Telenetix Technology Solutions, a highly innovative company that manufactures mobile modular containerised data centres, has implemented a 2Mbps fibre optic solution from XDSL at its Samrand, Centurion head office, giving it the throughput and reliability it needs to conduct business locally and internationally.
“The nature of the product we manufacture and the services we deliver to our clients makes us highly reliant on an Internet link for research, data exchange and communication.
“Communication via e-mail has become particularly vital for daily interaction with our major national and international clients. With our best effort ADSL link from Telkom becoming increasingly ineffective and vulnerable to cable theft, we needed to find another solution,” says Derek Wade, senior manager and ICT responsible person at Telenetix.
Overpopulation of Telkom’s Centurion exchange resulted in saturation of the switch, which limited Telenetix’s line speed and capacity. In addition, incidences of copper cable theft in the Samrand area was high, resulting in complete communication failure for extended periods.
“We explored alternatives like Diginet and implementing a fibre solution via various service providers, but the cost was prohibitive,” notes Wade.
“Our compromise was to install a 1Mb wireless link with 30Gb of data from a dedicated network provider. However, this was also not optimal in terms of speed, throughput, reliability or cost (up to R10 000 a month just for the data and data connection). When we became aware of the XDSL initiative to roll out fibre to the Samrand business complex, we were keen to explore the solution – we have not been disappointed.
“XDSL is a new breed of telecoms service provider. We have multiple agreements with owners of telecoms infrastructure and can tap into national and international infrastructure, providing our clients network neutrality and all the agility and reliability that comes with that. In terms of fibre, we are connected to more than 200 000km of fibre nationally. For organisations, such as Telenetix, that are located in office parks, we deliver a much needed niche service, partnering with our sister companies in the Convergenet Group to take dark fibre to the doorstep of these organisations.
“We then make use of our 24×7 national operations centre, as well as our presence in other data centres nationally, to provide full time monitoring and ensure SLAs are met,” says Danie Fourie, director of XDSL, part of the JSE Listed Convergenet Holdings group.
XDSL’s full range of services include national diginet and fibre optic solutions, hosted PBX, VOIP, telephony, hosted services, cloud services, and a dedicated Internet offering.
XDSL pre-installed the fibre line as Telenetix had to exit its contract with its broadband wireless provider before taking on the new service. “This was done to ensure a seamless cut-over to the XDSL service,” notes Wade.
“But XDSL went even further. Within a week of the site visit, the installation was done, giving us 2Mbps up and download capacity – for free for the full month that we awaited release from our existing communication commitments.”
“Moving to fibre and away from a more ‘traditional’ network service provider is not a risk,” Wade says. “This was a carefully considered decision on our part. It is not about just moving our connectivity to another point of failure – other service providers will offer the same service at a higher premium.
“The advantage XDSL offers is its advanced business and operations model – it has multiple back to back agreements with national and international network providers, from Seacom to iAfrica. There are multiple inputs to the network it provides its service across. This allows Telenetix to position itself out in the cloud with the necessary redundancy.”
XDSL installed a 2Mbps line for Telenetix with guaranteed 2Mbps up- and download speeds, 99,1% reliability and a two hour response time. A dual router affords Telenetix failover between XDSL’s fibre optic solution and an ADSL line, also from XDSL.
“At present we are using the fibre as the primary link and will automatically fail over on ADSL when the fibre goes down. We will be re-engineering our network architecture in early 2013 and hope to migrate our voice service, which relies on Cisco voice switches, to IP too,” says Wade.
XDSL, besides offering an advanced service model, understands customer service.
“Customer service excellence is a vital component that is sorely lacking in the pressured connectivity provision industry in South Africa,” notes Wade, “but XDSL has made it a priority. For example, when Telenetix installed its original infrastructure, a wireless network was used. When we moved our infrastructure, XDSL moved the fibre connection into our new data centre within a week at no cost to the business.
“In addition, monitoring at the data centre has assisted us to eliminate usage challenges. In one instance, identifying a single device that was “flat lining” our throughput capacity and assisting us to correct the problem.
“The urgency with which XDSL handles our queries and requests, and the high level of skill, capability and dedication of its account management and operations staff – that’s Foster Mavuka and his team – has impressed us enormously,” concludes Wade.
“The nature of the product we manufacture and the services we deliver to our clients makes us highly reliant on an Internet link for research, data exchange and communication.
“Communication via e-mail has become particularly vital for daily interaction with our major national and international clients. With our best effort ADSL link from Telkom becoming increasingly ineffective and vulnerable to cable theft, we needed to find another solution,” says Derek Wade, senior manager and ICT responsible person at Telenetix.
Overpopulation of Telkom’s Centurion exchange resulted in saturation of the switch, which limited Telenetix’s line speed and capacity. In addition, incidences of copper cable theft in the Samrand area was high, resulting in complete communication failure for extended periods.
“We explored alternatives like Diginet and implementing a fibre solution via various service providers, but the cost was prohibitive,” notes Wade.
“Our compromise was to install a 1Mb wireless link with 30Gb of data from a dedicated network provider. However, this was also not optimal in terms of speed, throughput, reliability or cost (up to R10 000 a month just for the data and data connection). When we became aware of the XDSL initiative to roll out fibre to the Samrand business complex, we were keen to explore the solution – we have not been disappointed.
“XDSL is a new breed of telecoms service provider. We have multiple agreements with owners of telecoms infrastructure and can tap into national and international infrastructure, providing our clients network neutrality and all the agility and reliability that comes with that. In terms of fibre, we are connected to more than 200 000km of fibre nationally. For organisations, such as Telenetix, that are located in office parks, we deliver a much needed niche service, partnering with our sister companies in the Convergenet Group to take dark fibre to the doorstep of these organisations.
“We then make use of our 24×7 national operations centre, as well as our presence in other data centres nationally, to provide full time monitoring and ensure SLAs are met,” says Danie Fourie, director of XDSL, part of the JSE Listed Convergenet Holdings group.
XDSL’s full range of services include national diginet and fibre optic solutions, hosted PBX, VOIP, telephony, hosted services, cloud services, and a dedicated Internet offering.
XDSL pre-installed the fibre line as Telenetix had to exit its contract with its broadband wireless provider before taking on the new service. “This was done to ensure a seamless cut-over to the XDSL service,” notes Wade.
“But XDSL went even further. Within a week of the site visit, the installation was done, giving us 2Mbps up and download capacity – for free for the full month that we awaited release from our existing communication commitments.”
“Moving to fibre and away from a more ‘traditional’ network service provider is not a risk,” Wade says. “This was a carefully considered decision on our part. It is not about just moving our connectivity to another point of failure – other service providers will offer the same service at a higher premium.
“The advantage XDSL offers is its advanced business and operations model – it has multiple back to back agreements with national and international network providers, from Seacom to iAfrica. There are multiple inputs to the network it provides its service across. This allows Telenetix to position itself out in the cloud with the necessary redundancy.”
XDSL installed a 2Mbps line for Telenetix with guaranteed 2Mbps up- and download speeds, 99,1% reliability and a two hour response time. A dual router affords Telenetix failover between XDSL’s fibre optic solution and an ADSL line, also from XDSL.
“At present we are using the fibre as the primary link and will automatically fail over on ADSL when the fibre goes down. We will be re-engineering our network architecture in early 2013 and hope to migrate our voice service, which relies on Cisco voice switches, to IP too,” says Wade.
XDSL, besides offering an advanced service model, understands customer service.
“Customer service excellence is a vital component that is sorely lacking in the pressured connectivity provision industry in South Africa,” notes Wade, “but XDSL has made it a priority. For example, when Telenetix installed its original infrastructure, a wireless network was used. When we moved our infrastructure, XDSL moved the fibre connection into our new data centre within a week at no cost to the business.
“In addition, monitoring at the data centre has assisted us to eliminate usage challenges. In one instance, identifying a single device that was “flat lining” our throughput capacity and assisting us to correct the problem.
“The urgency with which XDSL handles our queries and requests, and the high level of skill, capability and dedication of its account management and operations staff – that’s Foster Mavuka and his team – has impressed us enormously,” concludes Wade.
