The tech world’s best kept secret: carrier-grade connectivity

The benefits of a resilient, fast and secure network backbone are well known to network operators and their wholesale customers.

What’s less well known is that enterprises can also go direct to the source of network provisioning and management. The result: telecoms carrier-grade benefits at a lower cost and without the need for third parties. That’s a massive competitive advantage in a world where online performance is often the difference between operational success or failure.

Working directly with a company that deploys, operates and governs the core network is a win-win for large organizations but too often today they pay the price for being routed into the hands of third-party consultancies, service providers and others.

However, as more enterprises are starting to realize, going direct to the network owner provides superior value, state-of-the-art security know-how, reduced administrative overheads and no-holds barred performance and availability.

Banishing the world wide wait

What’s taken them so long? Perhaps it’s because network management has become subsumed into IT leadership roles.

CIOs and CTOs tend to have responsibility for networks and specialist knowledge has left in favor of convergence. With so much pressure on serving front-end needs, the network has been neglected but it’s connectivity that underpins much of the user experience.

Large enterprises are realizing this and going direct to the modern voice and data connectivity masters of the universe: global network owners. 

“We’re seeing more enterprises understanding this conundrum,” says Mattias Fridström, chief evangelist at internet backbone provider Arelion. “They are dependent on the network so why not go direct to the owner of world’s largest internet backbone that covers 350 points-of-presence (PoPs), which serve customers across 125 countries? By cutting out the middlemen, they gain access to capacity, performance and the best customer service. If we can manage some of the world’s biggest technology brands and other huge wholesale customers, we can certainly do the same for large enterprises.

“We are offering the technical underpinning of the network fabric but the ultimate business outcome is leading connectivity for the cloud age. Connectivity is key: consumers quit online shopping carts and value-chain partners lose confidence over wait times. The network has become absolutely central to core operational metrics and the perception of brands.

“This will only accentuate as businesses adopt AI and exploit the power of real-time data analytics. But there are other advantages too, such as security because we have panoramic visibility to incoming threats, and customer service and support from expert engineers with forensic insights to performance management, traffic prioritization and granular quality-of-service control.”

Fridström adds that Arelion is seeing customer interest from across verticals including global banks that need zero downtime and minimal latency to online gaming and digital streaming companies that need to deliver optimal value and performance to customers by moving services from data centers to cloud platforms.

As complex geopolitics create new network governance threats and performance challenges, and as more companies seek to globalize their supply chains and tap new markets, it’s likely that we will see more companies going to the ultimate source of connectivity: the world’s internet backbone.

Find out more about the world’s biggest internet backbone.