Ask the Experts: Top 5 Questions Asked of

EarthLink Network Engineers An Industry Brief to Support Business/IT Leaders as they

Evaluate Network Service Providers

www.earthlink.com

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Anyone who watches Jeopardy! can tell you that sometimes, knowing the right question is the best way to show your intellect and achieve strong ROI (“Alex, What was The War of 1812?”)

This applies to buying IT services, especially with network services, which happen to be going through a period of significant change. For anyone looking at new or upgraded solutions, knowing what kinds of questions to ask is central to your ability to compare/contrast offerings and understand important issues relative to your business needs.

Asking the right questions helps you cut through the hype and lets prospective vendors know they’re dealing with a knowledgeable buyer. This will help you get the most insightful recommendations and strongest proposal/pricing as a result. Something to keep in mind as you draft your RFP or less formal request for a quote.

To help put together a list of Jeopardy!-worthy questions, we asked a few of our

leading network engineers to weigh in. You’ll find their answers to be helpful and a bit surprising.

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An introduction from the engineers

Surprisingly, our team says prospective customers no longer save technical questions for the engineers. In fact, they don’t typically ask a lot of technical questions at all, since that is seen as somewhat of a commodity.

What people DO ask about are business issues, and about how we approach and solve problems. The engineers love such questions because they help us showcase how we might address the customer’s challenges, objectives and aspirations. That’s where our engineers add the most value.

With that in mind, they encourage prospective buyers to ask questions that let engineers show what their company brings to the table, and leads to productive discussion where they can:

• Probe to understand the buyer’s core business

• Learn about their critical applications

• Understand how they currently connect and engage with customers

• Determine how they currently use technology to meet business objectives

Following are five common questions engineers encounter; the kind to ask your prospective Network Service Provider (NSP) to see how they respond. Their answers may give you far better insight than you’d ever get simply reading their RFP.

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Q1: What’s your approach to redundancy and availability for “always-on” apps?

Redundancy, backup and failover for applications are central to everyone, especially customers moving steadily to the cloud. They want to know our thoughts on using a single provider for this; why consolidate vs. the traditional dual provider approach? They also want to know how this applies to critical, performance sensitive applications like voice. Or how we provide high levels of uptime to create an “always-on” network for critical, “always-on” apps.

The engineers respond:

The first thing we do is ask about their business applications and current architecture, how they’re using the cloud and how that might change. This will impact how we design for redundancy and availability, as there is no single answer for every environment.

Previously it was common to look at dual carriers. Today, with the introduction of SD-WAN, and with so many aspects of business becoming truly dependent on the network, there’s greater value using a single vendor approach. In fact, with SD-WAN the second network is not simply a “backup” or “failover” but an essential part of active/active network architecture.

If the customer is simply looking for voice failover, or a traditional passive backup network, we can provide that using multiple options – DSL, broadband, wireless, etc. – but we still suggest consolidation with one NSP. With the increasing complexity of WANs and what they’re being used for, a single source approach offers the best way to provide an “always-on” environment for “always-on”, business critical applications.

Q2: How do you approach availability in the last mile?

The last mile has always been a concern for customers we talk to, especially those with many locations, since it’s essential to network availability. Questions regarding the last mile often cover a variety of related topics, though they all revolve around the need for an access solution that meets the customer’s performance requirements and budget.

The engineers respond:

EarthLink uses a diverse pool of access vendors and technologies to meet our customers’ specific demands, either through direct connectivity or IP-based access mediums. We’re also constantly augmenting our access portfolio to add new vendors and products, to stay ahead of that demand. We believe this is an area where a great NSP can shine, by having geographically rich last mile options to deliver the performance and reliability businesses need.

If we do run into difficulty using our existing portfolio of vendors, we’ve developed IPsec technology to deliver our product set over a customer’s current access design.

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Q3: How does EarthLink help reduce the burden of PCI compliance?

PCI compliance is a complex, critical issue for anyone dealing with credit card transactions, which these days is nearly everyone. There is a bit of confusion though on the role of the network, the differences between compliance and certification, and how that can impact your selection of an NSP.

The engineers respond:

While overall PCI compliance is ultimately the responsibility of the customer, EarthLink can help our customers in a number of ways – especially by “reducing their scope” – in order to make ongoing management of PCI compliance as simple as possible. EarthLink has a range of products and services that meet the latest PCI standards. Working in partnership with our customers and by leveraging our deep experience with both merchants and processors, we can provide ongoing consultation to help reduce risk and to achieve, maintain and validate PCI compliance requirements.

Q4: What’s your approach to the cloud… performance, security, everything?

Cloud migration has outpaced the evolution of networks supporting all those new XaaS implementations. IT leaders are increasingly aware of this and they seek answers to a myriad of questions about how we can help them access apps safely and efficiently wherever they are.

The engineers respond:

Our nationwide network enables us to connect customers to cloud-based, X-as-a-Service applications with the same efficiency, reliability and security as we’ve always done for traditional enterprise applications. To explain this, we talk with the customer to understand the types of workloads they’re running, as certain 3rd party cloud providers are better at some types of workloads than others. We help them look at this in a holistic way since the answer is not as dependent on the network as it is on the cloud provider.

We also talk about how to establish direct connections to 3rd party cloud providers to ensure security, support, scalable “pay as you go” connectivity, and to gain visibility and control over applications and performance. Making sure your NSP has experience with these technologies is more essential than ever. Having a solution and a point-of-view with regard to SD-WAN is also essential to addressing this question.

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Q5: How can you help simplify our day-to-day operations?

IT leaders and their teams are being stretched further than ever. When they speak to our engineers, they ask a variety of questions about our operational support structure, managed services, who monitors the network, etc. They ask how our NOC is structured, whether we’re equipped to support consolidation of new kinds of services, how we stack up against using multiple best-of-breed vendors, and how we approach this overall challenge in a unique way.

The engineers respond:

When they ask about support, what customers really want to know is how we can help make their lives a bit easier. So they ask how we can reduce the burden on their shoulders so they can focus on more strategic vs. tactical issues. We see this in companies of all sizes, though more so when there’s a small IT staff being stretched to the limit.

To address this, we’ll show how visibility across their network offers greatly enhanced capability while also saving time and effort. We’ll talk about the benefit of our fully-staffed, 24x7, geographically dispersed NOCs, our systems and controls for monitoring managed services and our network. And we’ll show the benefits of our myLink self-service portal, which provides simple, single-pane access to network monitoring and billing services. Finally, we’ll cover our support solutions, including enhanced platinum level monitoring for managed services.

It really comes down to our ability to truly partner with them, so they can focus on other things that require their attention. The ability for an NSP to do this is really what separates one provider from another these days.

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It all comes down to trust

The role of the network engineer has clearly changed, from engineering the network, to engineering solutions to creatively and successfully address business challenges and needs. During the process of evaluating an NSP for potential use, take time to talk to their engineers about how they help solve business issues, because this is what they should be able to do best. Anyone in any NOC can talk about a lot of technical mumbo jumbo, but by asking tough business questions of engineers, you’ll be able to arm yourself with the right information to make the best possible buying decision to serve your needs today and in years to come.

Meet our panel of network engineers

Chris Johnson — Principal Solutions Architect. More than 16 years of experience in the network space, including six years in communications for the United States Air Force.

Randy Landers — Leads our Principal Solutions Architects team. Broad experience building and implementing solutions to drive innovation and growth.

Sam Maraghy — EarthLink VP/director of engineering, Solutions Architects with 20+ years progressive experience in IT with a focus on the telecom space. Hands on experience as a technical manager, senior network architect, and VP/director of engineering in leading edge companies.

Mike Mundorff — Principal Solutions Architect with over 25 years of experience in the industry providing global solutions to Fortune 500 companies.

Charles Reyes — Principal Solutions Architect. As a CCIE, brings experience in network operations, architecture, and design to help customers with new and innovative voice and data solutions.

About Earthlink

EarthLink is a leading network services provider dedicated to delivering great customer experiences in a cloud connected world. We help thousands of multi-location businesses securely establish critical connections in the cloud.

Contact us at 844-856-1204connect@elnk.com | www.earthlink.com

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