Providing users with great, engaging content is no longer enough to build a robust service and win loyal users. In an increasingly crowded market, a fast and seamless viewing and download experience is gaining importance as a key distinguishing factor in helping your brand get ahead of the competition. Find out how a CDN can help your organisation improve loading times, reduce bandwidth costs, and increase global availability.

 

In recent years, advances in digital technology have led businesses to seek more effective methods of delivering content. The increased presence of the internet in daily life has allowed more consumers to do their shopping and secure services online. Furthermore, the improvement in internet speeds has made it possible for more complex websites with rich media to become the norm. To add to this, the expectations of consumers have risen as they expect to be able to access services immediately and with little to no delay.

This has resulted in the rise of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). CDNs are networks of geographically distributed servers that enable content distribution to users faster.

Read more: Content market in southeast Asia & why CDN is important.

As businesses strive to meet the demands of ever-growing global audiences, an increasing number are turning to CDNs to ensure quick and seamless content delivery. This is because CDNs provide many benefits, many of which are direct results of how CDNs operate. Some benefits even arise as a consequence of others.

Decrease Server Load

Recall that a CDN is a network of servers located in different geographical areas that are used to deliver content. This content is not stored on one central server but is instead spread out across Point of Presence. This prevents any one server from becoming overloaded, which improves the CDN's overall capacity utilisation, reduces the usage of upstream bandwidth and delivery costs, and improves performance for concurrent users.

Improve Website Speed and Performance

Businesses that rely on their website's content delivery speed can benefit immensely from CDNs. Any significant delay in page load times can result in users bouncing off the web page, exiting the site, or even moving to a competitor's website.

Businesses can improve website content performance for end-users by using CDNs. CDNs do this by caching content on servers closest to the end-users. The cached content can include HTML code, image files, live video feeds, and JavaScript.

This means that when an end-user requests a page or content on the website, the request does not have to go to the origin server. The end-user can access the web content from the servers nearest to them, which minimises the delay and improves web performance.

Allow Audience Segmentation Based on User Analytics

One potential benefit of CDNs that is often overlooked is their ability to provide valuable insights into the audience. CDNs today handle a significant amount of the world's internet traffic, collecting vast amounts of data on users, including their internet connectivity, device usage, and more. This data can be translated into helpful analytics, which can be used in decision-making.

Analysing user data, such as real-time load statistics, capacity per customer, most active areas, and the popularity of different content assets, can help businesses understand trends and content consumption patterns. This information can be used to optimise the website, improve the user experience, and contribute to more sales and conversions.

Reduce Packet Loss and Lower Network Latency

When transmitting information across devices over the internet, such as from a website to an end-user, it is done through packets. These packets are small units of data that contain information about the network addresses of the source and destination, error detection and correction rules, protocol identifiers and more, along with the application or website data.

Suppose packets must travel long distances and pass through many devices before reaching the end-user. In that case, some packets may be lost or delayed, reducing the user experience quality. This is especially problematic for high-definition video, audio, or live streaming content, which can experience issues such as out-of-sync audio, display distortions, and choppy audio. All these issues can be overcome with CDN solutions.

Enable Advanced Website Security

One of the indirect benefits of CDN services is that they improve website security. By distributing content across their edge servers, CDNs can help avoid web server overloads. This also makes it more difficult for cyber attacks that rely on sending traffic spikes to key servers.

Attackers often target DNS servers in DDoS attacks, where a large volume of requests are sent in an attempt to overwhelm the server and bring down the website. This can cause economic losses and reputation damage and lead to other more severe hacks and attacks. CDNs can help to shield DDoS attacks by distributing the load evenly across the entire capacity of the network and protecting data centres.

Enhance Content Availability

As the internet increasingly becomes media-rich, businesses must ensure their website content is highly available to meet consumer demands. With high traffic comes the pressure to prevent websites from crashing and maintain content availability.

CDNs can absorb traffic and distribute it across the infrastructure, thereby increasing content availability regardless of load. Using a CDN with multiple Points of Presence (PoPs) ensures that your traffic will be uninterrupted even if one server goes down. The top-tier CDNs additionally have load balancing functionality, which allows them to automatically sense availability and redirect users and requests accordingly. This provides 100% uptime for your users.

Contribute to Cost Savings by Reducing Bandwidth

CDNs also help reduce costs by optimising the bandwidth used by a business. If the volume of requests to a website is constantly high, this can consume correspondingly high bandwidth, driving up costs. CDNs help reduce the bandwidth demands on origin servers, reducing bandwidth and web hosting costs for website owners.

A CDN provider can help businesses save on the costs associated with setting up infrastructure, hosting and servers across the globe. With a CDN, businesses only need to pay according to the traffic and amount of requests. Some CDN providers offer self-service and optimisation features that give businesses more granular control over costs and performance.

Increase Audience Reach and Scale Effectively

CDNs allow businesses to reach a larger global audience by making it easier and more affordable to deliver content to users in distant geographic locations. They also help to ensure a consistent user experience, which is essential for customer satisfaction. Happy customers tend to stick around, leading to a snowball effect that accelerates audience expansion and allows businesses to scale into new markets effectively.

TM CDN

With over 90 nodes worldwide and a deep in-country presence in ASEAN, TM CDN offers a variety of built-in features to solve your most pressing delivery challenges, including content protection and asset optimisation. Meanwhile, robust customisation tools and components let you fine-tune your delivery's most minor details and even create unique functionality and flows.

TM WHOLESALE communication services and solutions offer a reliable and secure connection that can help improve traffic control on your local or wide-area networks. You can also use our suite of services to improve application performance and availability or protect your data from disaster. You can choose the option that best meets your needs with a range of services that include advanced IP with Quality of Service routing, to the flexibility of Ethernet, and data networking services.

 

For more information on how a CDN could enhance your business, take a look at TM CDN solutions and our integrated telco services portfolio. Get in touch today for a pricing breakdown and free consultation with a TM CDN specialist.

 

Gaming is changing. The advent of AR and VR, 5G, and the uptick of the multiverse and metaverse, are redefining the expectations of gamers. Find out how edge computing can help you keep up with gaming trends and meet user expectations to stay ahead of the curve.

 

With more people streaming videos, playing games, and buying things online, Southeast Asia's CDN market is showing the strongest growth momentum. Reducing the time it takes for each piece of data to travel from the host server to the client will provide lower latency and a more optimised user experience. Find out why a reliable content delivery network is a worthy investment if you want to maintain high-quality Web performance and user experience as you grow your online presence.

 

Did you know? 2020 saw a whopping 40 million new internet users in Southeast Asia. What's more? 70 per cent of the region's population is now online. And over 90 per cent of those 400 million strong users intend to continue using digital platforms post-pandemic. This significant uptick in internet usage in recent years has made Southeast Asia one of the most lucrative markets for content providers, application developers, and OTT providers. With a population fast approaching 700 million people and a combined GDP valued at over USD 3 trillion, Southeast Asia is among the fastest-growing economies in the world. Being located at the centre of a dynamic APAC region, operators and content owners must expand their horizons to harness the benefits that come with growth.

Expanding to Southeast Asia: the Opportunities and Obstacles

While in 2021, the online media market in Southeast Asia stood at USD 22 billion, it is expected to grow to a staggering USD 43 billion by 2025. In fact, the advent of rapid technological development, content consumption, and distribution is swiftly driving a sea change in Southeast Asia's Content Delivery Network (CDN) market. The rising demand for Over the Top (OTT) and Video-on-Demand (VOD) services, combined with the increase in demand for enhanced video content and latency-free online gaming experience, is expediting Southeast Asian CDN market growth.

However, delivering top-tier online videos can be challenging. Content files are getting larger, and users expect HD streaming to happen instantly. Broadcasters who value quality are incorporating live streaming CDNs to meet this growing demand.

The modern Web is a mixture of text, images, audio, and video, with data centres around the world supplying information on a 24/7 basis. However – as the internet gets more congested – streaming performance suffers, and end-users grow frustrated.

To combat this problem, organisations are turning to CDNs to provide greater bandwidth, reliability, and security for their content and websites. Used extensively by social media networks, entertainment companies, e-commerce brands, and enterprise businesses, CDNs are quickly (and reliably) making inroads into the Southeast Asian market.

CDN Explained

A CDN allows content providers to distribute content across different geographical locations. A CDN is a network of proxy servers located at various places around the world, which can store a variety of content types such as images, audio, and video files. When a user opens a streaming platform and tries to access a piece of content, the file is usually served from the proxy server closest to their location rather than the origin server. Therefore, enabling faster web performance by locating copies of web content closer to users or facilitating the delivery of dynamic content (e.g., live video feeds).

By reducing the distance between this content and users, the content delivery network helps the website publisher provide faster performance, reduce loading time for its users and control its own bandwidth consumption and costs.

CDN: A vast (Southeast Asia) Market Entry Opportunity

Thanks to high-speed network rollout, reduced data cost, rising demand for video/OTT services, and the surging internet consumption in all formats during and after the pandemic, the next 5-10 years are anticipated to be a crucial growth period for the Southeast Asia digital economy. The disruptive growth is due to the growing number of internet subscribers, the massive mobile internet consumption, and the thriving of e-commerce, live gaming, and online education in Asia, especially in India, China, and Southeast Asia.

Let's take a close look at how content providers stand to benefit from CDNs.

• Localised Data and Seamless Usage:

When you're using a CDN, the content will be served to the website visitors from the node nearest to their physical locations. This way, the data does not have to travel through multiple nodes to reach a web visitor, speeding up the content delivery time. It is important to remember that this method's effectiveness depends on your CDN provider's data centre locations.

• Decreased Bandwidth Consumption:

Web hosting companies charge businesses for the data transferred from the origin servers. A content delivery network can store web content copies closer to the end-users, which would reduce the amount of data needed to be transferred from the origin servers, and in turn, lower enterprise costs and bandwidth consumption.

• Lower Latency:

End-users typically request data from a system, and the system responds by transferring the  data. Latency is the amount of time that elapses between the request and the response. The latency increases as the distance between the end-user and the server increases. CDN servers are located nearer to the end-user, on the "network edge," which reduces latency and improves performance.

• Effective Traffic Spike Management:

When a video goes viral, a successful marketing campaign is launched, a new feature and patch is released, or a limited-time offer is available, the demand for content can suddenly spike. Load balancing can help distribute the demand across web servers so that traffic spikes do not affect website performance.

• Enhanced Cybersecurity:

A content delivery network uses automation and data analytics tools to identify firewall issues, MITM (Man in the Middle) threats, and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

• Amplifies User Satisfaction:

The primary reasons end-users avoid or abandon particular websites are media playback issues, unresponsive applications, and slow load times. A content delivery network minimises these performance issues, leading to increased user satisfaction.

• Accelerated eCommerce:

A content delivery network (CDN) enables faster loading of product pages on mobile and desktop devices, thereby improving the shopping experience. CDN also allows B2B and B2C eCommerce retailers to deliver applications and content, even during peak traffic rapidly.

Content Delivery Network and TM Global

As content becomes increasingly large, dynamic, and diverse, end-users expect faster, more flawless delivery than ever before. With over 50 CDN nodes within ASEAN alone, TM CDN has comprehensive built-in capabilities to solve delivery challenges, including content protection and asset optimisation, as well as robust customisation tools and features to fine-tune delivery details and even create unique functionality and flows. TM CDN solutions ensure top-notch reliability and speed for your content while keeping operating costs and complexity to a minimum.

If you're ready to partner with a top-tier CDN provider, check out TM CDN and our integrated telco services portfolio. And learn how TM CDN can play a major role in deciding the success of your web applications and websites.

 

When you consider embracing global ethernet services, what comes to mind? Is it saving money on staff and hardware costs? Or is it more about access to a global market and the ability to scale as needed? Perhaps there's a little of both. Regardless of why you're considering global ethernet services, you need to do your research first. Here are some things that need to be considered before making the leap.

 

Between 2019 and last year, the global internet capacity grew by 35%. IoT, Cloud, Mobility, and other high-growth applications are also constantly evolving, making access to information and data more important than ever before. Today’s enterprises require a network that can keep up with the demands of this new digital age. To meet these needs, it is vital for businesses, small or large, to choose a global ethernet service provider that is ready to provide the reliable high-speed connectivity they need wherever their users are located.

Ethernet services powered by a private global Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (EoMPLS)/Layer 2 network is a secure and reliable way to connect geographically dispersed locations over the public Internet. It provides organisations with a communication network that is completely dependable, fast, flexible, and cost-effective. Global ethernet can provide scalable and fast transport for data, voice, and video traffic across all major industries: energy, financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and government.

It is evident that ethernet services are one of the most important parts of a business’s network. So when you choose a global ethernet service provider, it's really important to make sure they can provide you with enough bandwidth, high-quality care and support, fast speeds, and fair prices. There are many different things to consider when choosing an ethernet services provider. TM WHOLESALE, a premier communication solutions and services company in the ASEAN region, lists the five key criteria you need to consider.

Network Coverage and Reach

Network coverage is the lifeblood of any organisation. Whether it's a major corporation or a small business, connecting and sharing information with all parts of an organisation irrespective of the location is vital for success. This includes employees as well as customers, vendors, and partners. So if you are looking forward to building your enterprise network or want to expand your existing network to meet the demands of your business, check the network coverage offered by the service provider. Do all of your desired locations fall under the network carrier’s footprint, and can they offer international coverage? The reach and coverage of the service provider will directly impact issues such as latency, jitter, resilience, and cost.

Network Project Management and Monitoring

Network engineers and managers face many challenges every day. One of the most daunting of these is managing large networks, especially those with multi-site or international elements. Complex networks require constant maintenance to run smoothly. Proactive management can result in reduced costs and downtimes, as well as enhanced security. Businesses need to understand the details of pricing and the scope of services offered under this category before signing on with a network management company; do they monitor the entire network? Can they provide managed services, freeing up internal IT staff?

Complete Network Security

The pandemic has amplified the cybersecurity fears of Singapore leaders. According to an IBM Institute of Business Value report, 77% of Singapore executives plan to prioritise cybersecurity over the next two years.

All the devices of your business are connected to each other in one way or another, which means they're all vulnerable to security breaches. Whether it's a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or wired computer, network security is an important issue that you must always be aware of in order to keep your data safe. A weak connection can allow hackers in and compromise your sensitive information. Businesses need to review the security capabilities of their global ethernet service providers closely. For example, businesses should ensure that their service provider has access to a dedicated security infrastructure to support and monitor the network. Security experts are necessary for monitoring and maintaining uptime to guarantee that the business’s data remains secure.

Compare SLAs and Check References

Another way to evaluate the capabilities of a service provider is to check the SLAs (Service Level Agreements) offered. According to TM WHOLESALE, a well-written SLA sets the expectations right from the onset - what services will be provided and under what circumstances. They also provide a framework for how any problems or issues will be handled and resolved if they arise. Most established providers in the market will offer SLAs. If they have been around long enough to have a proven track record, most providers will be willing to back their services with an SLA. It is worth comparing service level agreements of several network providers to get the best deal. You can also look at their existing clients and check references from those to evaluate their performance.

Class of Service and Quality of Service

Companies must evaluate and understand the Classes of Service (CoS) offered by the carrier. The way a carrier consolidates and prioritises various types of traffic will affect Quality of Service (QoS). It is important that these CoSs match your business requirements, and the contract with the service provider clearly defines and states these service commitments.

 

While the points mentioned above form a base to shortlist a good global ethernet services provider, other considerations should be made. The routing protocols used by the provider, staff expertise, partnerships with 3rd parties, and future scalability capabilities all must be taken into account when choosing a provider.

It’s easy to make decisions centered only on the bottom line. However, you need to consider your business’s needs and goals and how those needs will change in the future. After all, your global ethernet will form the backbone of your business for a long time to come.

TM WHOLESALE is a leading global provider of connectivity, data, infrastructure, voice, and multimedia services. Learn how TM WHOLESALE’s communications and connectivity solutions help organisations take an integrated approach to adapting and accelerating their digital transformation initiatives.

For more info about TM WHOLESALE’s Global Ethernet, click here

EVP TM Wholesale, Amar Huzaimi Md Deris was invited to speak on APAC's Next Network Hub on September 9, 2022, at Equinix's Asia Peering Forum, representing TM alongside other APAC telco leaders from Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

In response to the discussion on Singapore's current space/power limitations and DC moratorium, among others, Amar emphasized how TM is prepared to attend to the global requirements for network and connectivity into APAC and ASEAN specifically, leveraging extensive infrastructure.

“Malaysia is already well-established within the global submarine cable network. For TM, which strives to be the nation’s preferred network infrastructure provider, we possesses 30 submarine cables with reachability and extensive regional coverage spanning over 320,000 kilometres, from Malaysia to Intra-ASEAN, to the Indian and Pacific Oceans. This is also in line with our aspiration to position Malaysia as a digital hub. Hence we believe that we are the ideal service provider upon whom you can trust to deliver reliable, diversified and uninterrupted global connectivity solutions.”

IP Transit services and internet exchanges (IX) are changing the way we communicate every day. They are opening up new opportunities for organisations to expand their reach, enhance customer experience, and increase profitability. Find out how IP Transit and IX are redefining business across the world. 

 

We are increasingly living in a connected world. The power of connectivity, brought about by the Internet, touches every fabric of our businesses and our lives so seamlessly that we no longer remember how the world existed so long without it. Today, it is the oxygen on which our economies, society, governance, and businesses run.

This became more evident when the COVID-19 pandemic hit us and brought the entire planet to a standstill.

But as they say, the show must go on. And, thanks to the Internet, it did.

It was, at a difficult time such as the pandemic, that we began to recognize the real significance of the Internet. Without the Internet, there would have been no semblance of business-as-usual. Without the Internet, work-from-home would have remained a distant dream. And without the Internet, businesses would have had to shut their doors and bid farewell to productivity, revenue, and profitability—even their existence.

But just the Internet was not going to cut it. Two forces came together to ensure businesses thrive in the new normal: IP Transit and Internet Exchanges (IX).

IP Transit is a service where an ISP allows traffic to pass through its network to reach the rest of the Internet—or its final destination. In order to access all Internet routes, businesses need to connect to all the autonomous systems out there. They need to avail the services of an ISP who has access to reach any network on the Internet.

At an Internet Exchange or IX, networks connect and exchange traffic, as the name suggests. It is a physical network access point through which primary network providers connect their networks and exchange traffic. The primary aim of an IX is to keep local Internet traffic within a confined area, improve the quality of service, and cut costs. Simply put, an IX offers a neutral local network where any carrier, ISP or network operator can connect and exchange traffic.

Let’s look at how IP Transit and IX empower businesses with a host of advantages.
 

The Benefits of IP Transit and Internet Exchanges

IP Transit and IX provide several and far-reaching benefits for businesses and wholesale companies.

With IP Transit, businesses like yours, can build an international digital footprint and establish a robust digital connection with customers, partners, and investors across the world. IP Transit services also enable global reachability, provide consistent digital experience, optimise network efficiency, enhance customer experience, and improve network performance.

They provide businesses with the ability to expand their service portfolio and reach new markets. They offer superior peering services that reduce the number of hops, enabling businesses with faster bandwidth.

Take for instance why minimising hops is crucial for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telco carriers. Today, ISPs, and telco carriers are constantly thriving to meet the changing needs of businesses through extensive coverage, guaranteed performance and operational efficiency. IP Transit and IX  interconnect eyeball networks with minimal hops, provide access to an extensive number of direct connections and the global routing table.

IP Transit and IX, enable route optimisation and high-performance networking and empower businesses with the necessary throughput for critical business transactions. The availability, flexibility and scalability of IP Transit services and IX allow businesses to bring new applications to market quickly and cost-effectively.

Gateway to the World: IP Transit

TM Wholesale, offers IP Transit services with Clean Pipe, Direct Peering, single ASN, and Tier 1 capabilities. TM has the largest Internet subscriber base in Malaysia, and is one of the biggest regional ISPs. TM owns close to 30 submarine cables spanning over 300,000 km worldwide. It offers extensive global connectivity with other Tier 1 providers and direct peering with major content providers and OTTs. Recently, TM Wholesale added 2 new PoPs in East Malaysia.

What’s more? TM IP Transit delivers a complete carrier-class security portfolio and time-critical performance through a dedicated security monitoring portal. It also enables visibility and real-time performance reporting of IP Transit services with 24/7 customer support. It offers SLAs with KPIs of high quality, customer satisfaction, packet delivery, and IP port availability.

With TM IP Transit you can extend reachability with peering relationships with other global Tier-1 ISPs to ensure short-hop connectivity to global content. TM IP Transit is one of the biggest Regional Tier 1 ISPs in Asia.

Connecting Malaysia & ASEAN : TMiX

TMiX is the newest regional Internet exchange in Malaysia. It delivers unmatched performance and experience allowing businesses to grow and extend access to the Malaysian market and beyond, while ensuring the highest levels of customer experience and cost efficiency.

It is an open and neutral platform established to help Malaysia-based providers, international carriers, content providers, OTTs, and hyperscalers peer and physically connect to an IX point in Malaysia. TMiX ensures domestic traffic does not have to take indirect international routes, making it more cost-effective for users.

TMiX is designed as single Point of Interconnect (POI), via TM AS4788, to reach extensively into Malaysia. With a total strength of 62 nodes—TMiX ensures high-performing connectivity across Malaysia. It poses a significant cost benefit for smaller ISPs by reducing the dependency on costly international links. This translates into cost efficiency for TMiX customers.

Today, as more businesses like yours, gear up for digital transformation—to enhance customer experience, enable competitive differentiation and innovation, and achieve profitability by adopting new technologies—IP Transit and IX will play a significant role in breaking connectivity barriers and opening up a world of opportunities.

 

Collaboration signifies TM’s commitment to expand cloud gaming in the ASEAN region, leveraging Radian Arc’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Edge Point of Presence

 

TM Wholesale, the domestic and international wholesale business arm of Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM), today announced a partnership with cloud infrastructure provider Radian Arc to expand its cloud gaming offerings in Malaysia and other ASEAN countries. 

The collaboration will see both parties leveraging each other’s strengths to provide users with high-quality content and cloud-gaming experiences.  

Through this partnership, both companies will collaborate to deploy a new point of presence (PoP) in Malaysia, utilising Radian Arc’s proprietary GPU Edge technology. This PoP will enhance TM Wholesale’s cloud-based gaming solutions as well as other real-time applications that use similar technology.  

The availability of this robust platform ensures that these central processing units (CPUs) can provide relevant applications at a lower cost to serve.

Following the rollout of the cloud gaming platform, TM Wholesale and Radian Arc intend to make an array of cloud-based applications, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IOT) accessible to users in order to accelerate digital transformation and adoption, which is pivotal to Malaysia's digital aspirations. 

Radian Arc is also partnering with cloud gaming platform Blacknut to bring their games catalogue to the region, reinforcing TM Wholesale’s vision of providing better cloud gaming solutions. Through this partnership, TM Wholesale will be able to offer over 500 family-friendly premium games to service providers, with lower latency and faster start times for their customers. 

Commenting on the collaboration, Amar Huzaimi Md Deris, Executive Vice President of TM Wholesale said, “TM Wholesale has always been committed to promoting Malaysia's transition to an advanced digital economy, and given the meteoric rise of cloud gaming, we’ve shifted gears to put this into a higher drive.

“Our collaboration with Radian Arc is among our efforts to fulfil the demands of the gaming industry, while exploring opportunities in other emerging technologies such as cloud and edge computing, and ensure customers enjoy high-quality digital experiences. 

“This is in line with our aspiration to position Malaysia as a regional digital hub and expand our reach via edge computing platforms to provide better user experience for next-generation applications and games,” he added. 

“As we continue to expand access to cloud gaming around the world, we want to find partners who can elevate our service offerings to telcos and improve the gaming experiences we provide to players,” said David Cook, CEO of Radian Arc. “The collaboration will also look into possibilities for future applications leveraging TM’s extensive network coverage, allowing us and Blacknut to improve the quality of cloud gaming for customers in Malaysia and the surrounding regions.”

The collaboration with Radian Arc symbolizes a new era of gaming for TM, harnessing the benefits of GPU Edge technology to deliver high-quality digital experiences to end users.
 

TM Wholesale returned to Atlanta for International Telecoms Week 2022 (ITW), led by Executive Vice President Amar Huzaimi Md Deris.
 
During the event, which took place from May 9 to May 12, 2022, TM Wholesale promoted key products such as TM Edge Services, Data solutions including IP Transit, and Global SD-WAN via a virtual exhibition booth in addition to having dedicated physical meeting rooms to discuss voice and connectivity solutions with customers.
 
Taking advantage of ITW as one of the world's largest gatherings of communications executives from all sectors of the global communications industry, TM delegates, comprised of TM Wholesale's management, products, and sales team, as well as the team from TM's regional office in the United States, have the opportunity to engage with carriers and operators from new markets.
 

TM Wholesale attended AsiaTech x Singapore 2022 for CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia from June 1 to 3, 2022, to meet with the APAC media community and discuss the recent trends in the  broadcast industry, content, production, as well as eSport, gaming and investments.

TM Wholesale delegates led by EVP Amar Huzaimi Md Deris and TM regional office in Singapore were able to attract a crowd to the booth set up to promote TM Wholesale’s edge services that includes CDN and gaming solutions.   

SD WAN is taking the enterprise by storm. Read on to find the easiest explanation of what SD WAN is, the challenges it solves, and discover the speed and intensity of its growth.

Driven largely by increased digitalisation and raised by the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) wave, SD WAN has garnered a lot of attention in the last few quarters. This is an excellent trend because the technology solves a lot of critical problems organisations face, especially for fast-growing, global companies.

Unfortunately, there is still plenty of mystery around the technology. Despite gaining popularity in 2014 (the technology has been around since 2000), there’s a sizeable pocket of business, and technology leaders and practitioners who are less-than-comfortable articulating its definition, and its benefits to the enterprise.

In fact, a lack of knowledge is the second biggest barrier to SD WAN adoption, according to The Global State of the WAN Report, with 33% of organisations reporting it as a challenge. Another 30% say the “technology’s newness” is a hurdle to adoption.

 

                                                                                                                                    Source: The Global State of the WAN Report

 

It is time to clear up these doubts!

Read on and by the end, you will be able to describe what SD WAN is, explain it to your colleagues, list out its key benefits, demonstrate why—and how much—it is being adopted.

 

SD WAN: The Simplest Explanation You Will Find Anywhere

Imagine you oversee the travel desk for your office. Everyone depends on you to get them from your office in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia to a regional office in Bangkok, Thailand. There are a couple of ways to move people:

● By air (planes)

● By sea (ship)

● By rail

● Or by road

 

In the SD WAN world, these are called the transport layer, or the underlay (remember those words, we will come back to them). It is the medium on which data travels.

It is important for you to move people cost-effectively, safely, and reliably. To do so you must choose the most optimal route and transport medium based on different types of employees.

Network engineers have a similar challenge. Not all traffic on a wide area network (WAN) is equal. For example, some mission-critical systems require high uptime, while Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) traffic requires a high level of service quality. Network leaders must decide which is the best transport layer to use, based on traffic type, to have the highest cost-effectiveness, security, and performance, for different types of traffic.

Network operations teams also have to move data between more points—not just between KL and Bangkok. On a WAN, they are steering traffic between hundreds of points, using multiple types of transport layers. To do so effectively, they use rules or policies.

But rules need to be changed flexibly because of the exigencies of the real world: Some traffic suddenly needs to prioritised, or a transport layer goes down, for example.

So, network operators need to be agile. This is where SD WANs come in. With SD WAN technology, they can use software to centrally control routers and other equipment which helps them steer traffic, centrally, sitting in one place.

How is this possible? SD WAN introduces a software layer, called the overlay, on top of the underlay. The overlay enables network teams to manage WANs using a central, software-based orchestrator—eliminating the need to provision or program each network device separately (which is why you might have heard of the concept of zero-provisioning.) The overlay and orchestrator are where the idea of abstraction comes in: Network teams are abstracted from the worries of managing the physical elements of a network.

Now from a central location, using a software console, network teams can set up policies that shunt traffic easily, immaterial of the transport layer, which is what the term transport-agnostic means. SD WANs are also application-aware, i.e., they can recognise different types of traffic and prioritise one over the other, intelligently.

 

The Goodness of SD WAN

As you can tell, there are a ton of benefits from using an SD WAN—especially when you compare them to the more rigid, more expensive Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology that dominates WAN architectures. Implemented correctly, SD WAN offers greater visibility, agility, security, performance, and intelligence than MPLS. Additionally, MPLS is less-suited for the dynamic traffic patterns that arise with the adoption of cloud services. While there is research proving that SD WANs are being adopted at the cost of MPLS, many large enterprises leverage SD WAN to augment existing MPLS set-ups.

SD WAN’s agility and efficiency benefits really begin to multiply when you run a complex, global business that must stitch together hundreds of offices, warehouses, outlets, factories, data centers, and cloud platforms—across many countries. Especially when each country or region offers different types of connectivity, at different price points, at different levels of reliability and security.

Take, for example, a large conglomerate headquartered in Singapore but with regional offices in all the capitals of Asia and Europe, factories in Malaysia and Germany, and retail outlets that run in the hundreds. Introducing new nodes or applying network and security policies—granularly—across such a vast network is arduous, without the automation and the central orchestration that SD WAN makes possible. Transporting data quickly and reliably over long distances, too, is a challenge without the dependability SD WAN offers combined with sturdy connectivity backbone.

It is important to note that not all SD WAN solutions are built equal. For Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM), the SD WAN offering that is provided by its global and wholesale business arm, TM WHOLESALE, for example, is especially useful for enterprises with a widespread, multi-geo footprint thanks to its global connectivity. The service offers extensive coverage (over 190 countries!), supports various network topologies (hub-spoke, full mesh, partial mesh), and deployment models (do-it-yourself, co-managed, and fully managed.)

Plus, TM WHOLESALE overlays additional services—including an enhanced security suite which includes firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), URL-filtering and cloud security, among others—and advanced analytics that uncovers insights to improve SD WAN management and network outcomes.

SD WANs, in general, result in better application performance, improved cost control, enhanced flexibility and security, and greater resilience, among several other benefits. (More on this in a future article, 13 Reasons Why: Your Business Needs to Invest in SD WAN. CTA: Inform Me When It’s Out clicking opens mailbox, pre-populated with sales email to start conversation)

This explains the impressive growth of the SD WAN market. Analyst firm, Futuriom, predicts the SD-WAN market will grow at 34% CAGR and touch $4.6 billion by 2023. An IDC pegged

SD WAN’s market size even higher—at $5.25 billion by 2023. And according to the market research firm, Dell’Oro Group, in the first two quarters of 2021, the global SD-WAN market grew 39% over to the last year.

If you have not started on your SD WAN journey, it is critical to start now. Organisations that delay compound the risk of being left behind in an increasingly digital, cloud-first world. The first step is to create a strategy. If that seems like a big ask, do not worry. TM WHOLESALE has professional services experts who will hold your hand every step of the way, starting with an assessment of your needs based on your unique business environment, and then consult and design an SD WAN architecture tailored to your business.