How are enterprise network demands changing?
Everything a business does, whatever the sector, is dependent on high-performance connectivity. The rising use of media-rich communication and collaboration, remote working, AI applications, and increased reliance on cloud storage, along with cloud-based applications and services, are all changing the way businesses work. This is shaping new networking requirements for architecture and capacity that is adaptive and scalable. High availability and service assurance are critical for all our customers, but especially those in finance and healthcare. Costs for all businesses are rising at rates faster than have been seen for a long time, putting increasing pressure on business models to retain margins. This means that, alongside the demand for increased network capacity and performance, our customers also need to reduce costs.
How are we modernizing our network to support our customers’ needs?
At WIN, our close interaction and collaborative approach with our customers means that we understand their needs wholly. This in turn sets our network design and innovation strategy. Because we are aware of our customers’ needs, we are able to identify the right new technologies to deploy for a better service at a reduced rate. In other words, we strive to build a network that enables us to provide a bespoke service to meet both performance and budgetary requirements. Historically, this approach has meant that we have been able to provide reliable Ethernet connectivity with scalability at up to 10G increments when and where our customers have needed it. But it’s clear to us that businesses in all sectors are going to need more capacity and flexibility, yet still achieve a reduction in their transport cost per megabyte. With this in mind, we have embarked on a ground-up modernization of our network to provide a state of the art, carrier-grade solution that can underpin the services that we know our customers need now and, critically, that they will require in the future. Consequently, we set out to explore the options available to us to unlock the potential for much higher data speeds, more features, and more service options. We wanted a more intelligent and flexible network that is not constrained by port availability or bandwidth.
How have we achieved this transformation?
Based on their experience and market leading we knew that Ciena could offer a complete and integrated solution that would not only increase the data speeds we can offer, but also enable us to extend our service offering beyond layer 2 Ethernet connectivity. The upgraded network is based around Ciena’s newest 5171 and 8180 platforms, giving us capacity, control, and aggregation capability for maximum performance through the core and right to the edge of our footprint. It means that we can now offer routed or switched Ethernet services in increments up to 100G, and for our customers’ highest speed requirements, ports can be turned up as high as 400G.
So, what does this really mean for our customers going forward?
We can continue to deliver the layer 2 Ethernet services that we know many of our customers need. At the same time, the increase in speed and capacity in our network means that we can also meet the demand for more performance at a lower cost. The solution also brings a wider feature set, so we can provide layer 3 functionality for IP-VPN services, giving our customers the choice and control that they need. For some of our customers, especially in the future, the addition of segment routing capability means that we can offer a network slicing service. This is perfect for customers who need to build advanced private networking solutions or for mobile backhaul to support 5G rollout. Overall it means we can support an ever-increasing range of customers with a wider range of networking requirements. Speak to us now about how our new capability can be applied to lift your business performance.