Johannesburg, 11 Mar 2022
The world has been through a lot over the past two years, and as we start moving away from a lockdown mindset, companies are doing a lot of scenario planning to decide whether they need to return to their offices, or to downscale, or even whether to shut down branch sites. All of the changes we have experienced have presented challenges, but also opportunities, and many companies have started looking at how they can use their technology investments more effectively.
MTN Business has also had to adapt in order to keep meeting customer requirements. We realised early on that a more flexible approach was needed, and started looking at how to build bespoke or customised solutions to ensure our customers were able to continue operating effectively.
This is just as relevant today as it was two years ago. Organisations may not be sure whether they are going to send people back to the office, and many are exploring hybrid work environments and policies. In a market environment that’s unpredictable, partners like MTN Business must be able to understand what customer priorities will be over the next few years, and more importantly, what the business environment is going to be like.
Flexibility key to business success
Going forward, flexibility is going to continue to be key to business success. With the speed of change happening at an exponential rate, and with hybrid work becoming common across most industries, companies are faced with increased complexity from an IT perspective that needs to be managed in a safe and secure way. The normal modus operandi has changed permanently, so we need to be designing networks and connectivity solutions that are more flexible to accommodate this.
What every business needs is the freedom of choice and flexibility to scale things up, scale down, and optimise where it is required, and even terminate things that don’t make business sense or where the company can’t find ROI or economies of scale. Traditionally, businesses operated with branches, a head office and maybe a data centre. As work from home became mainstream, we saw a shift from traditional dedicated MPLS type services being delivered at a fixed location to different variations of broadband solutions.
As a result, we have seen large companies using LTE type solutions, private APNs, fixed LTE, and even fibre to the home. However, as remote usage has continued to scale up, companies are finding that the spend on solutions like private APIs is not sustainable. Now that lockdown is no longer in place, companies can’t afford to continue paying higher rates for their connectivity solutions that weren’t budgeted for.
Businesses are still continuing to migrate to the public cloud while they scale down on office sites and on-premises data centres. They are therefore looking for enough flexibility in their network design that will allow them to utilise on-premises infrastructure, third-party data centres, and the public cloud as and when needed. This not only requires flexible network design, but flexibility in contract terms and bandwidth options.
SD-WAN puts the power in your hands
When businesses originally sent staff home to work remotely, how much capacity was needed for each staff member was guesswork. Quality of service therefore became an important consideration to ensure that call centre staff, for example, had access to the bandwidth needed to keep up excellent customer service. While organisations needed different options to separate classes of employees, they also needed something to unify all of their connectivity mediums and connectivity types. In many cases, companies had already made significant investments into different connectivity options, and were stuck in a contract term that no longer served the business. They therefore needed to find ways to repurpose that expenditure to gain a solution that met their requirements.
With some uncertainty as to what their connectivity needs will be in the next few months, organisations need options, and they need a measure of control to ensure their network performs optimally and securely. SD-WAN was designed to be able to monitor remote quality of service, security and visibility of what’s actually happening across the network, providing an ideal solution for companies looking for the flexibility that will save on costs and ensure staff can continue working optimally, no matter where they are.
In a survey of our customers, we found that when it comes to their broadband solutions, cost-effectiveness was the most important aspect, followed by reliability. Another important consideration is security. Connectivity is one thing, but ensuring that the line is not abused, and making sure an employee is not hacked and compromises the whole network is vital. People working from home may not be using devices issued by the business, so protecting the company’s information, networks, data and employees becomes even more challenging – and more important.
With an SD-WAN solution powered by Cisco Meraki, companies can see what they are consuming at any specific point in time. Offering a bandwidth on demand type of model, SD-WAN enables remote working and is optimised for the cloud. In a traditional static network, connectivity must be provided to each point on the network, but because SD-WAN is application-based, the app determines how routing on the network is done, greatly simplifying today’s cloud-driven environments.
The African advantage
Companies still need the functionality that they are used to in branch environments, but now they need it deployed at employee homes. Essentially, they need SD-WAN technology and capabilities moved to the end point. This is even more vital for multinationals operating throughout the rest of Africa, where they are still faced with last-mile challenges.
MTN’s African footprint, combined with our expertise and our partnerships, ensures that customers have access to bespoke solutions that offer simplified connectivity to enable today’s digital workspaces. MTN has been a Cisco partner for more than 10 years, and together, as a team, the two companies have been working to identify ways to help customers maximise their investments, allowing them to better manage costs, improve performance and reduce complexity.
With our customised SD-WAN solutions, companies can be assured of security, scalability, efficiency and flexibility. Helping employees stay connected securely, no matter where they are, our bespoke solutions close the gap between “can” and done.
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