Nile boosts NaaS offering with AI, customizable services

Network-as-a-Service vendor Nile has reinforced its secure wired and wireless package with features that aim to let customers more easily buy integrated components and manage them with AI-based software.

Nile was founded by former Cisco CEO John Chambers and Pankaj Patel, Cisco’s former chief development officer. The NaaS startup developed a subscription-based cloud offering, called Nile Access Service, for setting up and managing campus network operations without the need for customers to purchase and maintain their own networking infrastructure and security hardware.

Nile Access Service includes a core package of wired and wireless campus infrastructure components and sensors; they’re controlled by Nile AI software, which automates installation and other steady-state controls and enables management and observability features that are tailored for customer installations.

Since launching in 2023, Nile has been focused on bolstering its NaaS package to include better analytics, automation tools and network monitoring features.

Nile’s service is based on zero-trust security principals and enforces strict user verification and access controls to minimize cyberattack risks, according to Austin Hawthorne, vice president of solution architects at Nile. It features a number of extensions to third-party vendors, including Palo Alto, Zscaler, Splunk (now Cisco), Infoblox, AWS, Google Cloud and more, he said.

The Nile package is akin to the cloud services a customer would get with AWS, for example, Hawthorne said. “If you think about an AWS EC2 instance, you don’t worry about anything that’s going on underneath the covers as it relates to the servers, the storage and top-of-rack networking, the data centers. Amazon takes care of all that,” Hawthorne said.

“Our cloud-native networking stack – we configure it and install it, we handle the lifecycle management, network optimization, the patching, and we guarantee performance, availability, capacity, and coverage. But then we essentially hand the keys to the customer,” Hawthorne said.

With its latest upgrade, Nile added Service Blocks to its NaaS architecture. Nile Service Blocks make up the foundation of the Nile Access Service, and each block represents a collection of physical Wi-Fi sensors, Wi-Fi access points, access switches, or distribution switches. The blocks are customizable and can be delivered in different-size packages for customers, depending on their needs.

The idea is that instead of requiring manual configuration and separate software release management for different network elements, service blocks are supported with cloud-native delivery and a microservices-based architecture, Hawthorn said.

Also part of the Service Blocks architecture is a digital twin feature that lets customers set up a virtual replica of their environment to simulate and troubleshoot network operations and help manage proposed changes and additions.

On the AI side, Nile has added Copilot applications that simplify equipment installation and intent-based provisioning of Nile Service Blocks. In addition, new Nile Autopilot applications can offload what are today manual network functions, such as software maintenance, and automate manual workflows for infrastructure performance monitoring and troubleshooting, Hawthorne said.  

Core to Nile’s AI software is its ability to constantly evaluate network conditions and traffic patterns and align them with available resources to keep traffic flowing as well as identify and fix trouble spots in real time. This closed-loop automation ensures that the network maintains itself and is in the “best practice state” at all times, Hawthorne said. 

“Our AI data set allows us to start now making really quick decisions,” said Özer Dondurmacıoğlu, vice president of services marketing at Nile. “We collect telemetric data from network elements, environmental user experience, device experience, application performance, device availability, network design, log files, detailed CPU, memory information, all validated via a proper design of the network during installation and after installation, in software – that is our design pipeline, that’s our foundation,” Dondurmacıoğlu said.

“We have this idea that when something goes wrong in the physical space, we have to be responsible for detecting [it] in software, and driving ticket generation, and driving automation to resolve it. And if we cannot resolve it automatically, we need to notify the customer to help us resolve the issue,” Dondurmacıoğlu said.

Nile’s enhancements, particularly the Service Blocks and enhanced AI applications, will accelerate network designs and deployments and help improve the provisioning and ongoing management of the network, according to Brandon Butler, research manager, enterprise networks, at IDC.

“Nile’s overall offering is representative of a broader trend of enterprise Network as a Service (NaaS) offerings that continue to mature in the market,” Butler said.

“IDC defines Enterprise NaaS as enterprise network infrastructure that is consumed via a flexible consumption operating expense (opex) model, inclusive of: hardware, software, management tools, licenses and lifecycle services,” Butler said. “Typically, enterprise NaaS is used for WLAN, access switching and routing/SD-WAN.”

Enterprise NaaS offerings are appealing for midsize organizations and larger enterprises that value predictability in their networking costs, as well as those that are looking to embrace opex models for networking, Butler said.

“Other benefits include faster access to new technology and software capabilities compared to traditional network management models, and cloud-based management of enterprise network infrastructure,” Butler said. “Fundamentally, NaaS offerings allow customers to outsource the undifferentiated parts of their network to a NaaS provider so their IT and networking teams can focus on more strategic, business-enabling tasks.”

Nile’s competition in the NaaS market includes HPE Aruba, through its Greenlake offering, as well as startups such as Meter, Ramen and Join Digital, according to Butler.