How to Choose a Network Provider by Nathan Hill-Haimes
How to choose a network provider? What do I ask my Managed Network Supplier?
A view of how to establish who the best supplier is when you want to implement
a Managed Virtual Private Network.
By Nathan Hill-Haimes, Managing Director, Managed Communications Ltd
One of the easy things to do when discussing the products and services
available on the market is to wax lyrical about the way the market is going,
the best solutions that you can buy and the most cost effective results you can
achieve. And in an extremely dynamic industry, such as IT, there is plenty to
talk about. We all know that there are constantly evolving solutions and a
parade of suppliers who can provide them.
But rather than talk about the best technology, I think it would be useful just
to swing the debate over to the issue of the Supplier. Recently one of our
customers, 'The Firewall Warehouse' implemented a broadband VPN for it's 3
offices and centralised warehouse that are spread across the UK.
Nick Johnson, Director of The Firewall Warehouse said, 'For the management team
the technological argument and the financial benefit derived was not really an
issue. Where we struggled was with our choice of supplier.'
Johnson went on, 'the problem was that we treated the sale as a commodity and
didn't really respect the fact that connecting our business up and passing our
vital data between sites was, in reality, one of the most important things on
our agenda. Sure, we understood it all, but we really should have made sure
that we understood the product source, the delivery schedule, the time we
needed to invest and the fact that those who provide you with critical
solutions need to be close to you and your business.'
'As it so happens we ended up with a good delivery and a solution that is fast,
robust, capable and secure, but only after we realised that we were not paying
enough attention to the deal and consequently put our own management efforts
into play, which incidentally was not that arduous.'
The lessons 'The Firewall Warehouse' learnt were that you need to do a bit of
basic research yourself before kicking off the supplier process.
The web is a fantastic source of information, as we all know and by searching
'VPN network' 'managed VPN', 'managed broadband', and a few other similar
phrases, it is possible to become that much brighter and informed. But equally
important is to understand what is behind the marketing web pages, what do the
network providers actually do?
Now, even in the commodity sale, not all vendors offer the same product or
service. For a start, don't ever believe that broadband is just broadband. It
comes in various guises and is delivered with varying levels of quality and
efficiency.
Some of the better known names do not necessarily offer you the best quality
broadband and quite frankly the delivery and customer care capabilities are
woefully inadequate for the small and medium sized business. So it?Ts
important to understand your vendors offering. What contention rates and speeds
are on offer for a start? And if you can get into a discussion with a supplier
about this you will find that one who has knowledge of the topic and an
understanding of how best to network a business will really give you that added
comfort.
Additionally you need to know how good the service is and there are two issues
that need some real clarity. The first of these is Reliability.
Now the answer to reliability is not just a simple claim of being reliable.
What you need to be told is the structure of the network and an explanation of
how they intend to provide you with the usual spiel about 99.999999% guaranteed
uptime. This revolves around how they have built their network and how they can
demonstrate a lack of network congestion. The least reliable infrastructure
will be the one that packs as many people as it can on to a limited network.
Conversely, the better network is that which can cope with lots of traffic as
well as having a lot of free capacity.
Which brings up the second issue; namely that of Latency. This again needs
explained to you by the supplier and they need to convince you that there is
low latency on their network because they are being generous with the capacity
and not overburdening their infrastructure with users. It?Ts the same issue as
that of reliability; less conscientious suppliers will push lots of traffic
across a smaller network, whereas more conscientious vendors will make sure
that there is loads of capacity and will be able to talk confidently about
their high reliability and low latency.
Whilst you are digging deep into the knowledge bank of your supplier you would
also be well advised to talk to them about the provision of voice over the
managed VPN. Voice can be run across your broadband VPN, but not all suppliers
really know how to do this or are capable of doing it. But be aware, this is
something that is happening and will become more and more popular. Because of
this a good supplier will be either encouraging you to run voice over your
managed VPN now or setting your expectations to do it as part of your medium
term planning.
But knowing about the technology and how it applies to you is important, but
equally so is their knowledge of process. So many times you can place orders
and then be lost in a sea of promises. A good supplier will guide you as to
what they will do, but also as to what you need to do. You don?Tt need to
spend hours on working with the supplier but you do need to be in synch with
their programme and understand what they are delivering, when they are
delivering and basically when to flick the switch.
A good supplier will have a combination of automation and human resource. You
should expect to be able to be given an online service to manage and indeed
provision your service, but likewise you should know the service agent who is
in charge of your project. Invariably you will have questions, date slippages,
configuration changes and so on and you want that piece of mind that your
supplier works with you to change the schedule and meet your demands. Do watch
out for this because once you lose track of what you and they are doing it
becomes an absolute muddle of spaghetti to unravel.
Other simple things to look out for are the speed and simplicity of the
supplier process. Automation of process invariably means that line orders are
placed quickly, but you need to understand their acknowledgment process and
update process so that you are comfortable with what information you expect to
be fed to you over the order lifetime. Likewise you need to actually understand
how the installation takes place. It should be a speedy delivery of a box, a
speedy delivery of a connection or connections and a harmonious bringing
together of the items to create your managed VPN. If you can?Tt see that nice
clear plan from your supplier then be warned that it all might not be plain
sailing.
So don?Tt panic, but just be conscious of getting stuck in to some of the
detail when you are evaluating your supplier. This is absolutely not just about
price. It?Ts about their knowledge of how to create and run a project and
it?Ts about the network they use to provide it. It?Ts also about how they
efficiently supply you and appraise you along the way as well as their ability
to persuade you of their business and technological integrity.
It's a fun thing to be able to make your business better and I also think that
your supplier will actually want to be part of that journey too. So do probe
and ask questions about some of the issues raised and I?Tm sure you will find
your choice of supplier to be much easier and fairly natural. Like most choices
the most appropriate one is fairly obvious once you know which questions to
ask. Nathan Hill-Haimes Managed Communications is a high-performance Managed
VPN Service provider - the company does not use the public internet to create
VPNs as experience has shown this is where many issues regarding latency and
security can occur. In addition to standard VPN services bonding of lines
enables higher capacity than other service providers can offer to key VPN
sites. Managed Communications - www.managedcomms.co.uk Bonded DSL
Bonded SDSL
Business VOIP Bonded ADSL
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-dsl
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-sdsl
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/business-voip2
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-adsl
About the Author
Managed Communications - http://www.managedcomms.co.uk
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-dsl
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-sdsl
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/business-voip2
http://www.managedcomms.co.uk/managed-services/bonded-adsl
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