The 8 modern network requirements for businesses

Oct 14, 2019 | News

MyBroadband

Young telecoms company Fixed Mobile Telecoms is making waves in the corporate enterprise and carrier telecoms space.

Fixed Mobile Telecoms provides a platform where innovation can flourish as they cater for the changing network demands of corporates.

Fixed Mobile Telecoms uses world-class carrier equipment, including Juniper equipment for the routing layer, Arista for its switching fabric and Palo Alto for cloud security services. All are Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders in their respective categories, and all are geared to support software-defined networking – the essence of Fixed Mobile Telecoms’ next generation network.

The Fixed Mobile Telecoms value proposition

There’s a massive drive towards the cloud as corporates are increasingly seeing the value in a cloud strategy.

“Tech vendors today, however, offer access to cloud computing in the form of a Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), and while it’s a great concept, we believe people choose and use it incorrectly,” said Ed Du Plessis, CEO at Fixed Mobile Telecoms.

Everybody wants a network that can do everything which is why Fixed Mobile Telecoms have designed a network solution that addresses 8 important modern network requirements.

8 modern network requirements today

The 8 modern network demands to which Fixed Mobile Telecoms cater, and which also sets them apart from any other telecoms provider in the market, are outlined below.

1. SD-WAN at the core, not layered – As with any network that is orchestrated in the cloud, we offer SD-WAN, but differently. Fixed Mobile Telecoms doesn’t offer it as an overlaid technology, but as part of the core of their next generation network. Thus removing the cost and complexity of the overlay technology, which could cause a modern network to cost substantially more than it should. With overlaid SD-WAN technology, fully managed capability goes out the door as the network provider, SD-WAN provider and security provider are often not aligned. This means the service provider won’t have control over every aspect of network and the customer has to deal with 3 providers and try coordinate them, placing a big onus on the customer to ensure network availability.

2. MPLS – MPLS is known to be costly and thus became less attractive compared to broadband infrastructure, but Fixed Mobile Telecoms has taken the price premium out of MPLS. It remains a brilliant technology from both a service provider and end-user perspective, as it provides proven, secure performance and reliability for mission critical and real-time applications. Fixed Mobile provides MPLS as a service inclusive of its unique multi-services bandwidth stack.

3. Cost and speed – “We address the need for high speed, cost-effective direct internet access that is available to every site on a corporate network,” said Du Plessis. What is more, we provide it as a direct site based internet breakout, completely secured by Fixed Mobile’s Digital Fortress cloud security service, which is based on Palo Alto technology.

4. Cloud migration – Fixed Mobile Telecoms enables cloud migration – whether the customer wishes to move their applications to the cloud entirely or keep the application on site or in a datacentre like Teraco or any combination thereof. “We address all these types of needs directly,” said Du Plessis.

5. Orchestration – Companies today demand a certain level of control, and Fixed Mobile Telecoms offers this. Orchestration talks to the manageability of the network, and Fixed Mobile Telecoms offers 4 standard services which are always available to any office branch. These services are Internet, MPLS, Layer 2 and Voice. They further offer the capability to define how much of each is needed and can change that dynamically and on the fly. This makes networking a breeze.

6. Security – There are an increasing number of security breaches reported in modern networks especially where applications are cloud based and networks that supports IoT devices. Traditional thinking around network security was to protect the ingress point where it breaks out to the internet. Today this ingress point is undefined and everywhere, with applications in the cloud, in a datacentre, or in a server room on your own premises and users are not in the office anymore. “We deal with network security in the cloud and address this challenge directly, and far more effectively than physical platforms that used to be deployed,” said Du Plessis.

7. True workforce mobility – Assuming that all users don’t work from the office, true mobility speaks to the corporate network that requires not being confined to a certain building. True mobility is having the ability to communicate back to the corporate network, or to where the applications are – which may not be in the corporate network – seamlessly. Security and mobility are integrated and Fixed Mobile’s Digital Fortress speaks directly to this challenge.

8. Agility – Everybody wants increased flexibility and the ability to scale up and down with ease. Fixed Mobile Telecoms again addresses this requirement directly through its scalable software defined model.

Through their experiences, Fixed Mobile Telecoms has seen what companies truly want in their networks, and has come up with a solution that can cater to all these demands without adding complexity and cost.

“We combine all the benefits you get out of SD-WAN, and integrate it into the network at its core level,” said Du Plessis.

Typical overlay SD-WAN technologies at best caters to no more than 5 of these demands, and may cost as much as 40% more, as a result of adding technology which also makes it less manageable and harder to troubleshoot.

“We’re a big advocate of SD-WAN, but not overlaid technology – as it creates more challenges instead of solving them, and because it doesn’t truly solve the issue of speed, cost and security,” said Du Plessis.

“We believe that the 8 network requirements are the future of networking, and we offer that future today. We strongly believe and foresee that networks will be delivered like this in the future.

World-class carrier equipment from Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders

According to Rikus Jansen, the reason Fixed Mobile Telecoms is able to offer this is because of the partnerships they have with Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders Juniper, Arista, and Palo Alto Networks distributed by Westcon.

Juniper offers equipment for the routing layer, Arista for the switching fabric, and Palo Alto through Westcon for cloud security services. All are Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders in their respective categories, and all are geared to support software-defined networking – the essence of Fixed Mobile Telecoms’ next generation network.

Because of this, every element of the Fixed Mobile Telecoms network is designed to be future-proof, resilient and flexible – catering to the stringent demands of today’s customers and making for a compelling proposition for enterprises and corporates, through to ISPs and ICT resellers.

Fixed Mobile Telecoms is a gold sponsor and exhibitor at the MyBroadband Conference & Expo 2019 and will be giving way an Apple MacBook Air on the day of the conference to one lucky delegate visiting their stand.

To stand a chance to win this awesome prize and to discover how their telecoms innovations can shake up your business, visit stand number 24 on 17 October at Gallagher Convention Centre.

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