ZeroOutages

With cloud becoming an ineludible requirement for enterprises world over, reliable and high-performance network connectivity has emerged as a major challenge. Daren French likens the situation to putting the cart before the horse. In an attempt to be agile and beat the competition, companies today are prompt at rolling out cloud-based services and applications (the cart) without realizing whether or not they have the necessary infrastructure (the horse) to support them. “They need a network infrastructure that offers the redundancy and performance required to support these advanced services,” says French, VP of Operations at ZeroOutages (the SD-WAN division of XRoads Networks). His company has been named “an evolutionary SD-WAN provider” by Gartner and in fact, was one of the first to use the term SD-WAN at the Channel Partners tradeshow back in 2009. It has been a leader in the SD-WAN space since then and is one of the top full-service SD-WAN vendors in the U.S. providing end-to-end solutions, including hardware and software, customer support, management services for onsite equipment, and ISP ticketing services.

ZeroOutages’ SD-WAN services connect multiple broadband circuits and leverage them to offer the best possible path for a customer’s traffic, with automated failover in the event one of the circuits fails or suffers setbacks. The company’s SD-WAN solutions comprise an intelligent remote edge device that is deployed at clients’ locations and comes with robust security and tunneling capabilities. Remotely managed by ZeroOutages via a central portal, the device has advanced routing functionality built-in to it that pushes intelligence directly to the customer’s site. This means that all of the customers’ traffic doesn’t need to be circuited through any remote third-party data center for obtaining the best path routing and redundancy functionality; the SD-WAN device can perform advanced routing, including source-based routing, OSPF, and GRE tunnel configuration between sites, right at the customer’s premise. However, the company does leverage its own data centers to offer services tailored specifically to customer needs. This hybrid model, French stresses, offers customers the most flexibility and efficiency in their routing. “The absence of data center backhauling allows us to customize our offerings when routing across MPLS and/or multiple broadband circuits.

SD-WAN is in our blood, it is what we do, and we take pride in making sure that our customer’s networks are rock solid and optimized for efficiency

We can extend services like virtual IP for hosted phones or automated single IP redundancy for VPN connections. ZeroOutages fits seamlessly into networks to provide redundancy and optimize performance across a customer’s entire WAN.”

One of ZeroOutages greatest attributes is its focus on the customer and ensuring that the design and implementation of solutions is a smooth and easy process. “SD-WAN is in our blood, it is what we do, and we take pride in making sure that our customer’s networks are rock solid and optimized for efficiency,” adds French. A common problem that customers approach ZeroOutages with is the high cost of their existing MPLS network. ZeroOutages enables customers to replace, say an $800 per month MPLS circuit with two $200 per month broadband circuits supplemented by its services. The net savings typically are in excess of 40 percent per month, per site. Additionally, customers gain redundancy and in most cases can triple their site-to-site performance due to the higher speeds afforded by broadband circuits.

ZeroOutages has a strong footprint in the retail space with names like BJ’s Restaurants, WSS, and California Pizza Kitchen as its clients. The Irvine-based company expects to turn up over 2000 retail locations this year and has partnered with many MSPs to offer its services to hosted VoIP customers. Though the company has a presence in over 50 countries (mostly through US-based companies with operations in these countries), French says that expansions into Europe are already underway and “we will partner with several industry leaders in that region.”