Posts Tagged "Networks"

When it comes to Internet connectivity in an organization, user expectations are sky high! Employees and guests, alike, expect fast, secure and highly available WLAN services the moment they step into office premises. To match this growing demand, several organizations have opted for subscription based Managed WLAN services.

Apart from easing business operations and enriching the corporate work culture, Managed WLAN services contribute directly to business productivity and profitability. To better illustrate the scope and benefits of an outsourced cloud based Wi-Fi setup we look at how an ITES enterprise can be transformed by managed WLAN services.

Challenges and Needs

In a large global company with thousands of employees spread across various regional offices in India, WLAN systems are complex projects that require dedicated management and support.

For an enterprise spanning vast geographies, the challenge is to provide secure and reliable Wi-Fi Internet access to users in all the regional office across the country. The enterprise would also require dependable connectivity at a desired bandwidth to ensure a certain speed for executing business critical functions.

What does a managed WLAN service provider bring to the table?

Managed WLAN services is so much more than providing access and managing corporate users, it’s a 360° process that starts right from the design phase – a team of Network experts study the organizational layout and its bandwidth requirements and design a WLAN plan based on their analysis.

The technology partner will then start the engineering and installation process. This includes –

• Installing an Internet link of required bandwidth, based on the number of users expected to access the Internet.
• Deployment of Wireless Access Points at all corporate branches, including cabling and PoE injectors/ switches.
• Configuration of wireless SSIDs.
• Building a customized corporate homepage with access control through user login.

Once the WLAN system is in place, the solution provider takes over the daily management and monitoring of the Wi-Fi ecosystem. This takes the form of –

• A cloud based centralized WLAN monitoring console to observe the network and detect, prevent and mitigate wireless attacks. The client is also able to gain 360° network visibility and user–level and application-level control.
• A centralized authentication system to provide network access based on users, devices type and location.
• A guest management portal to provide access to guests and temporary users.

How does Managed WLAN transform the corporate workplace?

After implementing a managed WLAN solution, the first and the most perceptible benefit is seamless and smooth connectivity for all users. Employees and guests alike can now bank on reliable wireless connectivity that can be accessed easily.

A managed WLAN service also frees up the core IT personnel from the daily operations of network management, giving them time to focus on areas of strategic business importance.

The network managers are also given complete network visibility and control. Along with being able to easily control the bandwidth and access, the managers are provided metrics and reports on Internet usage among employees or guests and performance and usage of applications.

In conclusion

From large global organization to SMEs, the rise of mobile usage and BYOD culture has changed the significance of Internet connectivity in a corporate setup. To provide secure, scalable and seamless Internet access, professional solution providers must be brought into the picture. The increase in productivity and efficiency that a fully managed WLAN system brings to an organization equals a positive Return on Investment.

For more than a decade, Sify has been successfully building and managing complex networks ecosystems across the globe. From commissioning the world’s largest MPLS network to leveraging cloud platforms for enhancing connectivity – Sify has the deep domain knowledge across the entire length and breadth of the network landscape. This experience gives us an in-depth understanding of what enterprises require from their networks and how they use them.

The rapid rise of new disruptive technology trends – cloud, social media and mobility –has added a new dimension to business operations. Connectivity is now the most critical factor for running a competitive business.

To get an enterprise-grade WLAN service for 100% secure and seamless connectivity, businesses need to outsource their WLAN design, installation and management to a professional technology partner. A fully managed Wi-Fi solution provides fast, easily accessible and secure wireless connectivity across the organization on a flexible subscription based payment models.

Here are the 5 key benefits of Managed Wi-Fi

Ease of Business

The first and the most noticeable benefit of outsourcing WLAN management is the hassle-free access to connectivity. The IT team no longer needs to deal with the stress of network downtime and constant demands for accessibility from users spread across the company.

The entire WLAN ecosystem is managed by the technology partner, who takes care of all the Wi-Fi requirements of the company – from analyzing enterprise requirements, designing and installing a customized WLAN system to day-to-day management and operations of the system.

Dynamic scalability

Managed WLAN services have the added advantage of being highly scalable. Organizations can rely on rapid provisioning and deployment of additional WLAN nodes to match sudden workload spikes.

Highly secure

Making your network open and accessible to a vast number of users and devices can lead to serious security gaps. A managed WLAN service offers a layered security structure – centralized authentication infrastructure to control access to the network, automatic tracking of all users and devices and wireless intrusion detection, prevention and mitigation.

Complete visibility

With a fully managed wireless network, companies gain an unprecedented level of visibility and control over the entire network. A cloud based centralized WLAN monitoring dashboard provides deep visibility of the entire WLAN infrastructure and provides application-level and user level control. Managers can control Wi-Fi usage by app category and make quick decisions with weekly or monthly reports.

Enhanced user experience

Outsourced wireless systems provide completely smooth and seamless connectivity for all users – from the employees to guests and visitors. Employees can now expect to walk into their office building and link instantaneously with the enterprise WLAN and guests are provided easy access within minutes – without compromising on security!

The last few years have seen the corporate work culture changing drastically. Employees no longer sit for hours in front of their desktops; mobile devices and laptops allow people to move freely and work from anywhere in the building. This dynamic work culture is perfect for enhancing teamwork and nurturing innovation and an enhanced WLAN ecosystem is an essential component of this new work environment.

For more than a decade, Sify has been successfully building and managing complex networks ecosystems across the globe. From commissioning the world’s largest MPLS network to leveraging cloud platforms for enhancing connectivity – Sify has the deep domain knowledge across the entire length and breadth of the network landscape. This experience gives us an in-depth understanding of what enterprises require from their networks and how they use them.

Today’s hyper-connected and hyper-competitive marketplace needs enterprises that can react quickly and efficiently to the changing market scenarios.  To respond with speed to these new market expectations, businesses need 24×7 access to reliable and high-performance connectivity. From connecting employees spread across geographies to responding and engaging with customers –a high performance and secure Enterprise WAN is an essential tool for business success.

The emergence of cloud technologies has created an urgent need for companies to reassess their current Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructures and it has become clear that to power their future growth, they need to invest NOW in the next generation of Enterprise WAN. Instead of the usual add-on WAN optimization and acceleration solutions, enterprises must undertake to transform their WAN ecosystem from the bottom up – turning it into an integrated, cloud-enabled networking platform.

To understand the fundamentals of WAN transformation you can read our first blog part of our more detailed WAN transformation series.

Over the last few years, while servicing its various clients Sify has acquired a deep understanding of the networking problems, bottlenecks, and requirements of enterprises across all industries. This feedback and understanding prompted Sify to create WAN Transformation services.

What are these business needs driving WAN transformation?

Organizations are continuously dealing with several pressing problems and challenges with their network services; in the long term, some of these issues can severely limit business growth.

Operational complexity – resulting from the need to manage hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of sites and dealing with multiple service providers for non-converged voice and data networks.

Managing infrastructure costs – spiraling CAPEX and OPEX costs while ramping up or down. Businesses are looking for an overall reduction of costs by integrating disparate networks.

Technology Obsolescence – Need to keep pace with technology innovation while eliminating the risk of investing in old or dying technology.

Enhancing Network Security –urgent need for a holistic and unified security system to plug all security issues due to overlapping networks and multiple providers.

Administrative challenges –managing multiple vendors with separate contracts and SLAs takes up enormous amounts of time and effort.

Enterprise WAN systems are expected to deliver a vast number of services and support new technologies and trends. The scope of the network services must increase to deal with various factors such as – Data Center virtualization, growing demand for the virtual workplace, the rise of BOYD culture, stringent business compliance and the need for faster, secure and reliable communication platforms. To manage the resulting complicated networking scenarios and infrastructure challenges, CIOs need to carefully consider WAN Transformation.

As the most successful Enterprise WAN service provider in the country, we understand what businesses need from their WANs. We offer services that range from the Data Center, network, cloud, application, and technology integration. Our decades of experience in building and managing complex network environments along with our network integration services make us the perfect partners for your WAN transformation journey.

To understand the importance of connectivity, let us imagine a day without it. Internet and phone lines are down. Your employees cannot access their mail; your offices cannot make or receive any calls; everyone from the CEO to the middle manager is left twiddling their thumbs as all their cloud hosted data and files are unavailable AND most importantly all your customer-facing applications are offline, turning away innumerable present and potential customers!

That reliable and highly available connectivity (Internet and telephony) is the lifeblood of the business world is irrefutable. In the present hyper-competitive scenario, organizations are increasingly turning to the latest technologies to achieve the best connectivity solutions at the most affordable prices. SD – WAN (Software defined – Wide Area Network) is the newest innovation to optimize WAN technology for faster, flexible and cheaper business connectivity.

SD – WAN explained

Enterprises have been relying on WAN networks to connect their branch offices; to ensure uninterrupted connectivity to remote locations they had to invest heavily in WAN infrastructure and bear the resulting maintenance costs. SD – WAN changed the landscape completely, allowing enterprises to only pay for the functionalities they require with their entire CAPEX investment amounting to small routers.

SD (Software defined) WAN is derived from the Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology, it utilizes software and virtualization technologies to create a WAN network that delivers faster, simpler and cost effective connectivity to businesses. SD –WAN achieves this by decoupling network software controls from the underlying hardware.

According to Gartner, SD-WAN has 4 main characteristics – it must be able to support multiple connection types, it must be capable of dynamic path selection, must be easy to configure and manage and should be able to support VPNs, and third party services.

So how does SD-WAN benefit businesses?

Application-driven technology

Applications are becoming increasingly complex and varied. The needs of these next gen applications can only be met with the flexibility and speed provided by SD-WAN’s use of hybrid networks, which provides secure access and fast connectivity at remote locations.

Security

Enterprise WAN networks are now open to a growing number of users accessing it from multiple points and from multiple devices. In such a scenario, security has become a weak point for WAN networks. SD –WAN provides enhanced security, delivered centrally via an API to cover your entire WAN landscape with comprehensive security solutions such as encryption and app firewalling.

Quick to deploy and easy to manage

One of the main advantages of SD-WAN is its ease of use and simplicity; it can provide extremely dependable connectivity to remote locations, which can be deployed within a few minutes and can be easily managed.

Cost efficient

Traditional WAN networks relied on expensive hardware which were seen as a necessary cost of doing business. With cloud-enabled connectivity, SD –WAN delivers enterprise-grade services without any CAPEX investment. With a number of service providers offering varied and competing packaged service offerings, businesses can now pick the functionality they need and pay for what they use.

Centralized control

Network managers have complete control and overview of their entire SD WAN network and all its components. This allows them to monitor the network in its entirety, optimize network usage and ensure centralized implementation of operational and security policies.

Whether you need to connect your HQ to remote branches or connect Data Centers across your organization, SD-WAN has transformed the network landscape by providing premium, secure, and simple cloud-enabled WAN connectivity.

With its obvious benefits, it is hardly surprising that SD WAN adoption is predicted to grow dramatically.By the end 2019, 30% of enterprises are expected to deploy SD-WAN technology,up from less than 1% today.

With the industry revenue expected to touch $6 billion by 2020, service providers are trying to attract new customers by offering a variety of SD-WAN based innovative services, which range from NaaS (Network as a Service) to specialized WAN appliances to cloud based WAN solutions. And as their legacy WAN technology comes up for technology upgrades, businesses will certainly consider these options.

Sify’s converged ICT ecosystem – comprising infrastructure and service offerings for cloud, telecom and Data Centers, allows it to offer enterprises end-to-end network services. Our SLA backed services will transform your business connectivity with enhanced network availability, reliability, performance and security.

WAN – Wide Area Network, the three magic words that connect our world. Simply put, WAN is the network that connects local areas spread across the world.

The word network might conjure visions of tangled cables and blinking routers, but we have come a long way from the days when a 9.6 Kbps line was considered fast! Since its inception in the 1970s, WAN has been responsible for connecting people and facilitating business.

We trace the WAN journey through all its technological leaps from the 1970s to the present day and take a quick peek into the future of Enterprise WAN.

WAN evolution – 1970s to the present day

The late 1970s saw, what could be called, the start of WAN with X.25 Networks – a popular option with the maximum speed of 9.6 Kbps, which was used by many companies at that time.

The 1980s saw considerable innovations in WAN technology and through the decade network speeds of leased point-to-point lines kept improving. 1987 saw Cisco introducing routers to replace remote bridges.

At the beginning of 1990s, frame relay service was introduced and revolutionized the enterprise WAN industry by drastically reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency. In less than a decade, even the most reluctant organizations were using the technology.

The next big leap came with MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) – a successor to Frame Relay. Since its launch in early 2000s, it has been widely adopted by the majority of enterprises. It provides an IP based service to deliver voice, data and video on one network. Over time,WAN optimization technology has been added to MPLS networks to squeeze out more bandwidth and lower costs.

Enterprise WAN in the coming decade

Plagued by performance and reliability issues, WAN technology could not get the desired flexibility and cost effectiveness that other Internet based services achieved.

Cloud computing platforms changed this. SD- WAN (Software Defined-WAN) is the technology which will be the foundation of the next generation of enterprise WAN. It is software controlled, virtualized Network delivered through the cloud; with all the cloud related benefits of scalability, cost effectiveness and fast deployment.

Now that cloud service providers are offering cloud aligned network solutions, organizations can finally get access to the next generation of WAN to keep pace with cloud-based application.

Organizations need to move from using widely disparate and hybrid networks to integrated cloud-enabled networking platforms that can provide seamless manageability, high performance and high degrees of resilience and security. Watch this insightful video on WAN transformation