Many businesses in South Africa continue to rely and use on premises Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, which is a viable solution, especially on solutions that are static in nature and don’t often change.
Some of these businesses have used the same infrastructure without modification for well over a decade and have understandably been very resistant to change as the perception is that additional costs will be incurred.
During the looting incidents that have hit South Africa, a large proportion of this infrastructure has been destroyed at a significant number of locations. Many large businesses faced a serious operational crisis that required significate work to recover and restore operational capability. During the rebuild the affected business are presented with the choice to either replace the infrastructure or migrate it into the cloud.
The cloud is a viable alternative if your solution supports it which is not necessarily a given. Alternatively, it is possible to host the infrastructure at a co-location data centre. In light of current events IT professionals need to address the challenges faced by businesses in the South African environment so that when these major incidents occur, business will continue to function without interruption or have operations restored in a short as possible time afterwards.
Regardless of whether the solutions are in the cloud or whether they are on premise the importance of a rock-solid last mile internet connection is of paramount importance. If the last mile goes down your business cannot get to the cloud. Alternatively, if the IT infrastructure is on premise, then your clients and employers cannot connect into inbound either.
A key ingredient of this business continuity is making the Internet more reliable in the last mile so that it can be restored as fast as possible. Just like any vehicle solves this problem by using and having a spare tire, the same is true in this case. A business that wishes to continue operations cannot just rely on a single Internet Service Provider (ISP), it requires a “spare tire” or many alternative options.
The problem is legacy networks have been designed around the concept of a single ISP and adding another one to the mix is not as easy as pie. This is where Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) comes to the fore in making the use of multiple ISPs simple.
And this is where Fusion Broadband has a sweet spot. It automates the business continuity and delivers a value proposition that doesn’t involve a penalty. We have delivered numerous solutions where both fibre and fixed wireless is being used in an active/active aggregation.
That means you can have fibre as an example from Cool Ideas and fixed wireless from Comsol and use the bandwidth from both to its full capacity. Therefore, using multiple Internet links is thus not a grudge purchase but provides resilience without any wasted overhead.
At a time of crisis, it is crucial to establish connectivity as quick as possible. Fusion SDWAN is fully automated, can be configured within 30 seconds for any connection type available at the location and implemented in less than 2 minutes at any site.
In addition, Fusion can maintain hardware for customers which can be sent overnight to any location that requires new installations. At a third of the price, Fusion delivers the business a higher return on investment which makes the rollout to multiple sites the right thing to do to achieve resilience. Other overpriced, complex solutions requiring expert skills and resources will take long to recover, especially in a crisis situation.
If you are serious about your business continuity and building resilience, please contact Fusion at info@fusionbroadband.co.zato arrange an online and real time demonstration.