Lumen Technologies launched a solution designed to help enterprises move data at the speed of AI.
Dubbed Lumen Intelligent Internet, the offering aims to provide a digital and programmable experience where customers adjust capacity as their needs develop with the AI buildout.
Specifically, clients are able to provision and adjust connectivity through APIs or the Lumen Connect service, scale bandwidth according to business needs, and choose term-based pricing for a predictable monthly rate.
Lumen also touted enterprise-grade control as part of the package, including its DDoS Essentials and Lumen Defender solutions.
Beta customers included iVision, SABIS, Skyway Studios, and the New York Yankees. The service is now generally available to enterprise customers at over 10 million U.S. business locations, with bandwidth scalable up to 100 Gb/s.
The vendor touted the solution as resolving enterprise internet's fixed-capacity nature as AI and surging data movement put new pressure on enterprise networks, with Lumen citing IDC research that almost 40 percent of enterprises saw bandwidth needs grow by more than 50 percent year over year, while 29 percent faced challenges adapting their network infrastructure to support AI workloads.
“Businesses can easily scale compute and storage up or down as their needs change. Enterprise internet should work the same way,” said Jim Fowler, Lumen chief technology and product officer. “AI is making demand harder to predict, not easier. Lumen Intelligent Internet gives businesses the ability to respond in real time instead of paying today for capacity they might need tomorrow. We’re redesigning internet service for enterprises with a new model that gives customers greater control over connectivity, capacity, and cost as their businesses change.”