- Zayo launched a new NaaS offering that comes with an AI helper
- Product chief Bill Long said the goal is to make the NaaS setup and interface more accessible
- AvidThink’s Roy Chua thinks it’s only a matter of time before other NaaS providers follow suit
Agentic AI is all the hype these days, and Zayo touts it as a key part of its new network-as-a-service (NaaS) offering.
The company just launched DynamicLink, which essentially brings Zayo’s services like Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Ethernet and DDoS Protection under the NaaS umbrella. It also comes with an AI assistant that aims to make network setup less complicated for customers, said Zayo Chief Product Officer Bill Long.
The agent, which uses Anthropic Claude’s large language model (LLM), has “full visibility” into the network, he told Fierce, meaning it can see the services a company has already set up, where its ports are physically located, plus it has visibility into network traffic.
How it works
Let’s say a bank wants to set up a NaaS. The customer can tell the AI that it has “this many locations” and ask the agent for advice on how to design the network. Aside from assisting in the setup process, Long added the agent can also troubleshoot any unusual traffic patterns.
“You can say, ‘hey I noticed my traffic at my office in Denver was running slow, can you help me troubleshoot that?’” he said. The AI could say it detected “an influx of traffic from this one specific IP address” and provide guidance if the traffic looks like a DDoS attack or another security risk.
Zayo isn’t the only one to incorporate agentic AI into its NaaS platform. Startup Alkira recently unveiled its Network Infrastructure Assistant, a conversational co-pilot that can be used for troubleshooting, configuration and monitoring tasks. Cisco has a built-in AI assistant with similar capabilities in its Meraki and ThousandEyes products.
Customers are already using DynamicLink. Long said the platform’s been in beta for a couple of quarters. Although Zayo created DynamicLink specifically for large enterprises, he thinks the AI assistant’s user-friendly interface makes the platform more accessible for customers who are “further down market.”
He added the agent was also created to lighten the load for IT staff.
“Their jobs have gotten so much harder because they’re being asked to do twice as much with only a quarter as much budget,” said Long. “One of the problems is it’s hard to hire really good people to do this work.”
Zayo’s intent was to make a tool that “someone who [isn’t] a deep network expert” can use to “accomplish the business goals they [want] to accomplish.”
Of course, no AI model is perfect. The Zayo agent won’t just go off and complete a task without any user input, Long noted.
“We’ve tuned it to be more prescriptive than what an out-of-the-box model would be,” he said. “We’ve put in the checks to make sure that it doesn’t have the full autonomy to just go and do things without checking in – in detail – with the user.”
Analyst: Zayo sets model for user-friendly NaaS
AvidThink Principal Roy Chua said Zayo’s DynamicLink has some “promising AI elements” and that it’s only a matter of time before other NaaS providers roll out similar features that could make their product more accessible.
“The other NaaS services in the market will likely catch up quickly but this is one of the cleanest and easier-to-use interfaces with a fair and understandable price model and more importantly, consistency across a variety of underlay offerings,” Chua told Fierce.
Lumen is similarly rethinking its NaaS strategy. The company announced last month a new interface device that can run on any type of access technology, such as fiber, fixed wireless, copper and more.
Chua added Zayo’s security and analytics features “are innovative and baked in (no extra equipment required) compared to other offerings I've seen, which makes it more likely for customers to adopt.”