The Network Manager’s “Aha!” Moment

I see the look on their faces all the time, sitting across a conference table, chatting with the corporate IT team. As I explain what our Software-Defined Network Platform does for our customers, their faces change! There is a brief pause and then comes the “Aha!” moment. They’ve just realized that their jobs are about to change dramatically.

As I describe to these network overseers, how Aryaka’s supercharged global private network can outperform the speed of their current (and frustratingly slow) Internet or MPLS connection, they are intrigued.

When they hear about the lower cost to set up and run our network, they are intrigued even more. But, when I explain how we can have it up and running globally, in a few days – with just an Internet connection – their faces change….

Real time WAN deployment is a revelation
No corporate WAN has ever been deployed in real-time before. Today, making even routine adjustments to the network takes a lot of time – and causes a lot of pain. Legacy networks are just difficult to scale and optimize. Setting up a branch office on foreign soil – even in bigger cities – can take as much as 60-120 days.

IT constantly faces tension with the businesses they serve, when expansion initiatives butt up against the realities of setting up shop in the developing world — rolling trucks, digging trenches, burying lines to put in hard lines and fixed circuits.

Global MPLS reality: first delays, then frustration
The issues of agility and speed of deployment resonates deeply with IT, because of how difficult it can be to ramp up an office with poor local infrastructure.

When corporate WANs are tied to an MPLS footprint, getting that final, local link to the office can be incredibly frustrating. Finger pointing and discussions about who is accountable for delays go on incessantly.

Finally, digging your own well
Out of desperation, IT folks are actually forced to set up the WAN themselves. They are saddled with ordering the connections, determining equipment needed, going through endless cycles of testing, service failure, and more testing.

It’s like digging your own well for water — or building your own power plant for energy.

The problem is, there no single MPLS provider that can cover all your remote global locations. In fact in China, some companies give up on local service providers and pay separately for constructing a link to their own building – just for one location.

But back to the “Aha!” moment …
Despite the pain, companies are expanding, moving, and reconfiguring their WAN all the time. They lean on IT a lot.

A global WAN, up and running in a matter of few days, is nothing short of a revelation.

No difference between crossing the road and crossing the world
A Fortune 500 manufacturer wanted to relocate their Shanghai office. After four long months, with the CEO set to fly in for the ribbon cutting in three days, there still was no connectivity in place. The team on the ground was scrambling (to put it mildly), as we came in to give the company a quote. It only took us a few hours to get their network up and running, even before the paperwork were signed.

Oh and the new location? Across the street!

Another one of our customers – we took them from hello at the door to routing traffic between Israel and New Jersey in 3.5 hours. The next fastest alternative would have taken them 10 months.

And we hear of other scenarios all the time.

• A business is expanding in the APAC region. The company has just acquired three new companies in the region. An executive bursts in. “How fast can you integrate this company with our network? Can we be up and running in 30 days? For CIOs, the difference between being able to answer “today” rather than “in three months” is almost beyond imagination.
  Or….
• A CEO puts down a magazine. She calls the CIO into her office: How fast can we move our corporate apps out of the data center? How quickly can we ramp up Office 365? Can we save money if we get out of the data center? This is the moment when the IT person’s head begins to spin. She knows that a) this is a huge job and b) there will be little or no tolerance for slowdown in the workforce while this process is taking place. Aryaka’s ability to ramp up such integral applications such as remote hosted email and file sharing in real time – without “performance compromise” — is mind-boggling to her.

A whole new world
When I’ve spoken to CIOs and Network Managers about what Aryaka can do for them, I’ve heard them whisper: this could change our whole lives.

And often, while they are still processing the significance of this new agility to their own jobs – and to the business people they serve – we already have them up and running.

MPLS not only takes much longer, this 20-year old technology is not worth the wait. Remember, there is no single MPLS provider that can get you anywhere in the world.

But we can! Try it out for yourself.