tw telecom Dials Up Enterprise Ethernet

CEN Feature (Aug 16 2012) Access , Business Ethernet , Managed Data Services

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   How much bandwidth does an enterprise really need? The definitive answer is, it depends, which is the point behind tw telecom’s new Dynamic Capacity service.

   Launched August 6 in all of tw telecom’s 75 markets, Dynamic Capacity lets enterprise customers scale up their E-line business Ethernet bandwidth and capacity to meet their short-term needs. For example, a mortgage processer with a couple dozen offices might dial up its bandwidth and capacity for a few days each month when it needs to upload large amounts of scanned paperwork.

   Small businesses also are potential Dynamic Capacity users, as tw telecom found when talking with a law firm that was interested in using the service during its Partners conference

   “They said, ‘It would be nice to have this capability for the week that we’re in Washington, DC,’” says Mike Rouleau, tw telecom senior vice president for Business Development and Strategy. “Another customer was establishing a disaster-recovery site, and for that first month, they expected to need twice the capacity as they establish servers and infrastructure.”

   Dynamic Capacity also aims to leverage changes in the way enterprises, government agencies and other organizations do business. A prime example is cloud computing, which organizations like because they can scale up quickly and cost-effectively rather than having a lot of expensive infrastructure lying fallow most of the time. In that sense, the arrival of bandwidth-on-demand (BoD) services, such as Dynamic Capacity, was just a matter of time.

   “The way that people buy and consume bandwidth is changing,” Rouleau says. “It’s a perfect storm of market demand, our unique capabilities and the Ethernet infrastructure that allows us to do this.”

   One difference between Dynamic Capacity and other BoD services – virtually all of which are IP rather than Ethernet – is how quickly customers can dial up. Because the changes in the network are all handled without manual intervention, the process takes seconds and doesn’t disrupt service. The SLAs and other aspects of a customer’s regular service still apply when it uses Dynamic Capacity.

   “We can deliver that bandwidth to customers in a matter of seconds because it’s flow through,” Rouleau says. “We do inventory management. We do capacity checks. We provision the network elements. We establish a billing record. All of that gets done automatically.”

   Dynamic Capacity is an opportunity to try before you buy, so it could help tw telecom upsell existing customers that get hooked on the temporarily faster speeds and then don’t want to scale back down. Although customers can dial up and stay there indefinitely, it’s unlikely that they will because the additional capacity and bandwidth are priced at a premium.

   “You get a much better deal by signing up for the sustained rate,” Rouleau says.

   tw telecom customers access Dynamic Capacity through their existing MyPortal interface, where they also can track how much of the additional bandwidth and capacity they’re actually using. Additionally, tw telecom plans to add APIs that will let applications tell the network when they need higher speeds. 

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