Masergy has upped its SD-WAN game by serving up some of the most robust service level agreements (SLAs) in the industry for its SD-WAN services. With more applications, services and workloads moving to the cloud, SLAs are becoming increasingly important for organizations, especially in light of more remote workers due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The new SLAs are part of Masergy's Secure SD-WAN portfolio and include 100% service availability for cloud connections architected for redundancy. It also includes 100% service availability for SD-WAN sites that are configured for high availability. The 100% availability for direct connections to some of the top cloud service providers and cloud applications is particularly notable.
Also of note, Masergy is offering proactive credits on service availability SLAs. Instead of putting the onus of credit management and collection on the customer, Masergy is proactively and automatically crediting customers after an availability SLA isn't met.
“Providing better SLAs for SD-WAN is a smart move because there aren’t many standards or metrics for comparing SD-WAN performance," said Scott Raynovich, the founder and chief analyst of Futuriom. "This will push other providers to be more transparent about the level of service they are providing.”
In an email to FierceTelecom, Masergy's Terry Traina, chief digital officer, said Masergy was confident in its ability to deliver on the new SLAs because it owns and operates its own Secure Edge Network. Cato Networks and Aryaka also rely on their own networks to deliver their SD-WAN services.
Masergy was an early adopter of software-defined networking (SDN), which Traina said gives it "deep visibility across the network, making it easy to track everything."
Another key pillar for the SLAs is Masergy's AIOps, which launched near the end of last year. The artificial intelligence-based AIOps is an SD-WAN-integrated digital assistant for network, security and application optimization.
"AIOps helps optimize performance on our network," Traina said when asked what role AIOps played for enabling the new SLAs. "Automated network performance analysis and machine-assisted decision making helps Masergy and its clients quickly optimize bandwidth resources.
"The degree to which the underlying SD-WAN architecture is standardized distinguishes platforms from mere solution sets where vendors have cobbled together parts and pieces. The key is to have one transparent ecosystem where all capabilities share a common infrastructure for superior interoperability and visibility from edge to edge. Solution providers typically use their own private network to serve as the underlying platform, and it’s here where Masergy’s underlying network architecture stands out."
Traina said the transparent ecosystem combines Masergy’s software defined-network, direct cloud connections, and security-centric Fortinet hardware, "which together deliver superior edge performance." For Masergy, every newly added SD-WAN feature and application interoperates as equal partners on the same operating system, according to Traina.
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Masergy also touted its 1 millisecond jitter in Tuesday's SLA announcements. Over the past three years, the average jitter on Masergy's network has been 1/20 of a millisecond (0.02) while anything less than 10 milliseconds is considered optimal. Jitter is the primary culprit when video conferencing calls break up or the audio becomes distorted.
Masergy also said it was enabling100% in-sequence packet delivery across its Secure Edge Network. Lastly, Masergy is notifying customers of a service outage within 5 minutes of verification.