Stateless: Stretching Boundaries of Innovation with CCaaS

When it comes to data science, Stateless Inc is putting a lot of innovation towards enabling data infrastructure needs of a new network. The company has just announced - Cloud Connect as a Service (CCaaS) which provides complete cloud data transport with integrated network functionality for delivering significant operational efficiency.

Mike Anderson, VP of Marketing, Stateless Inc, speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com on the launch of the company's Cloud Connect as a Service and why it is important for the industry today.

Please share details about Stateless Cloud Connect as a Service and when the service will become generally available?

Cloud Connect as a Service eliminates the network barriers to data initiatives by providing a self-service and end-to-end network creation and configuration, including the set-up of direct cloud connectivity and configurations of all required networking protocols as well as the last mile of connecting the network to data lakes and warehouses.

It utilizes intelligent software and APIs to make reaching cloud endpoints easy, giving businesses end-to-end visibility and the agility to expand network capacity and grow without lock-in.

The Stateless Cloud Connect as a Service offering will be available in North America this month. We are working with partners such as Packet Fabric to extend the service outside of these boundaries in the foreseeable future.

Can you highlight the value that Stateless is bringing to service provider customers with this new solution?

Stateless’ Cloud Connect as a Service uses Stateless’ software and works with cloud and network provider APIs to connect different data platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks and virtual compute across different clouds such as AWS and Azure.

It seamlessly couples data infrastructure and networking to connect to multiple hybrid clouds, data centers and edge/remote locations with encrypted, secure connections in minutes – delivering operational speed, efficiency and agility.

The most foundational benefit is the simplicity of being able to reach clouds without any complex networking skills. With this service, we only require four pieces of information to set up a complete cloud connection.

And, it's not just a connection to a cloud gateway, it's all the way into the organization's or person's virtual computing environment within the cloud. The customer does not have to bring in any other connectivity – we make it all happen.

How will Stateless improve the quality of service for telecom providers and their new customers with the new platform?

There are a couple of things. We still sell the core software platform which a telco provider can still install and operate on their own if they wanted to create a service like this. Part of what we're trying to do as part of releasing this service is to get more people to experience the Stateless software.

With telco providers, there is a paradigm shift that is happening, but it's not happening fast enough. But we are working with a number of partners and growing those relationships to include other types of providers to participate in this ecosystem.

The core platform that we provide is able to carry large amounts of capacity, but not everyone needs it. The Cloud Connect as a Service will allow companies with smaller requirements, say 50MBs of capacity, to more easily take advantage of the Stateless' software.

In terms of hardware/software, what areas of traditional infrastructure will be replaced with the new service?

From a telco perspective it will be the carrier edge router that is replaced. If you think about the on-premises router delivered by a telco/co-location provider, they would have to have layer 3 equipment (routers, firewalls, etc.), we are replacing that with software.

With an approach that couples data infrastructure and networking and bundles together transport, network functions and automation, Stateless abstracts the process of automating BGP, NAT, firewalling and encryption in an intelligent network configuration, virtually eliminating the network as a barrier to data science.

The cost savings are significant, can you provide more detail in this area?

There are savings on the egress fees and overall, we believe we are at least 33% lower in cost than alternative solutions. For example, one of the things we do is to purchase an entire port from Packet Fabric, then divide among multiple users - allowing us to pass those saving onto those users. We automate the setting up of virtual circuits over that port.

Since the deployment is closely aligned with time to revenue, can you share how quickly the solution can be deployed?

It depends on how they access Stateless, Inc. technology, but the service can be deployed within hours or even minutes if accessed over the Internet. All it takes is for the user to go to our portal, login, establish credentials, then set up their connection. This can even take as little as 20 minutes.

What is your outlook going forward in terms of industry adoption?

We're very excited by this new service because it's something provides a whole new concept of building data pipelines in a way that applies to multiple industries. Initially, we're seeing interest from customers in education, government, financial services, healthcare and manufacturing.

In initial trials we have deployments in both the medical and business service sectors. The service open up new possibilities to companies that are much smaller in size, providing those organizations with benefits that only larger enterprises had previously. So we expect to see a lot of demand from large enterprises, but also these smaller organizations as well.