technavadmin – Page 9 – Technology Navigation Inc.

Author: technavadmin

EA or CSP? Good Question 

technavadmin SaaS , , , , , ,
EA or CSP? Good Question 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

Traditional software licenses or head for the cloud? Is there a different way to procure cloud software/SaaS? These are some questions our clients ask as they look to leverage costs against their projected growth in the short, mid, and long-term. 

For firms using Microsoft products – which at last count is in the neighborhood of 650,000 including a whopping 91% of the Fortune 100 – this decision comes down to choosing between Microsoft’s Enterprise Agreement (EA) and its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). Deciding which one is best for your business situation depends largely on who you are now and who you want to be in the future. 

The Case for CSP 

CSP Flexibility has become a huge part of many business plans because it can allow them to manage the ebb and flow of a volatile world with a lot less risk. Instead of the typical three-year agreement that is the foundation of EA, CSP allows you a more flexible purchasing cycle, which not only lets businesses have more elasticity with their budgets, but also means they are only paying for the licenses they use each month.  

For companies where there is a dedicated seasonal surge, this is a great way to upgrade the number of users needed for that specific window without having to take a bath on their price the rest of the year. Depending on the number of licenses purchased, CSP can have similar discounts as the EA, making the CSP decision easy from a financial and contractual perspective.  

In addition to the flexibility and license cost that the CSP provides, there are many providers that bake in Advanced or Premier Support, which eliminates the need to purchase a Premier Support contract, as required in the EA structure. Some CSP providers have their support onshore with 24x7x365 access, which is a nice change from the existing MS support model.  

The Case for EA 

EA is the primary licensing vehicle Microsoft has been using. It is for companies with at least 500 licensing stations that want software along with cloud service options for a minimum of three years, typically. It is a big package deal that naturally affords the customer some discounts due to the volume. That is, the more licenses you buy, the less you pay per license, if you can negotiate a better price. As the business scale and need to add or remove additional hardware, online services, or connected devices, you have a once-a-year process called the “true-up” without having to order them individually.  

There is a bit of measured risk with the EA, however. If the expected number of users does not meet what you’ve purchased during the first year, there’s no getting your money back. Most businesses are confident of their growth predictions before making an investment like this; but what happens in the event of something unforeseen and catastrophic like COVID-19 or a natural disaster that stunts or cripples your growth?  

Obviously, risk management is part of any business, but the limitations should be noted. If Azure is part of your company’s package, it is possible to reduce the number of licenses needed without cost starting in the second year, but that does not apply to the rest of Microsoft’s products. 

Conclusion 

Kudos to Microsoft for being cognizant of how different two businesses models for purchasing licenses and support. The choice then is to decide between the long-term EA at a sizable discount or the month-to-month CSP with similar discounts per license but a lot more flexibility and seemingly better support. 

The evolution that brought us here: how communications have changed in 60 years 

technavadmin Technology Navigation, UCaaS ,
The evolution that brought us here: how communications have changed in 60 years 

By John Witcher
Director of Client Engagement

The landscape of office communications is changing at a rapid pace. It appears the days of buying a PBX and Key System are becoming obsolete, in its place are platforms that allow for communication in several ways all tied into a single source.  

Many businesses are moving away from old, technologically disparate communication solutions to Unified Communications as a Service. This is enabling the workforce to be more productive and connected than ever.  

Communication platforms have evolved over time and have accelerated greatly. Here are some of those highlights: 

1960 – 1990 

  • Computer Networking and communications between computers became possible 
  • Email became a new way to communicate  
  • Cell phones were introduced (remember those brick-like cell phones we used to carry around in bags?) 
  • Large PBX’s were developed (if you wanted redundancy, just buy two) 
  • Audio conferencing became more widely used during this time period, and we all learned (or thought we did) how to mute our phones  

1990 – 2000

  • Instant messenger was developed and grew to be one of the most prominent ways to communicate within businesses, friends, and family around the world 
  • Video conferencing was in its infancy stages during this time period, which will explode in the 2000s to present 
  • The first smart device was made, (who remembers IBM’s Simon?)  
  • Firewalls became a vital part of businesses securing their network environments  
  • Texting was released, (remember 15 cents per text?)  
  • Online conferencing and web share were launched 
  • Cordless phones were released (no more 20-foot-long, tangled cords!) 

2000– 2010  

  • Software as a Service was born, which lead the way to productized cloud platforms, including Unified Communications (UCaaS), Contact Center (CCaaS), Infrastructure (IaaS), etc.  
  • The first iPhone was released 
  • Web conferencing was launched, allowing businesses to hold live meetings across the web (remember the first jittery meetings like this?) 
  • Skype was launched  
  • MPLS was pushed to the client edge, allowing for stronger traffic shaping, and quality of service  
  • Social Media platforms became prominent, and businesses started using these platforms for marketing and business growth  

2010 – 2015  

  • UCaaS was further developed with the increase of cloud adoption  
  • Cloud file sharing (such as google drive) and collaboration were launched 
  • O365 was released and Skype was purchased by Microsoft 
  • Providers fine-tuned the online conference by combining HD video, online business meetings, webinars, and mobile capabilities into a single collaborative solution without expensive video conferencing infrastructure 
  • Asynchronous communication for businesses (SMS Text and IM) is more prevalent  
  • SD WAN was productized and released to the mainstream  

2015 – Present 

Most of these services and forms of communication listed above are now consolidated into one single provider or have seamless integration with many other applications. This has enabled users to consume communications on multiple platforms, shift easily between them and create increased collaboration and productivity across business segments  

Asynchronous communication is the norm where you can work on multiple projects at once, while waiting on a response from others.  Voice calls are mostly collaboration discussions and extensions of a digital interaction.   

Considering how quickly we have moved from the first computer networking to today’s version of interconnected communications, can you imagine where we will be in the next 10 years?  

Special thanks to John Witcher who assisted in writing, and editing this blog post. 

Internet Series #3: Applications basics 

technavadmin Internet Services , , , ,
Internet Series #3: Applications basics 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

We all use the Internet daily, whether it is in the office, home or on our mobile devices. As we discussed in our previous Internet Series, the type of Internet you use is important and not all Internet backbones and suppliers are created equal. In this part of the series, we will cover applications. If the Internet is the steak, applications are the sizzle.  

The Internet based application market is vast and often complicated. Applications can range from well-known providers like O365/Teams and G Suite to more niche providers that fit a certain role within your organization. Regardless of what application you are using, your Internet provider will play a vital role in the success or failure of these applications.  

Most applications work well Over the Top (OTT) of Internet, where a connection to the Internet is needed and the application rides “Over the Top” of the Internet to function. Some examples of this in the telecommunications industry is VoIP, UCaaS/CCaaS and SIP. Other services can have a direct connection to the application over the Internet.  

Examples of this would be Internet direct connects and on-ramps to AWS, IBM, Oracle, Azure, Google, Rackspace for Cloud Compute, Disaster Recovery and Storage. Having a direct connect allows your traffic to connect directly to these applications over the Internet, which increases the connection speed, passes information more quickly, and increases security.  

Getting connected  

Applications can also communicate with one another and are interconnected through the Internet with Application Programming Interfaces (API). This allows applications to share information to assist with inter-connectivity of data throughout an organization or application.  

One of the newest technologies utilizing the Internet is SD-WAN, which is like Virtual Private Network (VPN) on steroids. Like VPN, SD-WAN traffic is encrypted, and a router can intelligently change to a secondary internet provider. However, that is where the similarity ends.  

SD-WAN can test the health of an Internet connection to the destination down to the packet level and intelligently route packets by disparate Internet providers, prioritizing traffic and keeping any live traffic registrations up if one of the connections drops. Multiple SD-WAN providers are also offering direct connects to hundreds of application providers, which assists clients in organizing and supporting their traffic strategy.  

Applications on the day-to-day  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most businesses used collaboration applications such as Zoom, Glip, Teams, GoTo and others to communicate with our internal and external customers while working from home.  

When garbled voice, pixilation, frozen screens happen during a meeting, it is mostly due to the quality and congestion of the Internet service. While most organizations do not control which Internet provider our employees or customers use at their home, it is evident how important it is to have a quality connection to support these applications.  

When determining what Internet strategy to use for your organization it is important to determine what SD-WAN and OTT applications will be used, bandwidth requirements, and how sensitive these applications are to the quality of your Internet connection. While the applications are delivering the value, the delivery method and quality of the Internet and the underlying provider is vital to success. 

Internet Series #2: Peering 

technavadmin Internet Services , ,
Internet Series #2: Peering 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

When looking at internet providers for your business (especially in the day in age of VPN, SDWAN and Cloud services), it is important to understand where your physical network communicates to other networks, often called “peering”.  

For example, if a client has Lumen services at their offices for primary IP and in their remote offices, they are using Spectrum, Comcast, Cogent and AT&T services. These are not the same network, so, how do they communicate? The networks communicate through internet exchanges where the internet traffic converges and passes traffic back and forth, or, at “peering points”.  

Some of the primary peering points where internet providers converge in the US include Chicago, NYC, LA, Dallas or Miami. There are also secondary peering points throughout the US where fewer networks may converge to connect regional internet providers and traffic in Denver, Ashburn, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, Detroit, Seattle and Ashburn, to name a few. 

The importance of traffic 

Traditionally the exchange of traffic is at no cost to either Internet provider, because the traffic between the two typically offsets the other (settlement free peering). However, if traffic being passed is heavily skewed in a certain direction, Internet providers will require payment to accept traffic or throttling may occur. This is important to consider when choosing an Internet provider as you do not want your traffic to be throttled or not passed due to an Internet provider conflict. 

When deploying SDWAN, VPN, SaaS and Cloud services, understanding how your traffic is being handed off to a disparate carrier is vital to the health of an application. The originating carrier wants to hand off the traffic as soon as they can to the closest peering point thereby minimizing their network congestion. Therefore, where your data is peered is significantly important.  

For example, if you have two offices in Dublin OH communicating over VPN and using different internet providers, your traffic may be traversing to Chicago, IL or Dallas, TX before returning to Dublin OH to communicate.  

This will create additional latency, hops and complexity to the communication. The same scenario goes for Cloud services. If you are using a CCaaS or UC provider without a regionalize calling solution, who has their primary nodes in Dallas and Seattle, your traffic will traverse to the closest peering points (which may be in Chicago or Ashburn) and then across the US to communicate with the primary CCaaS or UC nodes. 

Creating routes 

We have often done trace routes on IP addresses to see how many hops it takes to reach a destination. When completing a hop trace route, you will see the peering points along the way for your packets to reach a destination. At times, tables that route traffic can loop your traffic multiple times before peering with other providers.  

Clients should utilize Internet providers who keep their routes clean and efficient to benefit from faster connections and lower latency. In the day in age of mergers and acquisitions of Internet providers, we have seen the merging of networks cause massive issues with latency and traffic due to inefficient routes due to incorrect or overly complex tables. It is possible to hard code your peering or routing requests, so your traffic is not getting caught in a bad routing table or peering situation. 

Internet is just not internet. It is important to consider who your provider is, who they peer with, if they pay for peering, and where they peer, before implementing an internet solution. 

Internet Series #1: providers overview 

technavadmin Internet Services , ,
Internet Series #1: providers overview 

By Chis Newell
Founder & President

There are many factors to consider when choosing an Internet Service Provider (ISP). It’s not always about who has the lowest cost or largest inventory of IP routes. Connectivity, traffic flow, and network congestion are a few key factors that I mention below.  

Looking on https://asrank.caida.org/, you will see that the undisputed ISP champion is Level 3/Lumen, who is the combination of Level 3, Qwest, US West and CenturyLink networks. There is no other provider close to the size of Level 3/Lumen Autonomous System (AS) IP routes, which means that Level 3/Lumen has the most routing prefixes to the internet. However, just because you have the largest amount of routing prefixes to the internet does not mean you have the most robust overall network. For instance, Zayo was one of the first to provide 100 Gbps access to the internet.  

Understanding internet mediums  

The medium of connectivity to end points/offices can make a difference in how stable internet service can be. Internet was originally provided over copper pairs (T1, NxT1, DS3, OC3, OC48, OC192), but keep in mind that copper pairs were never invented to transmit internet data services, they were developed for voice services.  

These mediums ended up creating instability, efficiency, and packet loss issues, as well as limitation of overall speeds. Ethernet over Copper, or EoC, is an interesting way to combining copper pairs into a single connection rather than running MLPPP to bond T1’s (NxT1). Currently, the most efficient way to deliver bandwidth is over native Ethernet, fiber or microwave.  

The “flow” issue 

Internet traffic is a very intertwined business. Traffic flows over multiple networks through multiple peering points (where the internet providers hand off traffic between ISP networks) to reach its’ destination.  

For example, if Amazon uses AT&T and your office uses Verizon for their internet access, in order to get to Amazon’s services, your internet request needs to traverse from Verizon to AT&T. That hand-off between providers is called peering and only takes place at certain peering points throughout the US and world. The is extremely important when using VPN, SIP, UCaaS/CCaaS or any latency sensitive traffic.  

Some ISPs will grossly over oversubscribe their network making network congestion an issue creating packet losses and re-transmission of packets an issue. They do this to increase profitability Vs building out additional capacity. There are also features that make some ISPs more attractive than others. These include network-based firewalls and DDoS capabilities, prioritization of IP traffic and privatized WAN traffic.  

In closing, when choosing an ISP it is important to consider the factors listed above. Stay tuned for the next blog in our Internet series…