EarthLink joined the SD-WAN race with a new Concierge service, one that the provider hopes to differentiate from similar offerings by allowing customers to test the service and migrate to a virtualized network environment on their own timelines.
Since SD-WAN is still a nascent service, EarthLink is offering a 90-day trial period for up to five locations for EarthLink SD-WAN Concierge.
As a fully-managed service, EarthLink’s SD-WAN Concierge is a two-pronged offering that the service provider says provides a personalized and proactive guidance to the SD-WAN platform.
Customers that purchase the SD-WAN service will be assigned a service manager and a team of subject experts that will work with the business to create and deploy routing and security policies based on real-time analytics and understand their specific requirements. To ensure the ongoing performance and reliability of business-critical and latency-sensitive applications, EarthLink provides 24/7 monitoring.
EarthLink said that by adding real-time visibility and control over network and application performance, the service provider can deliver uptime service level agreements (SLAs) and up to 100 times the bandwidth at significantly lower cost than traditional hybrid WAN networks. The offering includes EarthLink SD-WAN Advisor, designed for a wide range of enterprises including those with IT and network resources to implement and manage the solution internally.
Business customers can integrate other bundled services including hosted voice, security and secure Wi-Fi with the SD-WAN Concierge offering.
The key vendor powering EarthLink’s SD-WAN Concierge service is VeloCloud, which incorporates a distributed network of VeloCloud Gateways, a cloud-based Orchestrator and a branch platform.
EarthLink’s SD-WAN debut should be of no surprise as the service provider is facing larger competitors like CenturyLink and Verizon, two telcos that also offer their own try-before-you-buy options.
Joe Eazor, CEO of EarthLink, told investors during the company's first quarter earnings call that what will differentiate its SD-WAN offering from others is an integrated approach to SD-WAN.
"We are partnering with a technology provider or two that have great single box SD-WAN solutions with great software orchestration capabilities that then, combined with our service capabilities, provide a simpler and more cost effective solution over the long run,” Eazor said.
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