Colt Technology Services this week launched a new line of Universal CPE (uCPE) running ADVA's Ensemble software platform in a bid to help more enterprises leverage NFV technology.

Colt's latest uCPEs provide customers a network operating system as well as an environment — ADVA's Ensemble — from which a whole host of virtual network functions can be employed, including those for SD-WAN and firewall applications.

“By enhancing our uCPE offering we are aligning Colt with the future of networking," said Peter Coppens, VP of product portfolio at Colt, in a statement. "This approach allows us to deliver virtualized services from the broadest range of suppliers under end-user control. It will also enable Colt to achieve faster product development, cost savings, and operational efficiency."

Colt says this equipment will bring several benefits to medium-to-large enterprises including the ability to virtualize traditional hardware functionality and license only the functionality they need. The company also claims its uCPE will enable more enterprises to take advantage of edge computing use cases.

By running the applications as software on a common server infrastructure, companies can more easily enable automation and orchestration compared to older proprietary hardware, the company says.

Colt's uCPEs are now generally available in Europe, where the company says the technology is already helping a service company deploy SD-WAN across multiple branch locations while maintaining its preferred firewall.

This isn't the first time Colt has worked with ADVA. According to a Colt spokesperson, the company has leveraged ADVA's hardware in the past, but this is one of the first deployments of ADVA's software on its appliances.

Colt isn't the only company taking advantage of ADVA's Ensemble software either. In June, Dell EMC and Axians UK both employed ADVA's Ensemble managed VNF hosting software.