Enable High-performance Network Coverage in Europe & MENA
As host for this two-hour event GVF introduced welcoming remarks and a keynote address from Intelsat, following which three expert panellists contributed to the moderated discussion, Enterprise Networking: Meeting the Challenges of Growing Complexity, Expanding Needs.
The foundation perspective of this 60-minute dialogue is that hyper-connectivity is now a global phenomenon. Enterprises worldwide are increasingly dependent upon reliable access to information, applications, secure networks, and productivity tools. Enterprise networking, via turnkey managed services or wholesale capacity-only options, provides enables businesses to seize emerging opportunities, accelerate decision-making, and bring more value to customers. This expert panel, with representatives of Algeria Telecom Satellite, Media Broadcast Satellite, and Orange Business Services, explored innovations that are transforming satellite solutions, supporting enterprise applications and services securely, reliably, and cost-effectively, and as a starting point considered if there particular vertical markets across EMENA for which the role of satellite in advancing solutions to the challenges of growing complexity and expanding needs in enterprise networking is of particular and growing importance. Further questioning examined the most important and complementary advances in the space segment and ground segment contributing to advancing satellite solutions for enterprises across EMENA, and how enterprise sector digital transformation will secure the long-term sustainability of the enterprise VSAT market. Other questions covered changes in the enterprise solutions marketplace arising from the dramatically reduced cost of bandwidth and dramatically increased capacity of high throughput satellites, and the degree to which this trend is altering the enterprise network solutions equation in satellite’s favour, including when MNOs consider what role satellites should play in their networks. Panellists gave their views on how optimisation of cloud networks with satellite-enable SD-WAN will progress in the longer term and referenced again advances in space and ground segment with their expectations of future innovation.
Following the panel discussion Intelsat representatives joined GVF in a Fireside Chat on Addressing Market Needs: Supporting Enterprise Network Applications Requirements, focusing on the pillars of “Connect, Expand & Protect”.
Twenty-minutes of informal discussion encompassed various themes, initially looking at key business continuity issues in today’s enterprise networking solutions market across EMENA, and how satellite is well positioned to meet the challenges involved. Discussion then turned to SD-WAN, covering:
- How software-enabled and software-defined services drive interoperability standards which can bring together satellite, terrestrial and wireless solutions across the telecom and networking environment, simplifying services for enterprise.
- The SD-WAN decoupling of networking hardware from its control mechanism, simplifying operation and management of a wide area network by solving challenges related to latency, packet loss, bandwidth limitations, and network congestion and how satellite adds to these advantages.
- How the well-established advantages of SD-WAN (bundling and routing network traffic intelligently and securely across a combination of available wide area network access connections ranging across satellite and terrestrial) manifests itself across the different market verticals across Middle East, and North Africa.
- How the pairing of satellite-based services with SD-WAN creates solutions which bring additional value for enterprises over and above the simplification of networks implementation and management brought by non-paired strategies.
An audience Q&A session and closing remarks from Intelsat brought the session to its “live” close. However, if you missed it, you haven’t missed out because a recording of the entire webinar will soon be available here in English and French.