In case you missed my previous post, we here at TeleGeography love busting telecom myths. But we haven’t turned our analytical tools toward common WAN pricing myths—until now!
In this second installment, I’m going to investigate whether MPLS IP VPN and dedicated internet access (DIA) prices have become one and the same.
We have a years-long tradition of Mythbusting here at TeleGeography. But it occurred to me that we’ve never tackled any of the WAN pricing myths floating around out there. That’s why I decided to do a series addressing some of the things I hear from WAN-sourcing and WAN-selling professionals.
Let’s see if these WAN pricing myths stack up against the data.
First up: is it true that, particularly for traditional MPLS networks, local access can account for upwards of 50% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of WAN components?
Predicting the future is hard, especially when it comes to complex markets with disruptive variables that are difficult/impossible to model. In his excellent book Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman provides stark examples of how bad humans can be at doing just that.
In this excerpt, Kahneman details how he tracked the performance records of 25 professional wealth managers across eight years. He found that “[t]he results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.”
Let's talk about telecom expense management, better known as TEM.
TEMs are designed to make untangling telecom investments a little easier. For larger organizations with bigger telecom bills, this can be huge for streamlining costs and saving dollars. (More on that here.)
But why bring up TEMs? Why do we think WAN managers might be interested?
At this point, the spread of COVID-19 seems inevitable in much of the world. Working from home, if possible, is more than just a good idea. It’s a mandate from employers and governments around the globe.
While many folks are considering the social and business implications of a potentially permanent increase in remote workers, at TeleGeography we’re of course thinking about what this means for WAN and IT infrastructure managers worldwide.
In house or outsourced? This is an age-old question for many firms.
Welcome back to our blog series on “wargaming” WAN configurations to see how product choice can affect site bandwidth and total WAN costs. If you’re just joining us, it’s probably worth going back to the beginning.
When we last left off, my colleague Elizabeth Thorne covered minimizing MPLS down to the core offices. The next couple of entries, however, are going to focus on the radicals. Yes, the daring folks who decide to leave behind MPLS and go full internet.
My wife has a brutal Northern Virginia commute; she drives about 80 miles a day. Recently, we decided it was time for a new car for her.
Hello and welcome to the third entry in our series about wargaming WAN configuration scenarios. We’ve made it to the MPLS-broadband edition!
Before we continue: if you haven’t read the previous entries where I introduce our hypothetical WAN and then add local internet breakouts with DIA, it probably makes sense to do that before you dive into this one. (This scenario mirrors our last, but replaces DIA with ISP-sourced business broadband.)
Welcome to the second entry in this series on “wargaming” WAN scenarios to make sure you’re getting the most bandwidth bang for your buck.
If you didn’t read the set-up to the series, please go back and check that out. This will all make a lot more sense if you do.
The first actual scenario we’re going to tackle is adopting local internet breakouts in an MPLS-DIA hybrid WAN. Let’s dive in.
