Telecom Ramblings

A few international upgrades, deployments, partnerships, and new positions before everyone in the USA heads out (or home) for Thanksgiving.  Stay safe folks! [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Hugo Diaz of Claro Enterprise Solutions

Businesses looking to modernize, enhance and simplify their connectivity environments are increasingly turning to Software Defined Wide Area Networking solutions. SD-WAN can help organizations prioritize applications, aggregate bandwidth and easily deploy and manage resources through zero-touch provisioning. In addition to flexibility and oversight, benefits include built-in security as well as a wide range of bundling options to integrate a mix of transport technologies.

The challenges and new requirements posed by the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the potential of SD-WAN to enhance business performance. Organizations shifting to remote workforce models, for example, can use SD-WAN to support employees who rely on high-bandwidth applications such as video conferencing. In today’s environment, home-based workers often find themselves competing with neighbors and family members for scarce public Internet capacity. By allowing users to define which applications take precedence during peak demand times, SD-WAN can prevent latency, jitter and other problems when application performance is imperative.

Moreover, SD-WAN can help businesses tackle a variety of critical challenges specific industries are facing in today’s evolving environment.

Manufacturing

Today, traditional manufacturing operations continue to struggle with sub-optimal networks. Administrators often lack visibility into their environments, making it difficult to prioritize, deploy and manage resources. The stubborn persistence of siloed operations prevents network integration and seamless data sharing, thereby limiting opportunities to pursue Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiatives. To the extent that they are deployed, IIoT initiatives raise security concerns by creating networks of smart sensors that represent potentially limitless targets for hackers to infiltrate a system.

SD-WAN can provide the flexible, secure, high-bandwidth connectivity manufacturers need to drive convergence of IT and factory floor operations, integrate disparate platforms and connect plants in different locations.  Centralized management capabilities and zero touch provisioning are essential to supporting Internet of Things (IoT) applications and Manufacturing 4.0 models. SD-WAN’s bandwidth capacity is also ideally suited to expanding automation within “ghost factory” environments characterized by intelligent tools and minimal staff.

To take a specific example, a rapidly growing global manufacturer was struggling to manage and consolidate a geographically dispersed WAN comprising almost 100 global sites. Improving network performance and capacity was essential to execute the initiative. An SD-WAN routing and management solution allowed the company to centralize policy control as well as automate the process of optimizing traffic and application performance. In this instance, the transition to SD-WAN reduced MPLS bandwidth costs by an average of 64 percent per site, and drove annual net savings of nearly $450K.

Retail

Already challenged by dramatic industry disruptions, the pandemic has forced retailers to fundamentally rethink business models. The imperative of using analytics to assess customer preferences now has the additional wrinkle of accommodating new attitudes around visiting brick and mortar establishments and potentially encountering crowds. And while the goal remains delivering engaging and personalized experiences, those experiences must increasingly be delivered remotely or at a social distance.

The technology initiatives needed to support today’s evolving retail strategies largely hinge on the deployment of flexible, high-bandwidth connectivity that SD-WAN offers. Requirements include managing increased volumes of online transactions, deploying bandwidth to support mobile applications near pop-up locations and kiosks and supporting “ghost kitchens” with minimal staff.  Traditional retail spaces, moreover, continue to be transformed through technology. Stores are deploying interactive digital signage with sentiment analysis capabilities, as well as AI-enabled video analytics to monitor customer traffic. Enhancing data interchange between customers, store staff and account data​ is becoming an increasing priority.

Financial Services

For Financial Services organizations, networking technology is key to revenue growth strategies, improving operational efficiency and enhancing customer experiences. Many banks are focused on deploying digital branch office locations with minimal staff and bandwidth-intensive digital kiosks offering advanced, personalized self-service capabilities. These locations also require reliable and secure connectivity to support online transactions, data collection and analysis, as well as integration with legacy applications.

The flexible zero touch provisioning and visibility into network resources that SD-WAN provides allows administrators to deploy new branch locations on demand, as well as scale resources as needed. This ensures adequate bandwidth to support kiosks, applications and transactions at any branch, as well as respond to ebbs and flows in demand across locations. Enhanced security functionality protects customer and financial data on devices and networks. In addition, SD-WAN can be an effective and secure solution for remote workers accessing sensitive data.

Hugo Diaz is SD-WAN Product Marketing Manager at Claro Enterprise Solutions, a global IT service provider.

Some collaboration news, a new CEO, some new fiber, and a flagpole. [Read more →]

As the wave of migration of applications to the cloud continues, we sometimes forget that this is not one problem but rather a multitude of problems, each with its own special issues and considerations.  That leaves room for companies to dial in on opportunities that the broader solution sets don’t handle.  LzLabs is one of those companies targeting a unique enterprise computing niche that many people have forgotten is still out there: mainframes.  With us today to talk about LzLabs’ unique position within enterprise cloud migration is Executive Chairman Mark Cresswell. [Read more →]

Lots of news to catch up on before the short week prior to Thanksgiving. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Phillip Marangella, Chief Marketing Officer, EdgeConneX®

The importance of efficiently distributed network capacity and diversity of network access solutions will only increase as network traffic explodes in the coming years. IDC predicts the average person will have nearly 5,000 digital interactions per day by 2025, up from the [Read more →]

Three ecosystem partnerships, one technology upgrade, and a customer win across five US data center and colocation operators worth noting from this week: [Read more →]

Expansions, upgrades, and deployments by international network operators across multiple continents to keep an eye on: [Read more →]

Some interesting infrastructure consolidation hit the market today. 365 Data Centers has announced the purchase of Atlantic Metro Communications. The deal nearly doubles 365's customer and revenue footprint. [Read more →]

Here's some quick catch-up from around the industry: [Read more →]

This has been a year of extraordinary events for everyone, but for those near the recent fires out West, it has been even more so. As a regional fiber provider with network in Oregon and neighboring states, Hunter Communications has had to deal with not just the COVID-19 pandemic, but raging wildfires across its service territory as well. Grain Management took a majority position in the company this past spring, and Hunter recently embarked on an FTTH journey as well. With us today to talk about those experiences and its view of the marketplace overall is CEO Michael Wynschenk. [Read more →]

Some metro and regional news, one from New England, the other from the Southeast. [Read more →]

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Darach Beirne, Vice President of Customer Success at Flowroute, now part of Intrado

Businesses across the globe are still adapting to organizational changes put into place because of the ongoing pandemic and they’re shifting their IT investments accordingly. Many companies have migrated to cloud-based communication systems and workplace tools to maintain continuity, improve remote collaboration across teams and enhance interactions with customers. However, [Read more →]

I almost hesitate to check domestic news right now, but luckily there's plenty of international items to keep up with: [Read more →]

Western Africa has long been one of those places in the world where bandwidth comes from the ocean, not the land. Yesterday at the AfricaTech Festival, Orange made a move to change all that by announcing a pan-West African fiber network. [Read more →]

The Midwestern fiber builder and operator Everstream is expanding eastward into Pennsylvania, and they're doing it the fast way. Today they announced a definitive agreement to acquire both fiber and customers from Uniti that will give the company an instant presence across the state. [Read more →]

A couple new data centers, some metro fiber, and a submarine cable RFS: [Read more →]

Here's a quick rundown on some news from late last week plus a new data center launch from this morning: [Read more →]

This one slipped past me somehow when it came out over the weekend, but better late than never. Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Astound Broadband from TPG Capital and Patriot Media Management for $8.1B. [Read more →]

This thought leadership article was sponsored by QTS

An interesting transformation is taking place in the world of connectivity for  enterprises of all types. [Read more →]

The US may still be holding its breath, but the rest of the world is at least still going through the motions.  Here are two vendor wins, one NNI, and a traffic milestone: [Read more →]

The votes are still being counted, yada yada yada.  Meanwhile, here are three data center deals and a IaaS expansion worth not missing in the meantime: [Read more →]

The rest of the world may be in chaos, but the internet infrastructure world has been steady and strong.  And the data center provider QTS has been particularly solid, with Q3 revenues and FFO both exceeding analyst expectations.  The company has been on a nearly three year winning streak with the markets, gaining revenue momentum steadily.  With us today to update us on QTS’s status and future plans for the sector is Sean Baillie, Chief Marketing Officer. [Read more →]