Rakuten Symphony and Lightstorm Telecom Connectivity this week announced a partnership to deliver a sovereign network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform for enterprises, telecom operators, and cloud providers across India, the Middle East and Africa, and the broader Asia-Pacific region.

The collaboration integrates Lightstorm’s Polarin NaaS platform with Rakuten Symphony’s cloud-native orchestration and infrastructure stack to automate network and cloud operations through a unified platform.

Polarin provides a self-service portal where operators can onboard customers, publish service catalogs, provision connectivity, monitor network performance, and manage billing. The platform effectively acts as a programmable network fabric that abstracts infrastructure operations into automated workflows.

Under the partnership, Polarin will integrate with Rakuten Symphony’s cloud-native platform and orchestration software to automate both cloud infrastructure and networking functions.

The combined system is designed to provide layer-two, layer-three, and internet connectivity services as part of a unified infrastructure stack. According to the companies, the platform can cut deployment times from days to minutes through automation and self-service capabilities.

“With Polarin, our customers gain true self-service capabilities – from service provisioning to billing – which not only accelerates revenue realization but also enhances overall network management,” Lightstorm CEO Amajit Gupta noted in a statement.

The platform will also be distributed through Rakuten Symphony’s global channels, potentially expanding adoption among telecom and cloud providers.

Targeting sovereign cloud and AI workloads

A key focus of the partnership is sovereign infrastructure deployments – systems designed to keep data and cloud operations within national boundaries to meet regulatory requirements.

Vendors across the industry are looking for opportunities that could take advantage of more stringent regulatory data sovereignty laws requiring greater management and control over the transfer and storage of data, with some companies now offering sovereign secure access service edge (SASE).

Rakuten Symphony’s cloud platform is built on Kubernetes and optimized for sovereign data center environments, telecom operators, and AI-driven workloads. When paired with Polarin’s programmable networking, the companies said the platform can deliver a fully automated infrastructure stack spanning cloud compute and connectivity.

“This collaboration provides enterprises and service providers with an end-to-end solution that integrates cloud and network automation, cutting deployment times from days to minutes,” Rakuten Symphony President Sharad Sriwastawa added.