Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN) is now offering its Advanced Application Reporting (AAR) product for enterprise business customers throughout its entire U.S. network footprint, giving enterprises near real-time visibility into their WAN traffic.
By having this visibility, Windstream says its clients will be able to achieve three goals: quickly respond to problems, make informed network infrastructure investments, and optimize network connectivity.
In particular, AAR can benefit customers with Ethernet-based Internet, dedicated Internet, MPLS and VLS services by giving them the ability to collect, format and display WAN performance statistics for multiple intervals (hour, last day, and last week).
An enterprise customer will be able to better understand how they are using their existing bandwidth, which will help with capacity planning. And because collection can be done without the need to deploy on-site probes, enterprises can access AAR from any point in their WAN network.
Providing features like AAR are important for Windstream as it looks to up its profile in the mid-sized enterprise market. The expanded AAR availability gives mid-sized companies that may not have the time or resources to create themselves this kind of tool to better understand how their network is performing.
While Windstream has always provided a suite of business services it was only in recent years after purchasing PAETEC in addition to a series of smaller CLECs and ILECs that it became a more serious threat in the mid-sized business services market.
These efforts have gotten the attention of the Gartner Group, which wrote in its "Critical Capabilities for U.S. Wireline Telecom Services" report that it "should be considered primarily by midsize enterprises looking for competitive voice and data service."
"After successfully rolling up a series of regional competitive local-exchange carrier (CLEC) businesses, Windstream completed the acquisition of PAETEC," wrote Gartner. "It has now added a concerted focus on enterprise services, along with a larger footprint designed to meet the needs of the higher education market."
For more:
- see the release
- and Gartner's domestic players report
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