ECI expands Service Provider offering with Mercury uCPE solution

New vE-CPE provides cost-effective way to modernize business services and drive higher revenue

Petach Tikva, Israel – October 4, 2017: ECI, a global provider of ELASTIC Network® solutions for service providers, critical infrastructures and data center operators, announces the availability of its Mercury uCPE (universal customer premises equipment). As part of expanding its ElastiNETTM service provider portfolio, Mercury uCPE delivers on-demand virtualized business services by streamlining multiple customer premises networking functions into a single software-configurable appliance. Mercury uCPE is the first member of ECI’s vE-CPE family, which provides virtualization across CPE and the service provider’s PoP.

Enterprise CPE can be resource-intensive for service providers and business customers alike. For service providers, this severely limits their ability to roll out new services quickly or perform service modifications and upgrades. For enterprises, the current practice of supporting multiple vendors, devices, across a wide range of points in the organization means extensive operational complexities. ECI’s vE-CPE (virtual enterprise CPE) solution reduces operational complexities, lowers both CapEx and OpEx and enables service providers to better serve the lucrative business sector and drive new revenue streams.

ECI’s Mercury uCPE uses network function virtualization (NFV) to consolidate collections of single-purpose hardware boxes (for the likes of security, routing, voice and SD-WAN services) into a single virtualized networking appliance. Network functions can then be delivered virtually (VNFs) via centralized management and orchestration (MANO), and made accessible directly to users via a self-service portal. Self-installation and centralized management helps to further minimize operational complexities.

“Moving organizations and other systems to the cloud is affecting expectations. Today’s businesses want to see more network functions available as on-demand services. Additionally, these new business models are shifting spending from CapEx to OpEx,” said ECI VP SDN/NFV Network Solutions, Erez Zelikovitz. “Service providers need to stay competitive, and Mercury uCPE provides them with a flexible and affordable solution to offer modernized business services and increase revenue. This also equips both service providers and business customers with a future-proof solution that can easily incorporate new network functions as they become available.”

Mercury uCPE gives service providers flexibility to combine networking functions in new and innovative ways, creating value-added services tailored to individual customer needs, expanding service portfolios and generating new revenue streams. It also reduces costly operations involved in ongoing maintenance, inventory management and truck rolls. To meet the varying needs and constraints of small and medium businesses as well as large enterprises, Mercury uCPE is highly customizable for a diverse set of deployments.

Service providers can allow their business customers to select and combine best-of-breed VNFs from a library of ECI or certified third-party VNFs, supporting internet access, VPN services, voice services, cyber security (such as universal threat management), WAN optimization, LAN monitoring, storage services and more.

Mercury is ECI’s NFV platform, encompassing infrastructure (NFVi), management and orchestration (MANO) and a variety of VNF’s (both home-grown and 3rd party) geared towards edge computing. It is compatible with ETSI NFV specifications to ensure carrier-grade standards. For more information on Mercury and Mercury uCPE visit: http://www.ecitele.com/mercury/