The deal bolsters Zayo’s position as a ‘premier provider’ of secure edge networking services, enabling the company to support enterprise customers deploy, manage, and monitor their mission-critical SD-WAN and edge network environments.
“This acquisition represents our commitment to, and investment in, our edge-to-core, edge-to-cloud and edge-to-edge network services portfolio,” said Brian Lillie (pictured), chief product and technology officer at Zayo.
“We are extremely well-positioned to be a leading provider of networking for the evolving edge at all layers – fibre, optical and packet – and for all players – enterprises, hyperscalers and carriers. This requires secure, software-defined intelligent network control, management and monitoring capabilities that our customers need in a highly dispersed, multi-cloud world.”
These SD-WAN and edge managed services coupled with Zayo’s extensive fibre network, as well as its optical and packet capabilities, will power the growth of the network edge and the rapid adoption of 5G and private wireless. These technologies also lay the foundation for distributed, multi-cloud capabilities.
Speaking exclusively to Capacity on the decision to acquire QOS, Lillie shared that Zayo brought the business ‘to better serve current and future enterprise customers with world-class delivery of SD-WAN and other network edge services’.
Aside from being highly complementary to Zayo’s network infrastructure, Lillie says ‘it will allow us, in partnership with other ecosystem providers, to provide a full suite of physical and virtual network solutions to our current and future customers”.
Together, Zayo and QOS will create new opportunities with cloud hyperscalers investing in the edge, multi-tenant data centres investing in the core and carriers investing in fibre-to-the-tower. The newly merged business will also give enterprise chief information officers high quality network services with global reach, real-time control and visibility, and consistent security at every network endpoint.
Enterprises aside, the merger is set to have a ripple effect on the wholesale sector as well. ‘As we strive to serve enterprise customers, inevitably we will need to bring our carrier and cloud partners together to provide a complete solution to the customer,’ Lillie tells Capacity.
‘We will leverage our relationships with cloud hyperscalers investing in the edge, multi-tenant data centers investing in the core and carriers investing in fiber networks (e.g., fiber-to-the-tower) to jointly serve and provide value to our customers. This is truly a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ scenario as everyone should benefit from the “rise of the edge.”
“Joining forces with Zayo will bring our leading SD-WAN solutions into their already robust portfolio of communications infrastructure solutions,” said Frank Cittadino, CEO of QOS Networks.
“Combining our end-to-end enterprise SD-WAN solutions and white glove services with Zayo’s best-in-class fibre and network expertise will allow us to unlock unique value for our customers in the software-defined layer. On behalf of everyone at QOS Networks we are excited for our next chapter with Zayo and we look forward to driving new solutions for our customers.”
As a As a division of Zayo, the QOS brand will be retained and according to Lillie ‘will immediately begin operating as a new product division led by Frank Cittadino who will now serve as SVP, edge services, reporting to our chief product and technology officer, Brian Lillie. The entire QOS Networks team will be joining Zayo.’
Looking ahead, Zayo confirmed that it will continue to build upon the QOS brand and products and will ‘begin to co-sell and co-market QOS networks’ enterprise-class SD-WAN managed solutions and white-glove service offerings,’ adds Lillie.
