Asia/Pacific service provider Pacnet Systems today announced a new cloud network that it says dramatically simplifies and speeds up the provisioning of private networks.

The Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN) launched in beta mode in Asia last November, representing the first pan-Asian network-as-a-service architecture. Customer response to the software-defined network was strong enough that Pacnet is extending the service to the U.S.

PEN is a scalable service platform customers can provision themselves on demand, paying on a per-use basis. Pacnet calls it the first large-scale next-gen application delivery platform based completely on open-standards-based software. “We’re bringing the cloud to the network,” says Jim Fagan, Pacnet's president of managed services. “Customers can choose network attributes versus having their connectivity needs being dictated by the technology itself.”

Pacnet owns and operates a pan-Asian submarine cable network that extends from India to the U.S and links enterprise-class data centers. The new service uses software-defined networking (SDN) to connect users to the company’s network of data centers throughout Asia, Australia, and now the United States. Expensive WAN links between countries and data centers are fully utilized and monetized via software control of data flows associated with tiered SLAs.

Once users are in the network, they can provision and configure private networks through a web-based portal that allows them to grab and drop endpoints, create multiple flows between endpoints, and control the attributes of each flow. For example, a company can create and uniquely route 10 different data flows between the U.S. and Hong Kong, each based on different latency and bandwidth requirements. Connectivity is usable the minute a user hits the "deploy" button — compared to the 15 to 45 days it can take to provision such connectivity manually.

PEN’s application-logic routing and virtual cross-connect are built on open software from Vello Systems. PEN's portal setup "makes it very easy for customers to replicate an environment and copy that over in Taipei, and Melbourne, and Singapore," Vello CEO Karl May says.

Pacnet will continue to extend PEN’s availability throughout the rest of the year, with the next rollouts planned for Korea and Taiwan.