Hitting reset on network availability and visibility

Imagine your business Internet connection is accidentally severed during a busy period this summer.   Will your connection go down? Do you have redundant or failover connections? If you don’t have redundancy in your network, how will this affect your business?  Will your staff be able to work without connectivity to the Internet or your corporate network?

Now more than ever, Canadians are using the internet and the cloud to run their business.  We’re completing point of sale transactions, communicating with customers using VoIP, sharing screens with new collaboration tools, backing up data, and accessing office apps like 0ffice 365 or GSuite.  In this post, I will share with you some Internet and network availability concepts and capabilities that will help you understand how to better assess your needs in a cloud-first world.

Businesses care about network availability

Most organizations consider availability to be the key component of a managed business Internet service.  But it’s important to ask yourself questions like the following: “What do I expect from my service provider if my Internet service fails?”  “What’s my comfort level with downtime?” “How much visibility do I need with regard to the availability and performance of my Internet connections across by business?  “Are some locations and some applications more critical than others?

Monitoring your network uptime

Internet availability is measured on a sliding scale - the industry measures availability by a series of 9s.  With a managed business Internet service, you get the option of a 99.9% (three 9’s) Service Level Agreement (SLA), meaning you get rebates on the fees you pay your Managed Service Provider (MSP) if SLA metrics like uptime are not achieved.  Given what’s at stake, your MSP will monitor your specific connection and use special tools to proactively detect, report, and repair issues 24/7 to ensure your uptime is maximized.

When a managed business Internet isn’t a fit for all your sites

The reality is most businesses can’t justify a fully managed business Internet service at remote or branch locations.  To help solve this, Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) offerings have redefined the network management options available.  How? By providing near-real time 99.9% uptime availability when delivered on the same provider’s managed or standard (unmanaged) Internet services.  SD-WAN provides a cost efficient platform built upon the latest technology and standards to deliver advanced monitoring and management services. While your head office may still require a proactively managed Internet service, your remote sites can use standard Internet service.  The SD-WAN then acts as an overlay across all sites to give your IT staff the complete visibility and control that they require via an online service portal. 

Monitoring uptime across providers

Select Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and SD-WAN providers bundle wireless failover as part of their offerings.  With TELUS, in the event of an outage, network connectivity will failover automatically to our wireless LTE network to ensure business continuity.  But what if you have locations with other ISP’s, or what we call Bring Your Own Access (BYOA)? With TELUS Network as a Service SD-WAN solution, you get a network agnostic solution.  While you may not get near-real time availability for BYOA sites, you can still monitor your BYOA uptime and benefit from other SD-WAN features like managing voice traffic rules, and accessing analytics and reporting across your entire network.

Time to review your network availability needs?

Given the importance of all your business Internet connections, now might be a good time to review your services to ensure they continue to meet your needs.  Looking to learn more about the cloud and your network? See Your network technology will define your future.

Interested to learn more about TELUS Network as a Service (SD-WAN)?  Watch this video, visit telus.com/naas, or request a callback.