Services - Fault Resilient Broadband
In less than 10 years internet connectivity has grown from an academic resource to a global business tool. Many organizations have embraced this change in technology without realising the extent to which they rely on broadband connectivity - is your company one of these?
Do you work online with your suppliers placing orders and arranging deliveries? Do you manage your banking and other financial transactions through the web? How about email or one of the ever increasing online software solutions such as customer and contact databases, accounting packages and project management?
Broadband connections cannot be guaranteed and are not subject to a standard SLA (Service Level Agreement). But what if there was a way to protect and enhance your broadband without significant cost?
If you look closely at your business you will see that the internet is now an integral part of your daily activities – as essential as the telephone. (Do you run internet telephony yet? Many companies do as it provides features that cannot be achieved on traditional telephone lines.)
The cost of losing any of these services has to be measured in terms of lost business, delays in order fulfilment and degraded decisions due to lack of real-time information. Recent research by OFCOM, the UK telecommunications regulator, has identified that over half of small and medium sized businesses are not fully satisfied with their broadband connection either because of slow speed or more worryingly because of reliability.
Smart-Connect effectively doubles or triples your broadband in a smart way. It uses standard broadband connections but combines them in a unique way to protect your connectivity from failures in the network. Unlike other methods of providing standby lines for emergencies
Smart-Connect is managed and monitored from its data centres in London and Manchester. We provide two or more broadband connections to your location but uniquely each one is sourced through a different network operator. These connections run on independent networks and so each is immune to problems on the others. These are then combined on our network and you see a single, high-speed and highly reliable service. A small device on your site provides you with the Ethernet port – ready to accept your internal network equipment, which in most cases may be plugged directly into Smart-Connect without change.
If there is a failure on one of the broadband connections that make up your Smart-Connect solution the remaining connections will continue to maintain the service without interruption. If the problem is temporary you may not even know. If necessary the failed connection may be taken off-line for investigation and repair. Smart-Connect will maintain an overall service for you – allowing your business to continue without interruption.
Easy to install
Smart-Connect is quick to establish. We ship you a small pre-configured router, and ask that you connect this to your broadband. We then add one or more additional broadband connections to this depending on the level of protection and speed required.
The Smart-Connect network is continuously monitored allowing degraded performance to be identified early and changes made.
Are there alternatives to Smart-Connect?
Some larger companies use leased lines to provide their internet connections –but these are up to 10 times more expensive than broadband, are still subject to failure and in many cases provide less capacity. Smart-Connect is an intelligent and flexible way of providing a better service.
It is possible to connect several broadband connections yourself but these will lack end-to-end management and, crucially, may not support virtual private networking (VPN). Smart-Connect provides you with a single public IP address, regardless of the broadband in service – allowing any VPNs to continue without interruption. If you are using broadband to connect between your offices this last factor is essential.
