Hybrid WAN FEATURED ARTICLE

In the WAN world, I think it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of, say, what a hybrid WAN can do for an enterprise, and lose sight of how certain verticals can excel with this burgeoning technology. Education and the not-for-profit market are ripe for high performing, cost cutting and flexible networking solutions.

This week, the Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM) entered into a master agreement with hybrid WAN firm FatPipe Networks. The not-for-profit Group Procurement Organization (GPO) is the sourcing partner for much of Ontario’s public sector, and opens the door to much in the way of opportunity.

“Our partnership with OECM is a natural fit,” said FatPipe's CTO Sanch Datta. “FatPipe's deep experience in providing uncompromising SD-WAN solutions to organizations and enterprises across all verticals and service providers teamed with OECM and their customers' strong influence and technical knowledge across all business sectors in Ontario will help continue to drive next-generation networking technologies and ignite business transformation.”

The OECM represents nearly 120 institutions in education alone. And, now Ontario’s education sector gains access to the FatPipe family of SD-WAN solutions.

Schools in Ontario are required to provide 1Mbps per student, and the best way to meet this Ontario Ministry of Education mandate without breaking the bank was utilizing future-forward hybrid WAN technology. The previous solution required backhaul over costly MPLS, so not only is the new deployment scalable, it will save looneys at every turn.

Currently, a number of schools are running the FatPipe-integrated Avaya (News - Alert) Fabric (SDNFx) SDN to support unified communications within the network, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the number of deployments increase quickly.

“We chose FatPipe because of its single-device solution integrated with Avaya's SDNFx,” said Francis Mailloux, ICT Admin with the CSC (News - Alert). “FatPipe's deep experience in networking, the product's WAN link load balancing and path control, and unique, patented ability to conduct sub-second failover is unmatched -- and we're extremely pleased with the results.”

Software defined networking is a primary component of the digital transformation taking place. For the hybrid/SD-WAN space, the myriad of benefits have created a fever pitch buzz, which is resulting in forecasts for exponential growth.

What’s in your network?