Outsource Your Network Headaches

By: John Shepler

Back when all the network equipment fit into a literal broom closet and Cat5 cables hooked it all together, running a LAN with a connection to the Internet was an all in a day’s work. Now you’re dealing with multiple clouds, multiple locations, bad actors constantly trying to intrude, and equipment going obsolete almost before you can even power it up. The level of complexity is growing exponentially, but your staff and resources aren’t. Is there any way to simplify all of this?

Make Network Woes Someone Else’s Problem
You can keep doing it all yourself. That means hiring more and more staff, constantly refreshing hardware, troubleshooting outages and dealing with outside attacks on a daily basis. Or, you can let someone else take care of it.

The first approach to outsourcing network grief is to contract with a Manage Service Provider or MSP. This is an outside company that acts as your IT department. You still own all the equipment and services, but someone else provides the staff to manage it for you.

A newer approach is Network as a Service or NaaS. It’s a logical extension of Software as a Service. You stopped buying boxes with CD-ROMs to update your systems years ago. Most software is now offered on a subscription basis. Computing hardware has gone the same way with cloud-based services. Why not take the same approach to networks?

How NaaS Works
When you employ NaaS, you are essentially turning your network into a subscription. Just like SaaS you pay as you go and you pay for what you use. You dump capital expenditures and trade them for operational expenses.

NaaS can be implemented on a WAN or LAN basis. WAN networks include whatever it takes to interconnect various business locations, cloud providers and general Internet service. You can also outsource your LAN so that NaaS provides all the in-house routers, switches and security appliances needed to run the network.

What about SD-WAN?
Software Defined Wide Area Networking is a flavor of NaaS that can improve WAN performance, especially in accessing the Internet. SW-WAN combines multiple lines, such as fiber optic, Fixed Wireless Access, cable broadband, and satellite to get the highest performance for your most critical functions. It automatically monitors each line and selects which path each packet should take. Higher priority packets get faster and lower latency paths, while lower priority tasks get what’s left. NaaS may incorporate SD-WAN to improve network performance.

The NaaS Advantage
There’s a certain efficiency in not being short of resources when you desperately need them to conduct business, or getting stuck with a back room full of hardware you’ll have to keep until things pick up or unload at fire sale prices. Worse yet, who wants to be laying off valuable tech employees during a downturn only to have to recruit and on-board new ones when business increases?

NaaS can also introduce some new features, such as constant AI monitoring and self-healing networks. Your network becomes another type of cloud that just gets a job done without you having to fight fires or worry about how to add this or that capability.

When NaaS Doesn’t Make Sense
As attractive as outsourcing your network woes sounds to many companies, it’s not for everyone. Companies that have large expert teams with deep knowledge of the network infrastructure and business operations may be able to provide an operational ability and efficiency beyond what an outside company can. This is especially true in heavily regulated industries or those with unique requirements.

How about your business? Does your network run like a well oiled machine with a staff that has knowledge not easily replaced? Or, are you struggling to deal with growth, a changing environment, difficulty in finding the right staff, constant problems that are hurting productivity or facing an equipment refresh that is going to be a strain on the finances?

Before you spend a fortune, you might want to consider the alternative of Network as a Service. Get expert consulting and proposals that meet your particular needs now with compelling NaaS solutions.

Managed Services Give Small Companies an Edge

As "the great recession" drags on, companies of all sizes struggle with the issue of how to maintain competitive electronic based services while staying within a constrained, if not declining, budget. Managed services offer a possible solution, especially for smaller companies that have little in the way of IT staffing and no ability to hire.

What's the secret of managed services? The name pretty much spells it out, as long as you realize you are not the one doing the managing. Let's consider your telephone system. One approach is to do a study, buy a good sized traditional or IP PBX system, acquire the needed wireline connectivity, order cartons of SIP telephones, network wiring, and a staff to install and maintain the complex system.

That's how big companies generally do it. Really big companies may have one staff for the telephone system and a separate and larger staff for the corporate computer network. That's a lot of people and a lot of infrastructure. But what else are you going to do?

An alternative approach is to outsource everything to a managed services provider. Your in-house involvement is pretty much managing the manager to make sure they have the latest requirements and any moves, adds or changes. Just about any service can be managed by an outside provider, but telephone and computer networking services are common. Any services that don't need a vendor's physical presence can be handled from long distance, since on the network across the country is as close as next door. For those needs that do need someone on-site, a VAR or Value Added Reseller can be hired separately or through the MSP or Managed Services Provider.

A simple MSP arrangement is a Managed T1 Router. The company that provides the router is the same one that provides the T1 data line. Your line would normally be terminated to a network interface in your telecom closet. It would be up to you to buy a router with the correct T1 interface and configure it to work to the line specifications.

A larger company with a dedicated staff has no problem with this. But what happens when things go wrong at a smaller company? It could be the line. It could be the router. It could be at the provider's end. Who's going to sort that out? You are, in conjunction with the telco company and the service provider.

But if you contract for a managed router service, the service provider has responsibility for everything from their end, through the line, and through the router they provide at your premises. They don't have control or visibility into your network, but up to that connector they have full visibility and control. You may be gone for the day, but the network operations center will often find and fix problems before you open up the next day.

A hosted PBX system provides a similar service for telephone operations. There is no physical PBX at your premises. All you have are VoIP telephone sets connected to a broadband network that runs to the PBX service provider. The equipment at their end does everything from connecting to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) to connecting interoffice calls, to call forwarding, automated attendant and conference calling bridge. An extra advantage of this approach is that your offices can be scattered all over the country and still act as if they were in the same building.

There are managed services for telephone, broadband Internet, multiple location networks, video conferencing, Web servers, and similar needs. You can do any or all of these things in house, but if you want to see how to maintain your competitive edge without the staffing and capital expense, look into managed service options now.

Bandwidth Deals for MSPs

Management Service Providers, MSPs, can increase their value added to their clients by expanding the information technology services that they provide to include finding better deals on WAN bandwidth. Few companies realize how much the telecommunications services marketplace has changed over the last few years and the range of lower cost options available to them.

The most basic bandwidth service that most companies should consider is T1 voice and/or data services. T1 lines are highly reliable, usually come with a service level agreement, and have dropped in price by half to two-thirds this decade. Businesses that signed a lease years ago and simply renew without a competitive review of their options could be astounded by how much less they could be paying. Those pressed by additional bandwidth demand may find that they can get 3 Mbps, 6 Mbps or higher symmetrical bandwidth for what they are currently charged for 1.5 Mbps T1 service.

T1 telephone and T1 dedicated Internet access are the two traditional service classes. But companies with heavy telephone use, such as sales organizations or call centers, can benefit from the higher telephone system performance offered by ISDN PRI service delivered over T1 lines. Another lesser known service is T1 Integrated. The integration involves a using a single T1 line to deliver both telephone and Internet service. You can get up to 12 outside phone lines plus broadband Internet service with T1 Integrated lines. Dynamic bandwidth is often available so that all bandwidth not in use for telephony is automatically assigned to the Internet connection.

Many medium size companies or smaller operations with high bandwidth needs are moving to DS3 service at 45 Mbps. This service level, usually delivered via fiber optic connection, has also seen dramatic price reductions. So much so that companies that used to consider T1 services as the best they could afford are now moving up to DS3 bandwidth. A money saving option for those businesses that experience occasional high usage peaks but a lower average level of activity is burstable DS3. The basic line charge is lower than a full DS3 but with the ability to accommodate surges automatically.

An exciting new service unheard of a few years ago is Ethernet. Metro Ethernet offers the ease of network management with bandwidth options of 10, 100 or 1000 Mbps to better match LAN speeds. Remote data center access and disaster recovery are two popular applications. Ethernet can now be extended beyond the metro area by competitive carriers with nationwide fiber optic networks and POPs ( Points of Presence) of their own. Where available, Ethernet solutions, can be the lowest priced high bandwidth solutions by a factor of two or more.

Could your clients benefit from lower cost and more diverse WAN bandwidth options for voice and data? If so, our team of bandwidth experts stands ready to assist you in being the hero.