TLDR: Lumen Technologies has announced a significant milestone, surpassing 1,000 enterprise customers on its Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform. This achievement underscores the increasing demand for flexible, on-demand connectivity solutions, particularly as businesses accelerate their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform operations. Lumen’s NaaS platform is designed to provide the agile and scalable network resources essential for the burgeoning AI economy.
Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) has reached a pivotal achievement, announcing that its Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform now serves over 1,000 enterprise customers. This landmark signifies a crucial shift towards more agile and intelligent enterprise connectivity, driven by the escalating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) across various business sectors.
The NaaS platform by Lumen is engineered to deliver instant, on-demand network resources, enabling businesses to modernize their infrastructure without the complexities typically associated with legacy systems. This capability is particularly vital in an era where AI adoption is rapidly transforming operational landscapes, demanding highly scalable and responsive network solutions.
Ashley Haynes-Gaspar, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer at Lumen Technologies, commented on the milestone, stating, “This is a landmark milestone to observe as we continue to focus on what enterprises need, where the world is going, and where we lead. Lumen’s NaaS is built for the pace of modern business: fast, secure, scalable, and easy to use.” She emphasized that while every new customer is celebrated, this particular achievement is a significant ‘signpost’ on Lumen’s journey to power the next generation of business.
Lumen’s NaaS offers a comprehensive suite of services designed to revolutionize how organizations procure and manage their networking in the digital age. By combining instant, on-demand resources with advanced networking technologies, it empowers businesses to enhance agility, reduce operational overhead, and support next-generation digital experiences. The platform facilitates seamless access to major hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google Cloud, as well as third-party data centers, through strategically located cloud on-ramps.
Since its launch at the end of 2023, Lumen NaaS has garnered significant recognition, including being named the 2024 NaaS Service Provider of the Year across North America. The company continues to expand its footprint across the U.S., offering dynamic bandwidth and edge-to-core automation crucial for enterprises competing in an AI-driven economy. The platform is touted for providing ‘NaaS Connectivity in Minutes, Fortified for the AI Era,’ allowing customers to digitally connect applications across offices, hyperscalers, and data centers with self-service flexibility to scale capacity up or down based on demand.
Lumen’s NaaS platform is built upon one of the world’s most expansive and deeply interconnected networks, boasting approximately 163,000 on-net buildings and 340,000 global fiber route miles. This extensive infrastructure enables low-latency, ultra-high-capacity, and AI-optimized connectivity across enterprise corridors, cloud regions, and edge locations. Lumen is actively investing in its network, with a goal to reach 47 million intercity fiber miles by the end of 2028, scaling beyond 100G, and upgrading backbone capacity across key metro and intercity routes.
Lumen CEO Kate Johnson highlighted the company’s strategic focus on enterprise connectivity that can handle AI and cloud applications. She noted that the number of customers purchasing one or more NaaS ports increased by 35% from the first quarter, with a 31% rise in ports deployed for multi-cloud networking. Prominent companies utilizing Lumen’s NaaS service include Best Buy, Columbia, DXC Technology, Pacific Life, GE Vernova, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Johnson also detailed Lumen’s ‘road to AI profit,’ revealing that the company added approximately $500 million in new AI-related contracts in Q2, bringing its total private connectivity fabric (PCF) deals to nearly $9 billion. Analysys Mason predicts that global NaaS connectivity revenue, encompassing both retail and wholesale connections, will reach $14.7 billion by 2029, underscoring the critical role NaaS will play as AI workloads intensify. Flexible NaaS solutions are particularly well-suited to manage the bursty, intermittent traffic flows associated with transferring data between data stores and AI infrastructure for model training and fine-tuning.
Also Read:
- NBN Co Integrates Advanced AI and Automation Across Operations
- IBM: A Profitable AI Stock Gaining Traction, Often Underestimated by Individual Investors
Lumen’s strategy involves leveraging its physical network as the backbone for AI, building a digital platform for cloud-like consumption of network services, and integrating it all into a ‘digital commercial ecosystem.’ This ecosystem allows customers to purchase, provision, and manage network services as easily as cloud solutions, with Lumen connecting to the three largest cloud service providers and serving over 1,500 data centers across the U.S.
