IZO FAQ

A. INTRODUCING THE IZO PLATFORM

B. IZO INTERNET WAN

C. IZO PRIVATE
D. IZO PUBLIC

A. Introducing the IZO platform

4. What services are part of the IZO platform?

1. What is the IZO platform?

IZO is the most comprehensive enterprise WAN and
cloud enablement platform available today that combines
the public internet uniquely engineered for predictable
routing, together with enterprise private and public cloud
connectivity and interconnected data centres
2. What is different about IZO?
IZO is a global platform built on Tata Communications
truly global Tier-1 IP network, Global MPLS and Ethernet
Network spanning across 190+ countries. IZO combines
the public internet uniquely engineered for predictable
routing, together with enterprise private and public cloud
connectivity and interconnected data centres to deliver
the most comprehensive enterprise WAN and cloud
enablement platform available today.
In summary, IZO:
Is the most comprehensive enterprise WAN and cloud
enablement platform on the market.
Brings together Tata Communications global Tier 1
IP network with an ecosystem of over 20 network
providers covering 34countries and serving 85% of
the worlds GDP countries, the three largest cloud
platforms Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft
Azure, and Google Cloud Platform and over 50 data
centres across the globe
Is predictable, secure and reliable
Just works in a straightforward way because weve
done all the complicated work up front.
Combines the public internet uniquely engineered to
deliver business-class SLAs and encryption, with enterprise cloud connectivity and interconnected data centres to deliver a total cloud enablement solution
3. What business need does IZO address?

The cloud is the new IT architecture for the enterprise.

However, the challenge is that the enterprise WAN was
not built for the cloud. It is expensive, inflexible and difficult to scale up and down and the right parts must be
assembled from a variety of service providers making
for a complex mix of suppliers and supplier agreements.
Meanwhile public internet was never built for business
in terms of reliability and predictable performance. The
IZO enterprise WAN and cloud enablement platform
addresses these current and emerging business challenges holistically and at a global level on the back of
Tata Communications global network infrastructure

The IZO enterprise WAN and cloud enablement platform

currently encompasses the below three services:
a. IZO Internet WAN
A global Internet-based WAN service that gives businesses
the reliability, flexibility and predictability of a private network with the global reach of the Internet for the first time.
b. IZO Private
Through global partnered interconnect agreements
with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, Tata
Communications IZO Private connects businesses
across network, cloud services and data centres over
MPLS and Ethernet through one single provider globally.
c. IZO Public
A cloud enablement service that provides a dedicated
and deterministic route for Tata Communications
enterprise customers by tagging their data packets for
pre-determined delivery over the public internet.
It also provides a dedicated and deterministic route for
Tata Communications enterprise customers to reach
cloud service providers including Google Cloud Platform.
5. How many partners does Tata Communications have on
its IZO platform at launch?
Bringing together an ecosystem of over 20 network
providers covering 34 countries and serving 85% of the
worlds GDP, the three largest cloud platforms Amazon
Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google
Cloud Platform and over 50 data centres across the
globe, Tata Communications is working in partnership to
deliver the most comprehensive enterprise WAN and
cloud enablement platform available today.
The list of service providers includes but not limited to
the following:
1.

ATM S.A.

2. China Broadband Communications Co. Ltd

3. Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited
4. Kordia
5. KVH Co. Ltd.
6. Neutrona Networks International LLC
7. NOS Comunicaes, S.A.
8. PLDT
9. PT Indosat Tbk
10. Rogers Communications
11. Starhub Ltd
12. Talk Talk Communications Limited
13. TIME dotCom Berhad
14. Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC
15. Viettel

2014 Tata Communications. All Rights Reserved. TATA COMMUNICATIONS and TATA are trademarks of Tata Sons Limited in certain countries.

6. What are the future plans for the IZO platform?

We have aggressive expansion plans for the IZO platform and we will be rapidly expanding our coverage and
service features while executing an agile go-to-market
plan with our IZO Partners.
For example, we will be expanding the IZO Internet WAN
service to 100 countries by 2016.
7. What has been the R&D investment in developing the
IZO platform?
The IZO platform deployed a new process to handle
routing announcement between multiple service providers and Tata Communications AS6453 IP backbone is the
central ASN between all service providers networks. We
have invested millions of dollars in developing this truly
global Tier-IP infrastructure spanning six continents and
a global MPLS and Ethernet infrastructure spanning 190+
countries. With such a global scale and complexity, the
platform is considered as a pioneer for internet enterprise
network application.
8. What is Tata Communications right to play in this space?
We have played a role in the network that has revolutionised the way people communicate and collaborate and
the way companies do business. We looked at the world
around us and at our own credentials and realised that we
could spearhead the creation of a network platform and
partnerships that could address fundamental market shifts
that has driven the requirement for cloud adoption
private, public and hybrid.
Today, over 24% of the worlds Internet routes travel
over Tata Communications network and we are the only
Tier-1 provider that is in the top five by routes in five
continents. Weve invested USD 1.19 bn building the only
wholly-owned subsea cable network that circles the globe
and earlier this year, we were recognised by Gartner and
positioned in the leaders quadrant of the Gartner Magic
Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers*.
*Source: Gartner, Inc Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers by
Neil Rickard, Robert F. Mason, March 20th 2014

B. IZO Internet WAN

1. What is IZO Internet WAN?
A first of its kind, IZO Internet WAN is a global Internetbased WAN service that gives businesses the flexibility
and predictability of a private network, with the global
reach of the internet.
2. Why IZO Internet WAN is a worlds first?
IZO Internet WAN is a worlds first. Whilst it is based on
the existing Internet itself, the unique nature of this service
is the combination of Tata Communications leading global
network, together with partnerships with regional service
providers coming together to form a global ecosystem
that makes the Internet business-grade and therefore
more suitable for different enterprise applications.
The global scale of this ecosystem bringing the predictability of a private network to the public internet is
a market first.
3. How does IZO Internet WAN work?
The service works through partner agreements which
agree to route traffic to the core network in a way to
meet predictability requirements.
The setup/arrangement ensures the forward and return
path of the packets from partner A and partner B (for
example) will pass through Tata Communications AS6453
IP backbone to ensure the service quality is maintained at
enterprise grade. Also, we provide value-added-services
including managed encryption service to provide tunnel-less encryption without encrypting the IP header to
preserve the IP header information. The managed encryption platform can support regular key renewal mechanism
to further increase the security level of the packets
between two enterprise end-points.
4. Who is IZO Internet WAN targeted at?
IZO Internet WAN is aimed at companies that are
multi-national and have a diverse set of geographically
distributed offices across multiple locations. It is suited
for companies who need the predictability of a private
network with the global reach of the Internet.
It is highly applicable to sectors like global retail, manufacturing and logistics, but it is really applicable to any
industry with the possible exception of few sub segments
having high dependency on private networks with higher
network security requirements.
5. What are the enterprise business benefits to using IZO
Internet WAN? Is this measurable?
Tata Communications IZO Internet WAN provides deterministic routing of traffic, while guaranteeing end-to-end
SLAs and providing enterprise-grade customer service
and reporting.
Multi-national businesses will now experience faster
deployment times, whilst reducing their total cost of
ownership by up to 30% and foster a new way to capitalise on the cloud evolution.

2014 Tata Communications. All Rights Reserved. TATA COMMUNICATIONS and TATA are trademarks of Tata Sons Limited in certain countries.

6. What is the difference between MPLS and

IZO Internet WAN?
IZO Internet WAN is a public internet based service
whereas MPLS is a private service. Since IZO Internet
WAN is based on public architecture it provides better
reach and is more scalable. It also results in reducing total
cost of ownership of up to 30%.
7. How does IZO Internet WAN address the security
concerns over the internet?
Security is an essential part of managing a network. With
IZO Internet WAN, content is transmitted via dedicated
and determined routing according to defined values and
criticality. That means that critical information can be
handled exclusively via the Tata Communications global
network which ensures the highest levels of security and
high end encryption
IZO Internet WAN offers a CPE based managed encryption offering with multiple rekey, policy and deployment
options which are available across all IZO Internet WAN
countries to ensure maximum security protection.
Tata Communications has a comprehensive suite of managed security service offering ranging from DDoS to
vUTM to address customers security requirements.
8. Does IZO Internet WANs enable stronger and more
measurable SLAs for IP networks?
Yes, IZO Internet WAN allows us to offer enterprises
private connection SLAs across the public internet. The
strength of the connection created by IZO Internet WAN
also enables Tata Communications to begin building
towards per individual, per application SLAs a huge
step forward for user experience.
9. Can IZO Internet WAN connect to mobile?
At the moment 3G connectivity is not reliable enough
to provide the level of service and reliability enterprises
want. Therefore at this stage we have not included
mobile connectivity with the IZO Internet WAN offering.
But mobile connectivity will be one of the coming new
features.
10. What are Tata Communications expansion plans for the
partner ecosystem of IZO Internet WAN?
The goal is to expand the IZO Internet WAN service to
100 countries by 2016.

C. IZO Private
1. What is IZO Private?
IZO Private connects businesses to cloud services over
MPLS or Ethernet through one single provider globally.
Through a global partnered interconnect arrangement
under the AWS Direct Connect program with Amazon
Web Services and Azure ExpressRoute program with
Microsoft, companies now have access to a one-stopshop for end-to-end management to ensure network
performance and end-user experience.
2. How does IZO Private work?
The service works by pre-installing Tata Communications
Ethernet / MPLS access points at the locations where the
cloud service provider resides. Therefore, enterprises who
are connected to our Ethernet / MPLS can build the private connections quickly in high bandwidth requirements.
3. What is the technology that is being leveraged behind
IZO Private?
Ethernet and MPLS. The significance lies on interconnect agreements with cloud platform providers such as
Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services in different
regions and with different private network options. This
creates the single ecosystem and one-stop-shop.
4. What are the benefit of IZO Private to enterprises?
IZO Private gives customers guaranteed network performance and stable application performance, with just turn
on the cloud access for MLPS and Ethernet customers. It
also delivers fast provisioning, increased productivity and
ensures privacy and data protection with private connections over Ethernet and MPLS. Specifically:
a. Extending private cloud to public infrastructure.
Therefore better flexibility and agility to turn on IT
resources to handle peak loading requirements
b. Consistent performance from an enterprises business
premises to cloud service providers with the use of
dedicated Ethernet or MPLS, supported by service
level guarantees
c. Enterprise branch offices can access applications
running in cloud service providers with similar performance as an in-house data centre. Boosting staff
productivity

11. Will widespread use of deterministic routing adversely

impact the performance on the public internet for
other users?
No, we dont believe it will have an impact on public
internet performance for other users other than more
efficiently managing critical traffic flows away from the
public internet and potentially releasing some level of
bandwidth there.

2014 Tata Communications. All Rights Reserved. TATA COMMUNICATIONS and TATA are trademarks of Tata Sons Limited in certain countries.

5. Who is the customer of IZO Private?

a. Primary: businesses who are deploying virtualisation
technology to create private or hybrid clouds. This
could be the result of the following:
i.

Green initiatives to better utilise IT infrastructure

ii. The need to gain agility and flexibility to meet

business changing environments
b. Secondary: cloud service providers who want to
open up private access as a standard offering via
Tata Communications Ethernet and MPLS network.
In addition, third party data centre operators who
house different cloud service platforms and want to
connect them to a robust network operator (Tata
Communications)
6. What is the competitive landscape?
We have interconnect partner agreements in place with
the two largest cloud platform providers: Amazon Web
Services and Microsoft Azure.
These two providers also connect with Level 3, NTT, AT&T
and BT. However, not many of these network providers
connect to both cloud providers and not to all regions.

D. IZO Public
1. What is IZO Public
IZO Public is a cloud enablement service that provides a
dedicated and deterministic route for Tata Communications
enterprise customers by tagging their data packets for
pre-determined delivery over the public internet.
It also provides a dedicated and deterministic route for
Tata Communications enterprise customers to reach
cloud service providers including Google Cloud Platform.
This approach is fully supported by private network standard SLAs to give enterprises the confidence that their
data is being handled appropriately and cost-effectively.
2. What are the benefits of IZO Public to cloud and
content providers?
For cloud and content providers the IZO Public
approach means that they can deliver content in a more
customised manner, thereby improving the end user
experience in relation to speed and reliability. It also gives
them heightened ability to provide premium services to
those customers willing to pay for a faster delivery of
paid content.
The dedicated and deterministic routing is also implemented on traffic from Tata Communications to an
enterprise site which means enterprise cloud applications packet (from a cloud provider to the enterprise)
will not be interfered by the best effort packets like
file-transfers or Internet access. This is a key public
cloud enablement step to enable the full potential of the
Internet and cloud services.

2014 Tata Communications. All Rights Reserved. TATA COMMUNICATIONS and TATA are trademarks of Tata Sons Limited in certain countries.