Lumen Targets AI Bottlenecks

Lumen Targets AI Bottlenecks with New Multi-Cloud Gateway and Metro Expansion

New enterprise capabilities are designed to accelerate data movement across distributed AI environments while lowering complexity and total cost

Lumen announced an expansion of its enterprise networking portfolio with Lumen Multi-Cloud Gateway and enhanced metro data center connectivity across major U.S. markets.

“Moving data across hybrid environments is a lot like managing air traffic – you need clear routes, predictable timing, and the ability to adjust when conditions change. Most legacy networks weren’t built for that level of coordination,” said Jim Fowler, Lumen chief technology and product officer. “With our expanded network fabric, Lumen gives enterprises a way to move data securely, effortlessly, and consistently across clouds, data centers, and edge locations, designed to reduce the complexity that hold AI-driven operations back.”

How Lumen is Simplifying Connectivity

Lumen’s expansion simplifies how data moves across hybrid environments by bringing both centralized multi-cloud routing and high-capacity private metro connectivity. The result is a more consistent, controllable networking foundation for AI and other modern workloads.

Multi-Cloud Gateway: Multi-Cloud Gateway (MCGW) is a core element of Lumen’s shift to cloud-based telecom. Built as a software-defined, self-service routing layer on Lumen’s global fiber network, MCGW provides private, high-capacity connectivity among enterprises, hyperscalers and emerging cloud platforms. It turns traditional telecom interconnection into a programmable cloud fabric, allowing customers to dynamically connect cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-enterprise environments, optimize traffic for performance and cost, and support advanced use cases such as AI workload distribution and real-time data exchange. By unifying connectivity, routing and policy, MCGW is designed to reduce operational complexity, speed time to service and lower total cost of ownership.
Metro Ethernet & IP Services: Expanded high-capacity, dedicated connectivity across 16 U.S. markets, delivering up to 100Gbps between regional data centers, campuses, and edge locations and up to 400Gbps at key cloud data centers in those markets. This enables fast, secure movement of massive datasets for AI training, analytics, replication, and disaster recovery. Recently upgraded markets include Northern Virginia; Atlanta; Chicago; Columbus; Dallas; Denver; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; New York City; Phoenix; Portland; San Antonio; San Jose; and Seattle.

“AI is reshaping network design, pushing enterprises to move from experimentation to execution with architectures that reduce latency, cost variability, and operational complexity,” said Courtney Munroe, Vice President, Worldwide Telecommunications Research at IDC. “As workloads become more distributed and performance sensitive, organizations are rethinking how they connect edge sites, data centers, and multiple clouds, and Lumen’s network fabric shows how programmable networks can deliver more consistent data movement.”

Why It Matters for Enterprises

The business impact is immediate and practical for industries scaling their AI ambitions:

Financial Services: Keep risk, payments, and fraud workloads synchronized across multiple clouds with centralized policy control for lower latency and more predictable performance.
Retail: Improve business agility by accelerating data movement across cloud and enterprise environments, so analytics keep pace with changing demand.
Healthcare: Maintain data separation, support telehealth services, imaging and analytics, disaster recovery, and manage research workloads across institutions and resource centers.
Manufacturing: Connect regional facilities and cloud environments to enable real-time analytics and predictive maintenance.

Source: Lumen media announcement

Follow @PipelineWire