United Kingdom-based operator BT today announced that it will build out its next generation of managed services using Dell Technology's universal CPE appliances.

BT plans to leverage the Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform (VEP) series of appliances for a new offering that will enable IoT, SD-WAN and other IT applications.

"With Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform, we are providing not only choice but also ways to de-risk technology decisions and speed up and remove complexity from their global network service deployments," said Scott Cowling, network solutions director at BT, in a prepared statement.

Dell's VEP series of uCPE hardware is based on Intel x86 architecture, which presents numerous advantages, including the ability to replace dedicated appliances and services with a single appliance, the companies claim.

Dell EMC's VEP4600 series is designed to run several virtualized network functions (VNFs) and is targeted at central locations. The company's VEP1405 series is a compact, low-power model designed for remote locations at a lower cost.

Service providers have gravitated to uCPE because it provides greater flexibility and allows them to avoid vendor lock-in. The nature of uCPE also means service providers and telecoms can easily deploy software tailored to a customer's needs on low-cost, white-box hardware.

In the past few months, several SD-WAN vendors including Silver Peak and FatPipe have announced partnerships with optical networking giant Ciena to develop new service delivery models for communications service providers.

In an interview with SDxCentral in December 2019, Fraser Street, VP of technical alliances at Silver Peak, said that while the company would continue to focus most of its efforts on black boxes, uCPE and NFV is becoming increasingly important.

Moreover, while a recent Gartner report found that approximately 80% of SD-WAN vendors will continue to rely on black box appliances through 2021, some vendors are betting on that to change as telcos and service providers seek to avoid vendor lock-in.

An early attempt to open-source SD-WAN software, flexiWAN, reached general availability in January and is designed specifically to meet this demand, offering a software package that can run on uCPE white boxes from the start.