Lumen Technologies has launched Lumen Intelligent Internet, a new enterprise connectivity service designed to provide cloud-like flexibility by allowing businesses to provision internet service in minutes and dynamically scale bandwidth as AI, cloud and other workloads change.
The service is available immediately at more than 10 million U.S. business locations and can scale to bandwidth levels of up to 100 Gbps.
Lumen developed Intelligent Internet around a growing challenge for enterprises: computing and cloud infrastructure can increasingly scale on demand, while network connectivity has traditionally required companies to predict capacity requirements months in advance and maintain enough bandwidth to accommodate potential peak usage.
Artificial intelligence is making those forecasts even more difficult as large data transfers, AI inference, model development and other workloads create substantial fluctuations in network demand.
Lumen cited IDC research showing that 37% of enterprises experienced bandwidth requirements growing by more than 50% year over year, while 29% had difficulty aligning their network infrastructure with AI workloads.
Intelligent Internet is designed to address that mismatch by turning enterprise internet connectivity into a more programmable service.
Customers can digitally provision connectivity and adjust capacity through Lumen Connect or APIs, allowing networking resources to respond more quickly as business requirements change.
The approach is intended to give enterprises characteristics commonly associated with cloud computing, where customers can increase or decrease resources without deploying entirely new infrastructure each time their needs change.
Instead of maintaining peak network capacity continuously, a company could increase bandwidth when applications require more resources and reduce it during periods of lighter usage.
Lumen said the model could help customers better align networking costs with actual utilization while maintaining the performance and operational controls associated with dedicated enterprise internet connectivity.
Customers can choose term-based pricing designed to provide predictable monthly costs while retaining the ability to adjust bandwidth when needed.
The platform also maintains customer control over network and IP services.
Security capabilities include DDoS Essentials, which is designed to help protect businesses against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks, and Lumen Defender, which blocks known threats.
Intelligent Internet builds on capabilities Lumen previously introduced through Internet On-Demand.
The new service adds several enhancements aimed at simplifying how enterprise connectivity is purchased, activated and managed, including digital service management, pre-ordering through a new fabric port and term-based pricing that combines longer-term cost predictability with adjustable capacity.
Lumen sees this programmable model becoming increasingly important as enterprise infrastructure changes.
Cloud services have already made computing resources significantly more elastic, allowing companies to add or remove processing and storage capacity according to demand.
AI is increasing the pressure for network infrastructure to operate similarly because computing systems are only useful if organizations can efficiently move increasingly large amounts of data between users, applications, cloud platforms, data centers and AI infrastructure.
Lumen Intelligent Internet is designed to make the network another dynamically adjustable component of that technology stack.
Several organizations are already using the service, including iVision, SABIS, Skyway Studios and the New York Yankees.
The Yankees deployment illustrates how variable bandwidth can be applied to a business with unusually predictable swings in network usage.
Yankee Stadium has significantly different connectivity requirements on game days compared with periods when the stadium is closed to the public.
Using Intelligent Internet, the organization can increase capacity for periods of peak activity and subsequently reduce bandwidth when demand declines, allowing network spending to more closely follow actual usage requirements.
The model could have broader applications for companies with seasonal traffic, large events, temporary data-intensive projects or AI workloads whose infrastructure requirements can change rapidly.
It could also provide enterprises with greater flexibility when launching new applications because connectivity can be adjusted without requiring the same degree of long-term forecasting associated with traditional fixed-capacity networking.
The service runs across Lumen’s global network infrastructure, which includes one of the world’s largest internet backbones.
Lumen has increasingly positioned that physical network as infrastructure for the AI economy, combining its fiber footprint with programmable networking and a cloud-native control plane.
The company’s broader platform spans metro connectivity, long-haul data transport, cloud networking, cybersecurity, digital services and network orchestration.
Intelligent Internet extends that strategy by giving enterprises a way to consume connectivity more dynamically.
For Lumen, the launch reflects a broader transformation of telecommunications infrastructure from largely static services toward software-controlled networks capable of adapting to changing workloads.
As enterprises deploy more AI applications and move larger volumes of data between clouds, data centers and business locations, Lumen expects the ability to rapidly change network capacity to become increasingly important.
By making Intelligent Internet available across more than 10 million U.S. business locations and supporting connections up to 100 Gbps, Lumen is bringing that consumption model to a large portion of its enterprise footprint.
KEY QUOTES:
“Businesses can easily scale compute and storage up or down as their needs change. Enterprise internet should work the same way. 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.”
Jim Fowler, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Lumen
“Static connectivity models are increasingly at odds with the dynamic nature of AI and cloud workloads. As bandwidth needs become less predictable, enterprises need a more flexible approach that allows network capacity to respond to demand rather than requiring businesses to plan for every potential peak.”
Ghassan Abdo, Research Vice President Analyst at IDC
