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TELUS Business

On the information highway your managed connection may vary

Tech Trends · Mar 10, 2017

Picture a scenario where some construction down the road results in your Internet connection being accidentally severed during your busiest time of year.  Will your connection go down?  Do you have redundant connections?  If you don’t have redundancy in your solution, how will this affect your business?  Will your staff be able to work without connectivity to the Internet or your corporate network?

Every client I work with relies on Internet connectivity and talking through these questions helps me understand the extent to which their business relies on connectivity.  Exploring how they use their connectivity and how it supports their business enables me to help them choose the right connectivity solution with the right level of management to support their business.  In this post, I will share with you some availability concepts that will help you understand how to support your business in an online world.

Businesses care about availability

Most organizations consider availability to be the key component of a managed business Internet connection.  It’s important to ask yourself the question, “What do I expect from my service provider if my Internet service fails?”  When talking to clients about availability, I try to understand their comfort level with downtime.

Guaranteed uptime

Availability is measured on a sliding scale; the industry measures availability by a series of 9s.  The new TELUS Network as a Service solution provides a 99.9% service uptime guarantee (or three-9s) when delivered on TELUS managed or unmanaged internet services which includes TELUS PureFibreTM. This means that the service is designed to deliver downtime of less than 43 minutes and 49.7 seconds a month.  There are a number of components that affect the availability of your service, this includes the access technology such as switches and fibre of copper links as well as the tools in place to detect and report on problems with the service.

Redundant links

If a business requires availability higher than 99.9% I start to explore additional redundancy.  This usually means providing a backup redundant link that will take over in the event of the primary link failing.  TELUS Network as a Service offers two options for increased redundancy.

Wireless link

The first option involves integrating a wireless link running on the TELUS cellular network.  In the event of an outage, network connectivity will failover to our wireless network.

Second physical link

The second option is to provide a second physical link that uses separate physical cabling and infrastructure.  In this scenario, if the primary link fails due to a fibre being cut, as an example, then the second link will take over.

Beyond availability

Network management goes beyond the concept of availability.  It also covers usage monitoring and the ability to configure network features.  Often clients don’t review the features and capabilities of their network connectivity once it has been installed; the stability and reliability of most networks means they are often forgotten about as they run quietly in the background.  As a business evolves over time, however, its needs also evolve and they may no longer match the network services that are being subscribed to.  

TELUS Network as a Service

TELUS offers different network products that include different levels of management.  TELUS Network as a Service is built upon the industry standard for Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN).  SD-WAN provides a cost sensitive platform built upon the latest technology and standards to deliver advanced monitoring and management services that were typically only previously delivered with high end connectivity products like Dedicated Fibre Optic Business Internet.  With the introduction of new services such as TELUS Network as a Service, now might be a good time to review your services and ensure that they have the ability to support your business today and into the future.

Watch this video and see how TELUS Network as a Service can change your business today

For more information, visit telus.com/naas

Authored by:
Nathan Roarty
Nathan Roarty