Doug on IP Comm » MPLS

Office Depot goes with Global Crossing

Doug Mohney — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:42:51 +0000

Global Crossing announced it has signed up a Big Deal with Office Depot, providing the company with a large MPLS network for “more than 100” Office Depot warehouse distribution centers and large customer sites in the U.S., Europe, China and Israel.

It’s a three year, multimillion dollar contract providing Office Depot with a “strategic alternative network” in addition to its existing service provider. Global Crossing is providing a flexible usage-based billing model to help OD manage network throughput more efficiently and cost effectively.

In total, Office Depot has nearly 1,600 worldwide retail stores, a dedicated sales force, and $4.2 billion in e-commerce operations. Annual sales for OD are around $12.1 billion and the company employs around 41,000 people around the globe.

Verizon Business opens up second data center in Hong Kong

Doug Mohney — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:43:08 +0000

Network Hub, Data Center to Address Growing Demand of Asia-Pacific Businesses

HONG KONG – Verizon Business is strengthening its extensive Asia-Pacific network

Touting its major-league infrastructure spending, Verizon Business (www.verizonbusiness.com) announced it is opening up a second data center in Hong Kong. The new facility will “enhance” Verizon’s ability to deliver new and data center services in the region, as well as provide direct access to Verizon’s global network.

All of this comes about to meet the growing demand of the company’s enterprise customers, multi-nationals who need the capacity to expand into greater China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.

The investment is only a part of the $16.8 billion to $17.2 billion that Verizon plans to spend this year in building and operating its network and computing platform.

Located in the iTech Tower in Tsuen Wan, the 3,000 square meter facility features ROADAM technology and interconnections with the four main local carries and a new Private IP node to extend Verizon’s metro network footprint and direct access to Verizon’s MPLS service.

Verizon Business VPN Ethernet service goes more global

Doug Mohney — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:36:07 +0000

Verizon Business has significantly expanded their Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), making it the Layer 2 Ethernet service available throughout its POPs in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. Enterprise IT/LAN managers can now go control-freak crazy, provisioning offices around the globe with the same IP/Ethernet service, including implementing their own IP addresses and all sorts of other nifty things.

VPLS is a MPLS-based layer 2 VPN on top of the company’s Ethernet platform and is protocol independent, so customers retain complete control of their own routing. In a world of professional paranoia and fewer available IPv4 addresses, being able to run your own Ethernet and IP addressing is a Good Thing for simplified management and security purposes.

Since VPLS is MPLS-based, you get CoS — classes of services. An organization can customize priorities for different apps, so VoIP and video can get priority over email and other less latency-sensitive traffic. VPLS also allows customers to provision their network traffic from 1 Mbps to 1 GBps and beyond — a few customers have already made noises about 10 Gbps for linking data centers.

One point not emphasized in the press release but underlined in a media briefing is Verizon Business has carefully certified Ethernet providers in over 120 countries, so while the office in Argentina or Cape Town might not be next to a Verizon POP, the carrier has a “known good” business partner to provide Ethernet into its network for VPLS service; to repeat the cliche’ of the week – Verizon Business VPLS becomes the one “throat to choke” (a.k.a. single point of contact) for network connectivity.