architecture required to support NTT Com’s initiative for the integration and consolidation of its internal information and communication technologies infrastructure. Since deploying the X-Series, NTT Com has been able to cut the number of network security devices by more than half, resulting in a simpler, better performing security infrastructure and a significant reduction in the associated IT management burden and operational and maintenance costs.
• Deliver cloud-based security services: Delivering a successful cloud-based security service requires a cloud infrastructure that can easily implement the security policies of each customer and provides the robust performance and flexibility they need to meet changing network demands. Portugal Telecom selected Crossbeam’s state-of-the-art platform to deliver managed security services to its enterprise customers through PT-PRIME, a Portugal Telecom company offering a portfolio of IP-based services.

“Service providers face a difficult task trying to meet customer demand in a world that’s nearly always connected. More than ever, security remains a top priority,” said Jim Freeze, Crossbeam’s vice president of marketing and business development. “Crossbeam has emerged as top competitor in the carrier security market because we continue to invest in the X-Series and innovate to deliver the enhanced networking capabilities and security infrastructure these customers require to support fast and secure delivery of data over their networks.”