Maintel is aiming to best the office environment with its SD-WAN-based Secure Homeworker solution as businesses continue to rely on remote working.
That is according to Rufus Grig, Chief Strategic Officer at Maintel, who told UC Today that its latest solution, which caters to all departments within an enterprise, is designed to “provide people with whatever is appropriate to their role, in order to make the home experience as good as, if not better than, the office.”
Secure Homeworker combines Cisco’s SD-WAN connectivity technology with Maintel’s service wrap in order to provide different tools and capabilities to each department be it senior management, finance, legal, customer support or sales. Grig added that the SD-WAN technology is the best way for businesses to manage their connectivity as their employees embrace remote working.
“SD-WAN gives you some intelligence around the routing of traffic” said Grig, “I can effectively sit on a broadband circuit and route the traffic that needs to go over the corporate network to the corporate network, and route traffic that can go straight to a public cloud network straight to a public cloud network”
“That gets even cuter when you start adding some additional connectivity options. For example, if I put a 4G card in a router, I’ve effectively got a mobile backup. I can then use that connection intelligently so it’s always on, to the point where I won’t be affected even if I lose my primary connection during a video call.
Another option is to have a second wired backup, if you’ve got who relies on a secure connection a lot of the time. That then allows you to load balance and use the bandwidth available to you effectively, making sure that you’re keeping employees as productive as possible. When you multiply that over 100 or 500 or 1,000 employees, just making sure that you’ve got always on networking and the most intelligent use of path routing, is really important.”
Back up connectivity
According to Grig there are two trials for the Maintel Secure Homeworker solution currently in the market, one using a 4G router as a back up and one with a second fixed connection.
“In the initial phase of lockdown, there were no new circuits going in anywhere. Everything was run over consumer broadband and relying on that alone” said Grig, “Of the two trials that we’ve got going at the moment, one customer has taken the view that they want to put a business-grade FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) circuit in the homes, and another one is using 4G as the backbone.
I think some businesses’ choices will depend on what physical connectivity is available in the areas. I’m lucky, I’ve got a very fast cable internet that goes up and down my street, but I’ve got colleagues who live in the middle of nowhere and, for them, 4G is a really useful backup.
With SD-WAN, businesses can use these connections to augment bandwidth as well, rather than just use it as a back up, they can actually use it as part of their ongoing network. That’s the reason we’ve got to have these different connections in there, because different use cases will demand different solutions.”
