Mumbai, India – April 30, 2024 – Lightstorm, a leading innovator in networking solutions, unveiled its vision for the future of Network as a Service (NaaS) at the exclusive Blueprint event held on 25th April in Mumbai. The event, themed "Infinite Connections. One NaaS", brought together industry leaders and innovators to understand the potential of Network as a Service (NaaS) in India’s digital landscape. With continued adoption of cloud and digital transformation, Lightstorm aims to strengthen the potential of NaaS technology for Indian enterprises by offering cutting-edge solutions.
As part of the flagship event, Lightstorm unveiled Polarin Global DCI, a service in partnership with a leading global provider of NaaS interconnection solutions, to deliver seamless cloud and network connectivity to enterprise customers worldwide across 180+ data centers. This launch of Polarin Global DCI underscores Lightstorm's commitment to providing advanced solutions that meet the evolving needs of businesses in a geographically dispersed but interconnected world. Lightstorm also announced the launch of Smartnet Global DCI, a solution offering high bandwidth optical connectivity to destinations in Australia, Japan and North America and other countries in the weeks to come.
Lightstorm also showcased Polarin DCI Wave, world’s first NaaS solution for high bandwidth optical networks that offers seamless connectivity across 60 of the top data centers in India. Unlike offerings of the past, this innovation provisions network services in under 10 minutes, as compared to enterprises waiting for few weeks to multiple months.
Lastly, Lightstorm also exhibited the capabilities of Polarin Virtual Router, a Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Connectivity solution which stitches together multiple end points for enterprises ranging from public clouds to data centers, all in the matter of minutes.
These products mark the shift of enterprise connectivity solutions from being slow and archaic to provision, to instead, on-demand, simple and transparent operations. “The Blueprint event in Mumbai marked a pivotal moment for Lightstorm as we unveiled our vision for the future of Network as a Service (NaaS) in India and abroad," stated Amajit Gupta, Group CEO & MD, Lightstorm. "With the exponential rise in NaaS adoption across the country, it's evident that businesses are recognizing the transformative potential of cloud-based networking solutions. At Lightstorm, we are committed to supporting this momentum and advancing the Digital India narrative by offering cutting-edge NaaS solutions tailored to the unique needs of Indian companies."
“The turnout and the enthusiastic participation of key industry leaders from across the country at Blueprint, testifies to the importance of NaaS technology for startups and enterprises, and the much need disruption to traditional telco models,” said Prasanna C, Global Head of Products at Lightstorm, “An intelligent and secure NaaS enables enterprises to enjoy the benefits of greater flexibility, scalability, automation, predictability, and control to support the high- performance hybrid environments of today. Through events like these and with our new product offerings, Lightstorm is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of networking in Digital India and beyond.”
The sessions at the event focused on establishing the current networking landscape and the importance of robust network infrastructure for leveraging cloud-based solutions. A diverse set of industry leaders and partners including Cisco, Cloudflare, STT Global Data Centers, DE-CIX, Extreme IX, IndiaTech, Steadview Capital, and other ecosystem players explored and discussed ideas related to network connectivity, including trends that indicate the future direction of the connectivity ecosystem, which is growing tremendously in this digital era. The remaining sessions, which included panel discussions and a keynote address, were designed to provide practical solutions for businesses looking to optimize their networks, and provided attendees with a chance to understand the capabilities of NaaS, which elevates networks as a tool to grow and solve for the cloud era.
About Lightstorm
Initially launched in 2020, Lightstorm started with the SmartNet brand which was built to be a carrier-neutral, low latency and DCI-focused fiber network in India. As of today, SmartNet has expanded into 7 major cities across India with ~24,000 km of route fiber connected to ~60 data centers. Its NaaS offering, Polarin™ is an interconnection network platform that enables seamless connectivity between data centers, hybrid and multi-cloud environments, internet exchanges, and SaaS applications. With the success in India, Lightstorm further expanded into Indonesia in 2022, replicating a similar business model with first project targeting to roll out ~1,000 km of fiber and connecting ~40 data centers in Greater Jakarta. Looking forward, Lightstorm targets to continue expanding its geographical coverage to other Southeast Asian and Middle East countries and enriching its products and services to ultimately establish a leading next-gen cloud network infrastructure platform with assets across APAC and interconnect.
