In this economy, it is more important than ever for businesses to stay on top of emerging technologies. And a top priority for most companies is managing information. There have never been more options than there are now for corralling that information under one secure network.
The emergence of IP is enabling companies to manage business-critical information anywhere, anytime and on any platform around the world. In turn, this has resulted in many businesses relying more heavily – even entirely – on the Internet and networks for communications, as well as business operations.
These “Internet-centric” businesses are adding a new take as the network rises as a platform for business communications as well as operations.
NTT America, the U.S. subsidiary of NTT (News - Alert) Communications Corporation, is one company that has followed the rise of Internet-centric businesses, as reliance on the network has become so widespread that service providers have been compelled to sell services to companies that often buy at the wholesale level.
The company provides customers of all sizes in the United States, Japan, and throughout Asia with a range of Internet-based business services including IP network services such as global connectivity, network management and IP VPN, as well as advanced Web-based business solutions, including Web-hosting and e-commerce platforms.
The trend toward Internet dependence is part of a larger overall movement toward the network.
One way businesses are relying more heavily on the network is with hosted service models such as Software as a Service, or SaaS (News - Alert) – a model of software deployment that allows a provider to license an application to customers for use as a service on demand.
In fact, this method of software deployment has become so ubiquitous that it has changed even the way venerable software companies such as Microsoft (News - Alert) deliver their products. Much like the brick-and-mortar stores that were impacted by shopping online, delivering software and other products over the Internet that were traditional packaged, has had an incredible impact across many sectors, especially the network.
Recently, NTT America (News - Alert) was chosen as the network partner for OpSource – a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that provides a complete Web operations infrastructure and service solution for the serious SaaS and Web business.
As John Rowell, OpSource’s chief technology officer, said recently in an NTT America-published article, companies of every size benefit from SaaS and cloud computing products and services. The choice of NTT America as a company that could handle OpSource’s network transit needs – including bandwidth, reliability and cost – was carefully considered.
“Our goal is to give our customers a way to run day-to-day operations better and faster, so our choice of network transit is a fundamental component of the infrastructure we provide,” Rowell said.
NTT America offers 10GigE IP transit connections not only across major metropolitan areas in the United States, but also international connections in Asia, Europe and Latin America with industry-leading installation times.
For Rowell, the company’s 10GigE offering was key – the technology is used by Web hosting companies, content providers, CDNs, social media sites and consumer broadband providers.
“Very few other telecommunications companies allow us to shape our bandwidth by what we need to service our customers,” he said. “We make a commitment on a facility-by-facility basis and NTT America gives us the flexibility to manage that commitment, which is a huge cost-savings for us.”
It’s work that NTT America specializes in.
NTT America is a wholesaler that leases its network to Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, so that they can deliver their services to smaller companies. While it does not directly serve those smaller businesses, it does serve huge global enterprises that do.
In that respect the ISP is much like a VPN, or IP VPN, in which some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger networks – the Internet for example – as opposed to running across a single private network.
At the same time, managed network services are playing an increasingly important role for Internet-centric business to provide high-performance and scalable capabilities.
Reliable networks become extremely important for companies that are using the network – whether it is the Internet or a VPN – for communications and basic business processes.
In serving this overall market, NTT offers a diverse range of products including:
Smart Content Delivery Service, which provides options to ensure a site’s performance remains high, even under a heavy work load; Managed Router Service designed to increase a companies Internet router’s uptime while helping manage your expenses; and Denial of Service, or DoS, Attack Countermeasures that takes a proactive stance against attacks and provides countermeasures effectively reducing DoS traffic load on the edge of the network.
Michael Dinan is a group managing editor for TMCnet, overseeing TMCnet's Web editorial team and covering news in the IP communications, CRM and VoIP industries. He also oversees production of e-Newsletters in the areas of 4G wireless technology and smart products. To read more of Michael's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Michael Dinan