Burton Group
Hook Me Up: ‘Building the Multi-Carrier Enterprise WAN’
Daniel Golding
The multi-carrier enterprise wide area network (WAN) has arrived, just as the era of the one-to-one, carrier-to-enterprise relationship has drawn to a close. Regardless of the technology chosen – Internet Protocol security (IPsec), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), broadband, or some combination – options exist that allow organizations to interconnect carrier networks.
Whether enterprises choose to perform the interconnection on their own or in concert with
a virtual network operator (VNO) such as Vanco, the opportunity to increase geographic reach, reduce costs, and increase reliability should not be ignored.
From the perspective of enterprises, VNOs make a lot of sense. Unlike carriers, they are service-oriented organizations, and they tend to be quite profitable, with healthy growth curves ensuring their stability. Most enterprise IT teams are trying to do more with less – utilizing VNOs for time-consuming drudgery such as circuit provisioning or network operations center (NOC) monitoring makes sense.
They have sufficient economic clout to play carriers against each other and demand high levels of
performance. That influence is something that few enterprises possess, regardless of the messages whispered in telecom managers' ears by carrier account executives.
|
