ADVERTORIAL Engage with the Exchange
Network aggregators offer a compelling proposition, seducing resellers – and their customers - with the enhanced choice and flexibility that access to multiple networks can offer. But, says Tom O’Hagan,
Managing Director at Virtual1, aggregators are capable of so much more – and it’s time to deliver. Here he explains how Virtual1 are offering more than just Total Network Freedom.
“Our business has always been about offering our Partners maximum possible choice – so whether it is investing in our network so that we can offer both MPLS and VPLS networks on our backbone, or taking a flexible approach to offer our Partners either Managed or Wires Only solutions, or forming partnerships with all major UK and International carriers; whatever our Partners have demanded, we have done it. But the technology has changed.
resellers are still very much at the starting line in terms of achieving a real competitive advantage through a Cloud proposition. This is where the Cloud ExchangeTM
comes in. The Cloud ExchangeTM was
borne of our recent expansion into Co-location services. We have interconnected our network with our state-of-the- art datacentre facilities to deliver on-net hosting capabilities to our Partners and their customers.
The effect of this has been two-fold. Tom O’Hagan
Businesses have changed. A network is no longer a connection to the internet, it is a critical business enabler, as integral to internal business function as to external communications. So we as a business have also changed, transforming from a provider of networks, to a provider of network capabilities. Key to this change has been the launch of our two Exchange capabilities: the SiP ExchangeTM and the Cloud ExchangeTM
.
The SiP ExchangeTM Converged networks have long been the ideal for businesses, with SiP already deployed by more than a third of UK operations. But, as with network providers, SiP providers too have their individual strengths and weaknesses, especially in terms of geographic coverage and added value features. This is why Virtual1 launched the SiP ExchangeTM
,
offering access to the leading UK SiP providers via direct interconnections with the Virtual1 network. It brings real value to Partners
42 COMMS DEALER DECEMBER 2011
and their customers through: ● Enabling Partners to choose the right SiP solution according to the needs of the individual customer – we have private peering and true NNI with all SiP Providers so our Partners have real parity of choice and also retain the ability to deal with the SiP provider directly
● Delivering enhanced security and reliability through private peering relationships with every SiP provider
● Private peering also ensuring a seamless connection, for superior call quality and added resilience against jitter
● Every Virtual1 network comes with free QoS and SiP handoff as standard, making every connection a ‘convergence- ready’ solution when your business is ready to take it
The Cloud ExchangeTM Analysts rarely talk about networks now without talking about the Cloud – the two have become almost synonymous. And yet
Firstly, it has answered the growing customer demand for private cloud solutions, which offer a compelling compromise between the benefits of a cloud solution and the security concerns of putting mission critical systems and data on the public internet. Put simply, we connect a customer’s co-location directly to their Virtual1 network, essentially providing them with their own on-net hosting where they can locate their own hosted applications, even firewalls and other security devices as required.
However, more importantly, the Cloud ExchangeTM
also offers
resellers the capabilities they need to develop their own cloud proposition. Using our on-net capabilities, resellers can create their own private cloud environment and use it to host anything they would normally provide on the LAN – so that could be centralised PBX, call recording, Citrix, MS Exchange. This can then be presented to their customers as a hosted solution, and from here it is a small step to delivering a much wider breadth of services and solutions, all within the cloud and, if done well, all profitable.
And this is where I believe aggregators can really make a difference to their partners – by providing not just the bare connections, technologies and circuits, but by using our unique reach, our unique breadth of capability to help resellers create the added value solutions that customers expect, and for which they will pay a premium.
n
www.comms-dealer.com
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