Telstra (ASX:TLS) has announced a deal with Rabobank Australia and New Zealand that will see the telco's software defined wire area networks (SD-WAN) solution deployed across the Tasman.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Rabobank is a financial services company focused on food and agriculture financing banking. The financial institution has more than 90 branches in the A/NZ region.
According to a blog post by Jim Clarke, Telstra Enterprise's director for global connectivity and networks, the telco has worked Rabobank for a number of years in both Australia and New Zealand.
"Today, we’re excited to strengthen this partnership even further as it [Rabobank] takes the first step in its digital transformation program which includes a redesigned architecture for the bank," Clarke said.
The agreement came after a successful proof of concept with Rabobank, which showed significant increase in speed and bandwidth capabilities.
According to Telstra, Rabobank is one of the first banks in Australia to implement SD-WAN to its branches.
The bank is future-proofing its network across all branches in Australia and New Zealand with the implementation of Telstra's SD-WAN solution.
"Rabobank’s regional branches will now have access to the same technologies as in the major cities, supporting their digital transformation and creating better engagement with regional customers," Clarke added.
The implementation of the SD-WAN solution is part of Rabobank's digital transformation strategy. The financial institution expects the move will help it optimise its branch network and deliver superior application performance to its branches.
The rollout will take place over the coming months and Telstra expects that a "significant number of branches" to be on the new network by the end of the year.
In May 2016, Telstra added a SD-WAN service supported by Cisco’s Intelligent WAN (IWAN) technology. Telstra’s SD-WAN allows traffic to be routed based on the application profile over multiple networks including private MPLS and the public internet.
Less than a year later, Telstra established a strategic partnership with US-based VeloCloud, which saw Telstra Ventures invest in VeloCloud at its last funding round.
Macquarie Telecom (ASX:MAQ) signed its largest SD-WAN deal in February with childcare centre operator, G8 Education (ASX:GEM).
The company, who launched its SD-WAN services in August 2017, rolled out its solution to 70 G8 Education centres with plans to having the solution deployed to all 516 centres.
