Although cloud services have been in the market for some years now, the disruption they’re causing in today’s enterprise environment is only growing. To put it in numbers, the cloud services market is expected to reach US$ 266.4 billion in 2020, exceeding US$ 350 billion by 2022. This growth directly reflects the increasing demand for services running over the cloud. The increasing adoption of cloud-based applications as a better alternative to hosting applications on-premise is urging companies to replace their legacy MPLS and move towards internet-first, internet-only, or hybrid infrastructures in search for higher bandwidth. Unfortunately for businesses, making such a decision is not always so straightforward. Despite acknowledging cloud as a key enabler for business application performance and lower ownership cost, and even when reliable and cost-effective global internet access is available, the nature of the internet and its associated challenges are still keeping businesses away from forgetting completely about their MPLS – for now.
The truth about the internet
Here’s the deal: although the internet is pretty awesome, unfortunately, it’s not perfect – especially when travelling internationally. Picture a large enterprise connecting its Sydney offices to those in London. Those links need to perform flawlessly, all the time. However, even though available capacity has increased dramatically in the past years, when we traverse large distances over the public internet, we’re subject to the policies of all the networks we touch in between, as well as the limitations of BGP, the routing protocol used on the internet. “Oh, but then there’s SD-WAN!”. Not quite. SD-WAN is great, but its scope is mainly focused on improving performance at the edge of your network (the overlay). Still, the limitations of the internet (the underlay) are also hindering companies from making the most of their SD-WAN investments. In other terms, imagine upgrading your car to a Ferrari (the overlay). You’re going to go faster right? But what if the road (the underlay) unpredictably turns to mud every few hundred miles? 
For this same reason, global businesses are forced to maintain significant amounts of legacy MPLS infrastructure alongside their new SD-WAN and internet implementation to support site-to-site communication and any applications still hosted at HQ. If only there was a solution for this…
...which there is: The Middle Mile solution
Middle Mile services can provide guaranteed performance over the internet, even overseas, in much the same way that legacy MPLS networks deliver end-to-end guarantees. They’re also known to provide huge improvements, backed by an SLA in latency, jitter, packet loss, and also international upload/download speeds. Back to our Ferrari analogy, Middle Mile solutions will fix the road so you can get the most out of your shiny, new internet-fuelled car. Moreover, Middle Mile doesn’t only solve site-to-site needs. Because Middle Mile providers run much closer (and sometimes literally on top of) the public internet infrastructure, they can also improve your connections to the public cloud – just when you thought it couldn’t get better.
The best of both worlds is possible
Globalinternet, a leading provider of global internet access, has spent time understanding all these challenges. After testing multiple solutions to solve the Middle Mile problem, they are able to recommend businesses with the appropriate solutions to specific requirements. Globalinternet Middle Mile is an entirely software-defined solution to the challenges of traversing large distances over the public internet. Via a strategic partnership, they are able to ‘inspect’ the public internet regularly to then make informed routing decisions to guarantee performance over the network. In Globalinternet’s own tests, the company observed over 1000% reduction in packet loss between Manila and Amsterdam! 
Globalinternet Middle Mile is offered as an add-on to their enterprise package with proof of concepts also available. The company, already well-regarded for providing best ‘last mile’ internet access, is now able to pair that expertise with a one-stop-shop for all internet connectivity needs, which may be the reason companies need to say goodbye to that old-school expensive MPLS.
To go global, you have to get local. Find out more with Globalinternet, here.
