The new investment represents significant improvements across the whole spectrum of voice and data traffic over IP – from hosting and securing data to handling and prioritising traffic over broadband via MPLS, and delivering it back into the PSTN networks.
“This aggressive investment strategy reflects our confidence in the demand in the IP market for enhanced business telephony and data services,” said Griffin Sales and Marketing Director Andrew Dickinson.
“We are not only providing a fully secure and robust environment for data, but are also significantly upgrading the quality of our network infrastructure and the services that can be provided over it. By the time the upgrades are completed at the end of November, our channel partners will be able to offer their customers hosted PBX, VPN and VoIP.”
The improvements are currently underway with a major upgrade of the network already in place providing greater bandwidth and a full triangulation of the company’s three UK data centres in London, Derby and Leicester. This has paved the way for a robust and secure Storage Area Network (SAN) that guarantees that data is fully backed up all the time on more than one site.
With the bandwidth in the network and SAN infrastructure in place, Griffin is able to offer channel partners the opportunity to sell a number of services to their business clients, in particular hosted PBX. Reliable and flexible storage is an important prerequisite, allowing the hosting of recorded messages, voicemail and telephone data records. The SAN can accommodate variable storage requirements cost-effectively for both voice and data and the system is fully robust due to the mirrored storage arrays on three separate sites.
In addition, Griffin is upgrading its entire network to MPLS standard, providing the Quality of Service needed for voice traffic and VPN requirements to be routed via broadband. MPLS works by prioritising certain types of traffic – such as voice – so that the conflicting demands for bandwidth are managed effectively.
Channel partners will also be able to market VPNs using DSL. For businesses with a large number of remote workers it makes sense for them to connect via broadband to the company LAN. Their calls can then be routed via the VPN into the company PBX, thus saving on trunk calls. MPLS provides the flexibility to manage all these different forms of data and to decide dynamically how to use the circuit.
The final part of Griffin’s investment plan involves upgrading its IP PSTN breakout technology - the point at which the data and voice traffic coming in on IP needs to leave the broadband environment and connect back into the PSTN network.
“Our intention is to provide a quality network infrastructure that can host the business services of the future. These investments will provide a cost-effective, reliable and flexible network infrastructure and back-up services on which the channel can build their IP-based business offering. Our policy is not to get our Partners to sell Griffin branded broadband so that we can then siphon off CPE, maintenance and voice revenue for ourselves. On the contrary: we encourage the channel to take a white label managed broadband platform from us upon which we can then build value-added products and services for them to badge and sell to their customers,” commented Andrew Dickinson.