Building cloud-enabled, intelligent network solutions
How Network Solutions Group is helping customers reduce complexity and customise solutions through flexible, high-performing IP networks.
Network Solutions Group (NetSG) is an enterprise service provider and network integration specialist that has built a high-performance IP network across Australia and New Zealand. Leveraging NEXTDC’s national digital infrastructure platform as the foundation of its flexible, intelligent network architecture, NetSG enables customers to access high performance, resilient connectivity services. By aggregating a range of services into a single managed service using the combined elements of NEXTDC’s ecosystem, these networks help to reduce costs and complexity around customers’ ever-increasing data and connectivity requirements.
Director of Channel Success at NetSG, Laura Veness said she has great faith in NEXTDC’s 100% uptime guarantee and technical expertise to support their business model. She believes the best way to amplify the value of tailored solutions and connect their customers with them, is to partner with like-minded companies committed to delivering premium-grade solutions.
Challenge
As a managed network service provider, NetSG build bespoke software defined Wide Area Networks that combine multiple services to be managed as a single network. NetSG interconnects with all major carriers, including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, AAPT/TPG, and many more, at each of its points of presence (PoPs) in NEXTDC facilities across the country. From within the NEXTDC ecosystem, NetSG manages dozens of direct Cross Connects to aggregate all the services required to connect customers with the clouds, partners, people and locations driving their business success.
As they help their customers by creating communication solutions and offering local, onshore technical support 24x7x365, it is imperative that NetSG’s customers are never faced with poor performance or costly outages.
“We are working with customers from a range of industries, including financial services, media and entertainment, and healthcare,” Laura said. “These organisations can’t afford any service interruptions to the networks that manage access to, and transmission of critical data.
“As their dependence on technology accelerates, stability and performance of their networks is at the core of our customers competitive edge. Inconsistent connectivity can lead to major financial or productivity losses, so it is paramount that we can provide that guaranteed uptime they need.”
“At NetSG, our partners and customers come first. We want to ensure we have the best technology in place to enable scalable solutions, flexibility to make changes quickly where required, and that we can resolve problems efficiently through our Australian-based customer service and technical support teams.”
Solution
By using NEXTDC’s data centres, NetSG are able to collaborate with all the partners and services they need from within an ecosystem that comprises over 640 cloud platforms, carriers and IT services companies to build their own managed high-performance network across Australia. It has core PoPs in NEXTDC facilities in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth. NEXTDC’s premium data centres enable NetSG to offer its partners and customers flexible network performance and availability guarantees with globally competitive wholesale pricing.
“We are interconnected with 15 domestic and international carriers, which means we can provide the last mile connection to our customers’ offices out of our NEXTDC data centre PoPs in every state,” said Laura. “We needed a reliable and trusted data centre services partner who provides the level of flexibility and resilience we need to maintain a steady, but agile network.
“NEXTDC not only provides us with technical expertise to manage the core infrastructure that is so important to building resilient networks, it is also where we connect with all of the partners and other services providers we need to differentiate ourselves in a competitive market.”
As an example of the value that NetSG introduces to its channel partners, it has recently worked closely in collaboration with IT services company, Precision IT to support network capacity requirements for rapidly growing local online retail and auction company, GraysOnline. Looking to expand the number of locations across metropolitan and regional Australia where it could conduct live auctions and receive goods for sale, GraysOnline needed scalable services that would provide a stable platform for it to reach the broadest possible audience.
NEXTDC’s national footprint underpins NetSG’s aggregated network services. NetSG’s network infrastructure acts as the backbone for Precision IT, enabling them to provide network solutions to their customers for an end-to-end offering across all IT disciplines.
Innovative and flexible network architecture was key to supporting the broader digital transformation objectives of GraysOnline. It enabled them to move forward with growth objectives at the same time as retaining and extending the functionality of the core systems that have been the foundation of their success. Central to this NetSG platform-based solution, was NEXTDC’s resilient data centre infrastructure and network-dense ecosystem.
Benefits
In order to deliver their customers a suite of specialist, scalable, and manageable solutions anywhere in Australia, NetSG’s business needed to be supported by an infrastructure platform that guaranteed 100% uptime. By colocating within NEXTDC’s data centres, NetSG has complete confidence their critical infrastructure is in a high-performance computing environment that delivers the business stability, and the power to collaborate with all manner of channel partners.
NEXTDC’s focus on infrastructure excellence allows NetSG to maintain a focus on innovation and enabling its partners and customers with type of best-of-breed network connectivity their reputation is built upon. This included offering Internet Service Providers (ISP) and Managed Service Providers (MSP) access to flexible and agile aggregated services from all major carriers as well as core solutions that meet customer demand for managed solutions around voice and cloud connectivity.
“We are a channel-led organisation at heart, and through our partnership with NEXTDC, we can offer our partners the ability to innovate in the way they provide bespoke connectivity solutions to their customers. For example, our wholesale, white label services enable customers to gain a much better overall experience when it comes to their network. When combined with our network connections, our partners are provided connectivity options across not only Australia and New Zealand but anywhere around the world, with visibility in one single portal.”
It’s the assurance of a stable, flexible infrastructure platform and access to a highly interconnected ecosystem that is the significant value NEXTDC brings to the partnership with NetSG; as they continue to provide innovative managed network services to their customers. They in-turn add significant value to their customers, by aggregating multiple services into a single managed solution and providing the visibility tools, technical support, and architecture expertise.
As digital transformation accelerates under the shadow of new working arrangements and ways of doing business brought on by a global pandemic, NetSG can stay focussed on innovation and business development without having to think about managing data centres which aren’t core to their business.
“For us we want to focus on simplifying the complex world of networking and telecommunications through flexible solutions rather than worrying about managing power, cooling and security around our core services platforms.”
“We have a great relationship with NEXTDC and find that their strong brand reputation gives our customers confidence in our services. They’ve supported us on our journey all the way and their technical, facilities and operations teams have supported us to build solutions that continues to meet the needs of our partners and their customers."
She believes the best way to amplify the value of tailored solutions and connect their customers with them, is to partner with like-minded companies committed to delivering premium-grade solutions. By colocating within NEXTDC’s premium data centres, NetSG are able to collaborate with all the partners and services they need.
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