AT&T added network function virtualization (NFV) capabilities and multiple security applications to one of its networking platforms.

The company has brought several new connectivity and security offerings to FlexWare — which helps deploy software-based networking — and increased its availability to more than 200 countries and territories.

AT&T says FlexWare now offers NFV, in addition to Ethernet, VPN and dedicated internet. The company added three virtual security offerings to join firewall options from Fortinet and AT&T. That includes Palo Alto Networks’ security platform, Juniper Networks’ virtual firewall and Check Point vSEC.

AT&T says adding these solutions and making FlexWare more widely available “underscores our commitment to speed the global adoption of NFV.”

“Businesses spend billions annually on hardware worldwide. The potential savings, options and flexibility associated with moving to a virtualized edge platform are significant,” said Roman Pacewicz, senior vice president of offer management and service integration for AT&T Business. “It’s game changing when network functions like routers or firewalls are moved to a virtual model. Businesses can be more agile while driving down costs.”

AT&T says end users have bought more than 2,000 FlexWare devices since the platform began less than a year ago.

We recently reported on an NFV study, which said the global NFV market hit $38 billion in value by 2022. The ABI Research report said it couldn’t conclude whether NFV would displace the current technology or simply be a complement.

In other AT&T-related news, the company last week deployed a U.S. LTE-M network for IoT and 5G and faced a weekend strike from thousands of workers in multiple states.