Masergy Performance Edge™ minimizes packet loss over public broadband connections
Masergy, a software-defined network and cloud platform company, today announced its latest patent-pending innovation which is aimed at solving a fundamental problem with broadband internet transport. Masergy Performance EdgeTM, a new SD-WAN and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) capability, minimizes packet loss over public broadband connections, making them perform more like a private Ethernet circuit.
“Today broadband is being used ubiquitously” in home and business sites, says Ajay Pandya, director of Product Management for Masergy. “We are seeing this over the last year a lot. We used to sell 60-70% of our sites with one of the links as broadband. Now it’s in the 90’s.”
Broadband can be up to 70% cheaper than private access networks, says Pandya, but it’s still a “best effort” technology that doesn’t always provide reliable performance for applications such as voice and video conferencing.
“If I’m a contact center person or a power-user executive delivering my quarterly announcement to analysts, I don’t want the connection to be any less than excellent,” says Pandya. He also said that Masergy aims to improve the quality of last-mile connections with its Performance Edge.
“Masergy Performance EdgeTM is revolutionary because it turns the low-cost, low-performance access methodology into a high-performing service meeting the demands of today’s digital-first businesses,” said Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research. “It saves precious IT dollars and removes the productivity uncertainties of working from home all within a SASE environment.”
Most companies have become more dependent on broadband since the 2020 pandemic, but it hasn’t always served them well — particularly in cases where guaranteed performance is needed. According to an Altman Solon 2021 State of SD-WAN Study, 50% of IT leaders using only public access say their application performance is insufficient, and 48% say the cost savings don’t justify the lower quality of service. Inherently broadband is a “best effort” technology unfit for real-time data applications like voice and video conferencing. Thus, broadband often fails to deliver the performance needed, causing losses in productivity, sales, and revenue.
“Masergy is working to ensure our clients’ new need for broadband doesn’t impact their business continuity. Remote work success shouldn’t hinge on network connectivity types, and we’ve created Masergy Performance EdgeTM to make sure it doesn’t,” said Chris MacFarland, CEO, Masergy. “Masergy pioneered software-defined networking 20 years ago. We were the first to market with AIOps integrated in our SD-WAN and SASE solutions, and we’re already on the path to autonomous networking — so there’s no better company to revolutionize broadband, making it the high-performance, predictable service everyone wants it to be.
The patent-pending Performance Edge is aimed at assisting home workers, SD-WAN, SASE and MPLS customers in improving their broadband performance by reducing packet loss. The feature can be added on to Masergy’s SD-WAN and SASE services, but there is an additional cost to utilize Performance Edge. In addition, it’s currently centrally managed, so customers need to request it directly from Masergy to turn the service on.
Masergy Performance EdgeTM is available with Masergy’s Managed SD-WAN Secure and SASE offerings and uses proprietary network architecture along with industry standard and compatible routing algorithms to enable businesses of all sizes to realize increased efficiency and productivity. It provides these key benefits:
- Better Performance: Minimize packet loss over public broadband connections for more predictable application experiences
- Less Expensive: Save up to 70% compared to the cost of a private line and reduce outages with AI-powered performance visibility
- Fast to Install: Connect new sites in days versus weeks and boost existing broadband circuits for immediate results
Image Credit: Masergy
Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst of ZK Research, told Light Reading that Performance Edge could be useful in delivering the “performance of private IT with broadband” for remote workers, retail and small branch locations. Kerravala says Masergy is “using a multitude of different optimization techniques to make that broadband connection work better” with tools such as WAN optimization, compression and forward-error correction.
“SD-WAN does a good job of load balancing across 2 connections, but there are a number of situations where you only have your broadband connection available … Masergy also has their MPLS backbone, so it’s the combination of two that gives you the end-to-end performance. Performance Edge optimizes the last mile, and Masergy has always been good at the middle mile,” says Kerravala.
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Learn more about Masergy Performance Edge