High-performance broadband: Masergy’s Performance Edge™ transforms public internet transport

We all know the old adage about the “unattainable triangle,” which says it’s impossible to get high quality, fast speed, and low cost all at the same time. But what if I told you that Masergy is turning that rule on its head? It’s true. Today, Masergy released Performance EdgeTM, a new patent-pending innovation that makes affordable public broadband connections perform like the most expensive ones do — delivering services more like private Ethernet connections. It’s a bit like buying a basic (gas-powered) car and driving away in a supercharged Tesla.

Much like Masergy’s software-defined network changed the game for middle-mile connectivity, our latest innovation is the missing piece because it addresses performance for the last mile. As a new capability of our SD-WAN and SASE solutions, Performance Edge is a performance-boosting technology that minimizes packet loss on public internet links, this way IT leaders get an enriched broadband experience with more service predictability at a low cost. Just deploy SD-WAN with broadband at any location and get performance similar to a private line. You can even boost performance on your existing broadband connections.

This new breakthrough is perfect for businesses of all sizes needing to stretch their IT budgets while still achieving an always-on network. It’s also great for IT leaders looking for cost-effective yet high-performance services in locations where a private Ethernet circuit is either too expensive or completely unavailable. We’re hearing from our clients that Performance Edge is giving them a newfound confidence with SD-WAN broadband, as it gives them the ability to deliver a superior application experience for users working from home — all with the cost advantages of consumer broadband. Best of all, Performance Edge requires no commitment! Here’s are a few more benefits:

• Better Performance: Minimize packet loss over public broadband connections for more predictable application experiences
• Less Expensive: Save up to 70% compared to the cost of a private line and reduce outages using AI-powered performance visibility via Masergy AIOps
• Fast to Install: Connect new sites in days versus weeks and boost existing broadband circuits for immediate results

Learn more about Masergy Performance Edge

Throw out everything you knew about broadband

To appreciate why Performance Edge is so groundbreaking, it helps to understand the dynamics that have dominated the IT arena for decades. Here’s why it’s time for you to throw out everything you thought you knew about broadband.

Reliable service has always come at the highest cost — that is until now

Every IT professional knows that private Ethernet circuits come with the highest cost but are highly reliable, meanwhile broadband and public internet connectivity is inexpensive but very unreliable. These realities have governed SD-WAN connectivity design and dictated IT spend for years.

Performance Edge is revolutionary, because it essentially throws out the old definition that broadband is the low-cost, low-performance access option. What used to be called “best effort access” can now be called reliable, predictable and even “best performance.” This is mind blowing for most IT professionals! The “new rules” of Performance Edge turn everything upside down.

Broadband’s problematic tradeoffs disappear

In 2017, SD-WAN came on the market, giving IT leaders a new freedom to easily diversify their network access methodologies. Many companies added broadband or mixed and matched both private and public connectivity to reduce costs. But those benefits often came at the sacrifice of service quality and the user experience. Broadband is considered unpredictable in nature and can result in unexpected downtimes. As a result, many IT leaders have been forced to exchange cost savings for a downgrade in application performance.

A recent study reveals just how unsatisfied SD-WAN users are with broadband. Results from the Altman Solon 2021 State of SD-WAN Study show that when companies only use public access methodologies 50% say their application performance is insufficient, and 48% say the cost savings don’t justify the lower quality of service. That helps explain why more IT leaders are steering away from using a public-only strategy for connectivity and leaning into hybrid strategies that mix public and private access to better balance the pros and cons–striking a balance between cost savings and application availability. Until Performance Edge came along, hybrid access was the only way to manage these savings-for-performance tradeoffs, but today IT leaders have a better way to recognize the benefits of SD-WAN broadband.

Now, the door will open for many IT leaders who haven’t been able to take full advantage of broadband because their business requirements wouldn’t allow them to accept the risks of downtime. It’s time for IT leaders to reconsider their SD-WAN connectivity under the new realities of Performance Edge. After all, we can now look at broadband in a whole new way.

Broadband may never be reliable enough, so Masergy tackled the problem

Sure, the public internet has made strides over the past two decades; availability has improved from 90% to 95% and today even 99%. But 7 hours of downtime every month or 3.65 days of downtime per year is still not acceptable for many of today’s global companies that operate around the clock. Will broadband, on its own, ever be able to satisfy today’s business expectations? I am not sure, but it’s safe to say it won’t happen soon. What I do know is that many IT executives and corporate operations are largely risk averse. Minimizing the broadband packet loss essentially de-risks the most affordable access methodology, and that’s an invention worthy of a gold medal. Performance Edge will undoubtedly whet the appetite of IT leaders at companies large and small and across every industry.

Performance Edge is nothing short of revolutionary. The internet has made a lot of cheap bits widely available. It was only a matter of making them perform for the business market. Masergy has done that. Instead of sitting on our heels and waiting for the big carriers to perfect broadband, we’ve invented the optimization ourselves. Considering that we pioneered software-defined networking 20 years ago, we were the first to market with AIOps integrated in our SD-WAN and SASE solutions, and we’re already on the path to autonomous networking, I would say there’s no better company to revolutionize the public internet, making it the high-performance, predictable service everyone wants it to be.

Learn more about Masergy Performance Edge