Is Network as a Service Right For Your Business?

By: John Shepler

Running a company network can be a big operation. Perhaps too big. You need lots of capital expenditures for switches, routers and software. Then you need staff to plug everything together, deal with system failures and constantly keep on top of updates, security patches and incoming threats. But, hey, isn’t that just the price in being in business today? There really isn’t any way to avoid all this cost and hassle and still operate, is there? Or IS there?

Network as a Service
Actually there is a new trend in network management that might work to your advantage. Instead of doing it all yourself, how about buying the network functions and capacity you need as a service?

You’re familiar with the migration of everything data center to the cloud. Now, the network is moving there too. All that stuff you would otherwise buy and manage, including switches, routers, and security appliances, can be had on a pay-as-you-go basis. What’s more, you can easily scale up and down as your business needs change. No more buying equipment like crazy to meet a demand and then trying to offload it as surplus when the need evaporates.

NaaS takes care of acquiring the physical devices needed to make the network function, but also handles ongoing support. It has the smarts to optimize the network for optimum performance and keep everything up to date. In addition, NaaS can support automatically onboarding new users and supporting new locations without a lot of muss and fuss at your end.

What Does AI Have to Do With It?
Artificial Intelligence is the latest buzzword in business productivity with great promise for future profitability. Actually, AI is here already and has been quietly integrated in all sorts of technology behind the scenes. AI is important to Network as a Service in that the network is being virtualized, adding all sorts of complication. But AI can run this, optimizing the network and responding to changes as they arise. As businesses need to integrate multi-clouds and multiple locations, the workload on IT staff can go through the roof. Letting AI handle all this complexity on a real-time basis can give you much more capability without soaring expenses.

But Will It Help YOU?
Could Network as a Service be advantageous for your company? Maybe, maybe not. The way to make a decision is to find out the costs and capabilities of NaaS options suitable for your size business. Get a complementary quote now and see if you can get more for your network dollar.

How Your Network Provider Can Help Keep You Secure

By: John Shepler

It seems like every week there’s a major “hack attack” against companies large and small. Once upon a time, this was more of an annoying curiosity than a serious problem, as the intruders were mostly curiosity seekers looking to enhance their tech cred within their computer enthusiast community. Now it’s serious trouble. Today’s attacks are at least disruptive to the conduct of business and at most create unrecoverable destruction.

Have You Covered ALL The Bases?
You’ve tried to adhere to recommended practice, but there’s always that nagging feeling that you’re still vulnerable. Is there anything else within reason that can be done to keep the bad guys out? Let’s take a quick look at some Cybersecurity Basics, courtesy of Level 3 Communications, a major network service provider:


You are probably already implementing software patch updates, strong passwords, anti-virus software, and Internet firewalls as technical solutions. Employee training to avoid things like clicking on email links is also excellent practice.

Where The Network Provider Fits In
Even so, as shown in the video, there are protections that your network service provider can implement to stop these attacks before they even get to you. Certainly, the service provider can monitor their own core servers and mitigate attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that try to traverse their network connections. But, a managed service provider can also extend that level of monitoring and protection into your network as well.

The Team Approach
Why go it alone, when you can have high reliability wide area networking services along with full-time security monitoring and attack protection working on your behalf behind the scenes. Seems like there is no such thing as too much security these days, so this could be a great time to consider adding managed network security to the protections you have already established… just to be sure.

Your Options
Are you interested in higher performance connectivity with the advantages of monitoring and added network security? Find out about the wide range of networking options available to you now.