Unparalleled Performance at the Edges
Most companies manage myriad telecommunications and internet service technologies across multiple global providers: carrier ethernet, MPLS, cellular wireless, broadband internet and many more. For multisite organizations leveraging the cloud with SaaS and IaaS, network and internet transport services are complex. And they can be very expensive. When you throw in 5G and edge computing, the game changes even more.
Solutions for Optimized and Secure Connectivity
While Structured doesn’t sell the circuits or the internet services inherent in connectivity solutions, we do help customers manage, secure and optimize their wide area networks (WANs), including their connections to public cloud and “as a Service” providers.
Structured offers SD-WAN and WAN optimization technologies and services to improve connectivity and performance over geographically dispersed networks. We also can assist with carrier management.
SD-WAN
An SD-WAN allows organizations to use their choice of transport services — including relatively inexpensive broadband internet – to securely connect far-flung users to network resources, apps and data, including those resources, apps, and data residing in the cloud.
Carriers cease to matter as much in this virtual WAN architecture that centralizes control to intelligently direct and prioritize traffic across the WAN. This decreases bandwidth requirements while improving quality of service (QoS), visibility, and security across the network.
The savings realized by SD-WAN, both in time and hard dollars, are immense. Some industry estimates peg the cost savings at 90 percent off traditional MPLS-driven infrastructures. Further, the centralization and simplicity of SD-WAN management consoles – including zero-touch provisioning for new sites with virtual SD-WAN appliances — reduces the time IT staff must spend managing the WAN.
Enterprise security also gets a boost from SD-WAN adoption via end-to-end encryption and the way authentication and access policies can be applied and automated across the network. Many modern SD-WAN providers also include security features like firewalls, web filtering, intrusion detection and protection systems (IDS/IPS), and anti-malware software in their products.
WAN Optimization
WAN Optimization is a component of modern SD-WAN architecture solutions. WAN Ops improves application performance by caching, compression and deduplication for acceleration across physical sites. This technology is especially beneficial for bandwidth-intensive/latency sensitive voice and video applications as well as backup software that must move large amounts of data across the WAN.
Dating back to the early days to enterprise wide area networking, WAN Ops has been a useful tool for IT departments to contain bandwidth costs and improve performance in multisite networks.
Carrier Strategy and Management
For carrier strategy and management, Structured now partners with Lightstream. Together, Structured and Lightstream can help customers achieve high-performing and secure connectivity by recommending blueprints for the best way to route traffic based on where a client’s users are relative to the applications and data they need to access.
Once Structured and Lightstream help clients establish which technologies and which carriers will work best for their environment, Lightstream can also take on carrier management as a managed service. Customers receive immense benefit from having a single point of contact through which to manage their connectivity and service levels.
Structured Professional Spotlight
David Ritchey, Enterprise Networking Director
As the Enterprise Networking Director at Structured, David manages large and complex customer projects for enterprise LANs and WANs. A 20-year IT veteran, he is adept with the technologies and products from most major manufacturers and has significant experience working with ATM, MPLS, frame-relay, ISDN, Ethernet switching, dynamic routing, and internet services configuration and maintenance. Security and regulatory compliance is also of utmost concern in the projects he manages. More personally, this summer David was elected president of the board of directors for MINET (Monmouth Independence Network) which serves fiber to the home in the Monmouth, Independence, and Dallas areas.