If you want to do a proper review of the state of the corporate WAN—in light of digital transformation, cloud, SD-WAN adoption, and MPLS utilization—there's no one better to talk to than Phil Gervasi, Director of Technical Evangelism at Kentik.
Lucky for me, he was this week's guest on TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Hello podcast listeners. It's Tuesday, which means there's a new episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet hot off the press.
Our latest guest is Waheed Adam, Global Board Director of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum and Executive Chairperson at iTouch Messaging Service. He was a fantastic guest who brought a wealth of knowledge—and some really excellent stories—about mobile adoption as infrastructure in Africa.
Punch the play button below if you'd like to hear his chat with host Greg Bryan and Senior Research Manager Patrick Christian.
Welcome back, podcast listeners. We're thrilled to dive into a new season of telecom tech talk.
First, you might have noticed that we look a little different than when we were last in your headphones. That's because we did a little old-fashioned rebranding while on summer break. What was once the WAN Manager Podcast is now TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Anyone in the WAN business—from the carrier or end-user side—knows that local access can present some of the biggest challenges in corporate networks.
There's a physical geography problem that's not easy to overcome. We're talking about pulling and maintaining wires to all corporate sites, which is especially challenging when customers need physical diversity and protection.
Wireless has long been a backup of last resort for many users, but 5G has presented the promise of relieving this pain point.
While NaaS and the middle mile are still fairly new concepts, they're not new to the WAN Manager Podcast.
In episodes past, you've seen—or rather, heard—us shine a spotlight on the framework, concept, market players, and products available.
So let's look at things from another perspective.
The TeleGeography team began benchmarking networks almost a decade ago. (Time flies when you're having fun!)
Back then, the big use case was making sure that carrier and customer were on the same page about how much MPLS and access prices had fallen over the life of a contract—and how far prices would probably fall in the next several years.
Our readers likely know about NaaS: cloud-based network architecture that allows a WAN manager to stitch together different enterprise network components in a self-service, automated way.
At the WAN Manager Podcast, we've been watching the ways in which NaaS has emerged as specific products/solutions from vendors, as well as how it integrates with existing WAN strategies from the enterprise side.
Two years ago—when the world shut down—WAN managers had to scramble to accommodate massive changes. Offices transitioned to remote work and navigated brand new traffic patterns.
Our guest on this week's WAN Manager Podcast navigated the added challenge of running a network within the healthcare industry, where business needs were changing in real-time.
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