NETWORK SOLUTIONS
Scalable solution to grow and expand with your business
At the heart of every IT infrastructure is a robust, reliable, scalable network. Your office computers, laptops, mobile devices, servers and databases need to communicate with each other regardless where they are – on premise, outside the office, in the cloud, at home or any other remote location.
We connect you and your devices – from anywhere to anywhere. Whether you just need a local network in your office, a wide area network to connect multiple branches, or a global network connecting you to the Internet and facilities around the globe.
Ensite’s unique port-based model allows us to customise services according to your needs. We have a building block approach in which each element of the network is broken down into manageable and scalable components. In our solution a “port” is the actual access link, very similar to a LAN port installed in the office and once the port is available any number of services can be configured to run over the port. We offer different size ports for commercial reasons only in order to make commercial sense.
We do not differentiate between different types of services when it comes to access port cost. We install the port according to your total capacity requirement and allow you the flexibility to dictate how you want the services within the port to be configured.
We can install a dedicated access port at a customer site and configure it to run individual services, all at specific dedicated bandwidth requirements and each within their own VLAN, not interfering with the bandwidth of the other services.
Or we can install a dedicated access port and configure it to run multiple services with Quality of Service (QoS) and allow the individual services to utilise the full port capacity when required by bursting into the other services within the port.
This is particularly useful to ensure best possible voice and video quality for your inter-branch as well as external voice and video conferencing requirements, using Microsoft Teams, Zoom, BlueJeans, WebEx or your preferred collaboration tool.
Our core network was designed with the future in mind. Most providers have scaled legacy networks to 10 Gbps capacity or multiples thereof, whereas we designed a 100Gbps network from day one – ready for the next generation of networking and the growing demands of customers.
State of the art datacentre, carrier-grade equipment across multiple geographic regions gives you the peace of mind that your network and systems are available 24/7.
Network security is enforced by Palo Alto and Fortinet security solutions, and can be augmented with Cisco Umbrella (annual licence fees apply), a powerful DNS cloud security solution, continually monitoring your public Internet traffic and verifying the safety of the visited web sites in real-time, protecting you from malware. And if for some reason your network has been compromised and malware or ransomware attempts to contact its C&C (Command & Control) server over the Internet, Cisco Umbrella detects and drops this network traffic.
Our technical design teams will consult and design the best solution meeting your business requirement.
Office Networks (LAN – Local Area Network)
Our experienced cabling teams install top quality structured cabling, making sure every network point is tested and labelled. Our network engineers deploy your preferred routing and switching equipment (Cisco, Aruba, Dell, Ruckus, etc.), with the appropriate configurations for inter-VLAN routing Layer 3, or Layer 2 networks.
When designing and building a network, we take your current requirements and the bigger picture and your potential future needs into consideration and advise you accordingly. For instance, do you have an existing IP telephony system in place which will need to provide power to the telephone handsets? Does the number of Wi-Fi access points justify the deployment of PoE (power over Ethernet) switches, or are power injectors a more cost-effective option where there is a limited number of devices? Will you need to logically separate network segments for capacity or security reasons, and is a Layer 3 core network required?
Whatever the requirement, we establish the most cost-effective network solution for your environment that meets your business needs.
Once completed, we share with you (and retain – if permitted) all configurations and backups of each device’s configuration. If you allow us to keep copies of your configuration files, you have the additional peace of mind that we have a copy of each device’s configuration should you need it in the event of a failure, to enable a quick recovery.
We can also provide you with automated inventory management and monitoring tools, which will keep track of the devices on your network, monitor availability and automate daily backups of your devices’ configuration files.
If required, we can assist you with NAC (network access control) services, making sure that only your authorised and recognised devices, or only devices meeting a specified baseline can connect to your network.
Wi-Fi Network
Your office LAN would be incomplete without augmenting it with the appropriate Wi-Fi capabilities to enable your laptops, mobile devices and IoT devices to connect to your network. The Wi-Fi design must be fit for use and fit for purpose to meet your business needs. For instance, a high-traffic and high-density environment (a shopping mall or a hotel convention facility, for instance) has a distinctly different requirement from a low-density long-range application, such as an inventory management solution in a large warehouse.
The convention use case might require an increased number of Wi-Fi access points to cater for the large number of concurrent connections, to reliably provide the expected service during a large scale event; in this case, priority is given to the number of concurrent connections, and the range of each access point is of lesser importance, as the increased number of access points will provide the necessary coverage by default.
The warehouse scenario, on the other hand, requires range and coverage priority over the number of concurrent connections, as the latter will always be limited to the number of employees / devices in use during peak operation and therefore less access points are required. However, the reduced number of access points must still provide reliable connectivity in the furthest corners of the facility.
There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, there is a suitable access point for each application, and our network design teams will be able to guide you in selecting the appropriate technology to make sure you are getting the most cost-effective solution that satisfies the business requirement.
Inter-Branch Network (WAN – Wide Area Network)
If you need to connect multiple branches, we have smart solutions to help you to network all your remote locations, including traditional MPLS or SD-WAN technologies, or a combination depending on the business needs. You may, for instance, run your ERP or HR systems at head office and need to provide access to access these systems for your remote branches; or you might run your CRM system on Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure and need to process customer data securely from all your connected branches.
Consolidating the system requirements across your organisation’s estate can often provide economies of scale due to reduced local installations of software (and associated licence costs) at each branch, reduced management and maintenance overheads, or reduce the pre-user licence costs.
An inter-branch network can also reduce your operating costs, by consolidating many of the services traditionally required operate each branch. We already touched on some of the typical enterprise systems above (ERP, CRM, HR) which can be consolidated at one central location and made accessible across the business. But have you considered the potential impact on your communications, file servers, databases, data storage, security and countless other processes?
For instance, you may consider decommissioning your legacy PBX systems at your branches and manage telephony across your business from your existing head office PBX. Or, even better, do not have a PBX at all. Our voice solutions can provide you with a virtual PBX in the cloud, whilst still maintaining your published telephone numbers for each branch, DID (direct inward dialling), central directory listing – and, best of all, free calls between your branches using your inter-branch network.
You could also consolidate your unstructured user data (your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and PDFs) traditionally stored on the branch’s file server, and store all those files in a central repository at your head office, a storage platform at your datacentre provider, or your Azure or AWS file storage instance – whilst retaining copies of your recently accessed files locally in case of a temporary network outage. Compression and deduplication technologies dramatically reduce the volume of storage required.
Multiple database instances running at each branch could be consolidated into an Azure Managed Instance, potentially reducing RDBMS (MS SQL, Oracle, etc) licence costs and making data available across the organisation.
Not all solutions may be practical for all organisations, but the possibilities are abundant and provide ample opportunities and potentially significant cost savings.
Internet access
Internet access is fundamental for businesses of all kinds. Whether you need reliable, cost-effective service for home workers, business-grade broadband for small offices or a dedicated service for your business-critical communications, Ensite offers a wide range of internet services to suit your needs.
We offer secure network infrastructure your business can trust, giving your business the peace of mind and focus it needs.
Remote access / VPN / APN
You have invested in a robust and scalable network infrastructure – a LAN to connect your devices at your office, a WAN to connect your branches to consolidate and provide access to your services, Internet to access resources on the web – but it would be incomplete without the ability for your workforce and service providers to access your services remotely.
Remote access, traditionally treated with apprehension and reserved for IT support and service provider access for critical system support, has now become an accepted operational element in many, if not most organisations around the globe. Businesses have realised and accepted that many job functions traditionally preformed at the company premises can be done remotely just as effectively and at reduced cost (amongst many other benefits). The increased network access, however, brings new capacity and security challenges, which must be adequately addressed to safeguard the organisation’s assets and intellectual property.
Our Palo Alto and Fortinet security solutions provide exactly that – protecting your IP from unauthorised identities, whilst enabling access to authorised and authenticated personnel. On top of these security solutions, we built some powerful solutions enabling your teams to get their work done from anywhere.
For employees and service providers connecting over the Internet, we have a simple, yet secure, VPN (virtual private network) solution – Work@nywhere – connecting them to the office, granting the same permissions and privileges as if they were at the office.
You may even want to provide a permanent secure facility for your key personnel or employees who do not have Internet access at their home. Our Work@home solution is designed to extend the company network to the employee’s residence (last-mile fibre or LTE), enabling the employee to work seamlessly from home, with the costs of the solution carried by the company.
And for mobile users, our Multi-provider APN solution aggregates your employees’ mobile data traffic (the SIM in their smart phones / tablets – Vodacom and MTN) on your corporate APN, giving your teams secure access to the company network, with applications, protocols and access controlled by the organisation. You can customize your own corporate SIM based voice and data bundles according to the employee’s usage profile, then have full real-time visibility over the total and individual expenses and the control to set limits, disable and enable sims, and have full reporting at your fingertips.
VOICE AND UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
What our mobile voice and data solution means for your business
We can provide you with cloud PBX services, eliminating the need for you to maintain your own on-premise telephony infrastructure. We supply you with IP telephone handsets, but your virtual PBX with all its configuration and extension management resides in our datacentres, looked after by our engineering and support teams.
This effectively means that with our network in place and our telephony solution, you could decommission your PBX – no more maintenance, no more licences, no hardware replacement / refresh every few years.
Where you have multiple PBXs across your branches, you can retain the published numbers (you’ll have to port them to us first, but we will help with that), we configure each branch’s extension and main incoming number on our virtual PBX, and you can decommission the on-premise PBX equipment. Your typical PBX functions (forward, park, ring groups, hunt groups, boss-secretary functions, etc.) are all available on our hosted platform, so you are not sacrificing any functionality.
Best of all, as you are using – and already paying for – our network, you will not be charged anything for your inter-branch voice or video calls.
Calls you make to numbers outside your network are routed smartly to terminate the call at the cheapest available rate (least-cost-routing). This is done by our systems automatically so you can be assured that you are paying the lowest possible rate for each call.
Quality-of-Service (QoS) rules prioritise voice and videoconferencing traffic to ensure the best possible end user experience for these services.
For the end user, we have a range of telephone handsets and headsets available, from entry-level low-cost devices, to executive high-end units. And for the mobile user, there are soft phone options for laptops, as well as iOS and Android options available for download from the App Store and Google Play store, ensuring that you and your employees are reachable anywhere and on any device.