Aryaka has established a partnership with China Mobile International (CMI) to deliver a global SD-WAN service, giving it entry into China's burgeoning SD-WAN market.
The partnership enables Aryaka to serve international businesses with locations in China as well as Chinese companies that have a global presence.
CMI will leverage the partnership to provide high performance SD-WAN services to businesses headquartered in China with international locations.
The move comes at a time when the government has put forth a mandate that its three main service providers—China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom—block individuals’ access to VPNs by Feb. 1. This makes it challenging for foreign service providers to offer SD-WAN services in China unless they work with one of these three providers.
Gary Servounts, VP of marketing for Aryaka, told FierceTelecom that it is the first to offer sanctioned SD-WAN service supporting locations in China that is fully compliant with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's (MIIT) regulations and privacy policies.
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“The rules put an interesting twist on the SD-WAN industry because a lot other companies have been partnering with vendors that are not compliant and are not part of the approved list,” Servounts said. “There are several vendors who tried to provide an SD-WAN service that works in China, but according to the latest regulation none of the existing solutions are compliant because you have to work with one of China’s three main service providers.”
A reciprocal partnership
Being a dual-edged partnership, CMI will be able to sell a combined solution of Aryaka’s Global SD-WAN and Internet connectivity from CMI to deliver SD-WAN services optimized for modern global enterprise applications.
“CMI will sell SD-WAN to Chinese enterprises and sell local circuits for a complete solution,” Servounts said. “When Aryaka sells its global SD-WAN product and there’s a need for China connectivity we’ll recommend China Mobile.”
Servounts added “it’s a strategic partnership that provides the first fully compliant global SD-WAN for global enterprises that have a presence in China and Chinese enterprises with presence outside.”
While gaining compliance with the MIIT rules and regulations to operate in China is not an easy task for a foreign company, Aryaka said its focus on being a global SD-WAN player was an attraction to CMI.
“The process of getting MIIT approval went very smooth,” Servounts said. “China Mobile International is a global-like telco who clearly recognized the need for Chinese enterprises to use global SD-WAN and they approached Aryaka.”
Improving network performance, latency
What also helped Aryaka get a set at the table with CMI is its approach to SD-WAN.
The service provider has built a global network that serves over 7,000 sites in 63 countries across its own global private network, which is unlike other solutions that often ride over the public internet.
“Besides being fully compliant with China’s MIIT regulations, we can provide huge performance improvements for core applications,” Servounts said. “That made it really easy for China Mobile International to partner with Aryaka.”
But Aryaka has the numbers to back up its SD-WAN performance claims. China overall has always posed application performance challenges for global enterprises due to network latency.
In one test, Aryaka conducted a test comparing running applications over the public internet and its own private network. It took a 100-kilobyte file and sent it from San Jose to Shanghai with 150% variation. When this file traveled over the public internet, it took four seconds to travel from San Jose to Shanghai.
Such a delay could pose challenges for enterprises that use common applications like salesforce.com or Office 365.
“If you think about it a 100-kilobyte file is the simple loading size for a web page,” said Shehzad Karkhanawala, director of marketing for Aryaka. “If that keeps adding up and you have to keep waiting four seconds that’s a huge cost in productivity and poorer user experience.”
On the same routes using Aryaka’s private network, the application response time drops from 4 seconds to .3 seconds and variation drops to 25%.
“What makes Aryaka perform well is our global private network with WAN optimization and SD-WAN capabilities along with our partnership with China Mobile International for local circuits,” Karkhanawala said.