Case Study: Multicloud Connectivity

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Creating a unified approach to global multicloud connectivity in the telecommunications industry

About The Company

One of the world’s leading providers of telecommunication and technology solutions searched for a way to offer its enterprise business and government agency customers simple and cost-effective connectivity to hyperscale cloud providers. The company has around 500 employees with a double-digit growth rate per year. Focussed on delivering quality services to their customer base across various industries including healthcare, finance, and retail, the company wanted to provide an all-encompassing solution for hybrid multicloud requirements.

Snapshot

  • Implemented a solution that offers customers greater choice in cloud services along with high-performance hybrid and multicloud capabilities.
  • Offers customers greater flexibility and control over their cloud connectivity.
  • Extended its core network and cloud reach across North America.
  • Saved 45-90 days on engineering and provisioning time for each private WAN connection it provides to customers.
  • Saved 75% on resources and hardware costs when onboarding each new client.

Challenges

Choice of Cloud Services: The company aimed to build on their portfolio of service providers to enable their customers to reach a more diverse range of cloud resources and applications. They also needed the capabilities of getting customers to their preferred cloud locations. The ability to easily access multiple cloud services, and move workloads from on-premise to public cloud environments for hybrid requirements, would be key to the company’s offering.

Time to Provisioning: The company required a unified approach to helping its private WAN customers quickly and efficiently access their cloud assets. Building infrastructure into data centres, to connect to cloud services, is typically a time-consuming process. Once up and running, a traditional provider could take four to six weeks – or longer – to provision a connection. The company needed an alternative solution that would see its enterprise customers be set up and provisioning cloud connections within a short time frame.

Setup and Provisioning Costs: The company was having to front resource, hardware, and maintenance costs to build into data centres and provision cross-connects from each of its customers to each cloud provider of their choice. This quickly became an unsuitable financial model when the company’s customers started expecting more cloud provider options and quicker connection times.

Control Over Connectivity: The company needed to give their customers greater control over their cloud connections. The team looked to transform their convoluted approach to accessing the cloud into a simple and all-encompassing process. An on-demand network configuration, driven by the end user, was needed.

Solution

The company partnered with Megaport to offer customers a high-performance cloud connectivity solution leveraging a powerful Software Defined Network. With fast, flexible, and direct access to the global leading cloud providers, customers can now quickly and securely access the most applicable cloud resources for their business.

With Megaport connectivity, they can move critical workloads between their on-premise environments to multiple cloud providers from one interconnection point or provided WAN. This creates an easy and cost-effective method of managing their cloud strategies. This outcome aligns with the company’s mission of becoming a one-stop shop for many services, and enables both customisation and consolidation of telecommunications and technology solutions.

“We pride ourselves on developing unique solutions for our clients that are both quickly deployed and provide enterprise-grade service levels. Megaport is a partner that shares these values and helps us provide purpose built innovation to our clients.”

Key Points

  • As Megaport grows its network of cloud providers, the company adds resources and applications into its repertoire, strengthening their offering to its customers.
  • The company extended its core network and cloud reach across North America and, by joining the Megaport Ecosystem, they are able to leverage international capacity, covering more ground and opening up to a wider scope of potential new customers.
  • The company saves 45-90 days of engineering and provisioning time for each private WAN connection they provided to customers. It took just five days to set up their Megaport and now takes them less than 60 seconds to provision a Virtual Cross Connect (VXC) to any service provider across any global Megaport-enabled location. As a result, businesses get a more efficient and time-effective onboarding.
  • Customers can deploy services in real time without the four to six week delays often associated with traditional connectivity models.
  • The company is saving 75% spending on resources and hardware costs when onboarding each new client. They no longer have to manage the costs of engineering hardware into data centres, multiple port fees, and the provisioning of new connections for every customer’s cloud service needs. They can instead provision VXCs to any service provider on the Megaport Network by simply paying for one Port and required bandwidth.
  • The company can now offer greater flexibility and control over customers’ connectivity. Megaport’s on-demand scalable bandwidth capabilities have enabled the ability to flex capacity according to usage. They now have a unified and simple connectivity solution which is adjustable according to their customers’ requirements, and they can empower them with services quickly and efficiently.

solution diagram

Future Plans

  • The company has also started to leverage the Megaport solution for network redundancy. They can extend their backup core network by provisioning connections between their data centres.
  • The company is extending its global coverage to new markets across the world without the high costs and time constraints associated with committing to an inter-continental circuit.
  • Megaport’s Network as a Service offering will continue to extend the company’s reach and gives them a different economic model for opening up new regions to network services.