Four reasons why Kordia’s Intelligent WAN supports superior connectivity in digitally driven work environments

The way businesses operate has shifted dramatically over the past few years. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit and New Zealand went into lockdown, businesses that had already undergone considerable transformation could easily manage this new way of working or, where necessary, reconfigure their networks to let employees work securely from home. Additional capacity could be added, access to company platforms and data was easy, and teams were able to adapt and change.

Whether your business was already digitally enabled, or went through rapid transformation to cope with lockdowns, most organisations now have some form of hybrid working in place.

The shift to cloud-based, hybrid work

For most businesses, applications and data that once sat in server rooms are now cloud-based and consumed as services. Online meetings rely on the cloud, as do email and document management, and a wide range of business applications. As a result, connectivity is more important than it has ever been; poor connections to cloud-hosted services can negatively impact productivity, efficiency, and customer experiences. At the same time, customer expectations are higher than ever, and any latency or delays are immediately viewed as poor customer service in the transformed world.

The modern mobility-enabled, cloud-based working world offers unprecedented flexibility to access applications and data from anywhere, but it’s not without its challenges. We have moved into an entirely new way of working where connectivity is crucial across a distributed network with no perimeter, and multiple devices are connecting from anywhere, at any time.

In a hybrid working world, many employees work from hot desks and rely on superior Wi-Fi connections that let them transition from their home to their office desk, meeting rooms to customer offices. They need flexibility without losing connectivity, as well as always-on access to business-critical applications.

Importance of security and consistency

For leadership teams, ensuring a consistent service experience is matched in criticality only by the importance of security controls across the organisation, network, and devices to support a truly hybrid work environment.

As a business that has spent years perfecting how to build and implement secure network infrastructure in challenging areas—such as ports, warehouses, and factories—the shift to hybrid and cloud-based ways of working was a natural extension of the solutions Kordia has already been implementing. Ultimately, the only way for organisations to ensure superior connectivity and security across their networks, cloud platforms, and devices is through managed, secure and highly reliable security infrastructure consisting of managed security with software defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) as well as secure switching and Wi-Fi. We call this Kordia’s Intelligent WAN.

There are four key reasons why organisations should consider Kordia’s Intelligent WAN solution:

1. Security

Kordia’s Intelligent WAN is based on Fortinet technology. This means it delivers both security and SD-WAN connectivity in a single solution, as well as secure switching and Wi-Fi options all managed from a single pane of glass. The solution leverages in-built mechanisms to ensure you always get the best possible connectivity performance, and is managed and monitored 24/7, 365 days a year from the Kordia Network Operations Centre (NOC).  

2. Superior Connectivity

Utilising Kordia Intelligent WAN helps ensure you get ‘best-connected’ connectivity, enhanced reliability, and world-leading security. In addition, SD-WAN automatically measures critical metrics against a service level agreement (SLA), such as latency, jitter and packet-loss, to ensure link performance. If any SLA failures are detected, traffic is immediately rerouted through application steering and failovers. For example, Kordia’s Intelligent WAN solution constantly monitors all available connections and, if one is better, it will automatically and seamlessly shift critical traffic for the best experience and performance. 

3. Agility

As a software-defined service, SD-WAN is designed to quickly adapt to any changes in business, network, and security environments. Through proactive monitoring, real-time visibility, detailed logging and reporting, collaboration tools, and a 24/7 managed services partner like Kordia, these changes can be implemented quickly and seamlessly when required.  

4. Focus on New Zealand operating environment

New Zealand-based businesses require solutions that understand the unique operating conditions of local organisations. As a home-grown New Zealand business, Kordia has been delivering connectivity solutions that fit local needs for decades.

Security first, always

While security is a key feature of SD-WAN, it’s worth highlighting how foundational this aspect is in Kordia’s Intelligent WAN solution, and why Kordia has partnered with Fortinet to deliver it.

When a business connects to the internet, it needs to be secure. You wouldn’t connect to the cloud and just forget about security. As a Fortinet managed security services provider (MSSP) Advanced Partner, Kordia has always led with a security-first mindset. Fortinet is trusted, proven, and recognised as a global leader for security innovation and functionality. Fortinet’s comprehensive, granular features and processing power are key differentiators that align with our own business proposition of de-risking all client operations and ensuring highly reliable network connectivity, security, and business continuity.

To get the right solution for your business, work with a trusted managed service provider (MSP) that offers a complete connectivity solution, including secure switching and Wi-Fi, and managed security monitored nationwide 24/7, 365 days a year.