In this captivating age of technological advancement and digital disruption, the telecom industry has experienced a vast shift. There’s no denying the fact that with digital transformation the world of connectivity has also seen newer avenues and promises of greater connectivity.
ngena GmbH is an alliance of leading international telecom companies headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany. An end-to-end service provider of Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN), ngena (Next Generation Enterprise Network Alliance) offers services to enterprise customers on a global scale with help of its alliance partners. Originally founded by Deutsche Telekom, Century Link, Reliance Jio and SK Telecom in early 2016, the alliance has achieved a tremendous growth with major inclusions like A1, Altice with SFR and Portugal Telecom, Expereo, KPN, MTN, Neutrona, Starhub, Telus, PCCW Global and VEON along with technology partners Cisco, Comarch and Equinix.
The Visionary Leader:
Marcus Hacke, the founder and Managing Director of ngena is a Doctorate in Physics, who holds an in-depth knowledge of the telecom industry. The initial idea behind the alliance was devised by Marcus, which was initially implemented with a small team of Deutsche Telekom and Cisco and now is pushed forward by ngena and a strong ecosystem of partners. One of the many challenges he had to face during the initial stage of setting up the company was the rising demand of more agility and flexibility in global enterprise networks.
Marcus’s dynamic vision solved the entrepreneurial challenges the organization had to face in its initial days. His amazing leadership skills became the stepping stone for the success of ngena. The brilliant leader made the journey of the company swifter and easier than ever by taking some conceptual measures like;
- Formation of a strong global alliance of leading telecommunication providers by means of a sharing economy model,
- Connecting their regional networks to one Software-Defined Wide Area Network,
- Use of end-to-end automated service orchestration to provide hybrid VPNs for enterprises and
- Invention of a central cloud portal supporting all business and operational processes.
Outstanding Contribution of ngena to the Digitized Business:
Enterprises of this digital era need new and advanced network connectivity to cope with the increasing data flow.
The traditional Wide Area Networks (WANs) are built using private networks, which are very time-consuming, and quite costly. If we think of the worst, these traditional WANs are not enough adaptable and flexible to go with the global digital business standard. To console these requirements of global business, ngena has used a very powerful and adaptable approach known as Software-Defined Networking (SDN). SDN uses a series of data networking protocols, tools, interfaces and controls to enable more advanced, programmable and flexible networking. All the systems in ngena are developed by an agile “DevOps” approach. This approach aims at shortening development cycles, increasing deployment frequency, and building more dependable releases.
When deployed over a WAN, an SDN becomes SD-WAN. SD-WANs can be quickly and easily configured, automated and managed using a service provider’s centralized, usually cloud-based and adaptable software platforms. SD-WANs enable rapid network provisioning, and agile adaptability of network capabilities at much lower cost than with traditional network management approaches. With SD-WANs, global network updates and security management can be automatically delivered, remotely customized and reconfigured via the cloud. ngena has developed and implemented all needed IT tools and workflows to ensure end-to-end automation of service provisioning as well as service assurance. With the alliance approach, ngena becomes able to deliver services in a more consistent manner globally and locally at the same time.
Winning Over the Obstacles:
If you do something really new or create something that has never been imagined before, you must be ready for the complexity and challenges in the path of achieving it.
Marcus, the founder of the company was aware of the challenges and barriers in the starting phase of the new and unconventional venture.
The SDN technology, being such a new endeavor with its innovative and potential features, the initiators focused on the huge opportunities ahead, rather than the challenges. The company believes in overcoming any challenges in the way to deliver its services in a better way.
“You’ll always have to believe that it can be done in a smarter and faster way to achieve more success. This is what drives you.” says Marcus.
Distinguishing Factors of ngena:
The Frankfurt based company helps enterprises with the benefits of consistent data connectivity services, integrating all the alliance partners’ networks into a global Software-Defined Network. Using the state-of-the-art cloud and virtualization technologies from the strategic technology partner Cisco-Viptela, ngena provides end-to-end managed SD-WANs to around 200 countries worldwide.
The combination of the innovative SDN technology with the strength of the alliance’s operating model and ecosystem not only provides alliance members’ enterprise customers access to secure, stable, scalable and easy-to-use global corporate networks, but also high-quality, local customer services.
The Way Ahead:
The visionary leader of ngena wants to build a bright future for the company by inventing and developing more relevant and reliable solutions for the global telecom industry. He wants to achieve the goal by constantly improving the systems by adopting the latest wonders of the digital world, making the services more attractive and adaptable than they already are, and adding new services to the ngena platform and thus helping business customers to cope with their connectivity and communication challenges.
Source :- The 10 Most Innovative Telecom Solution Providers 2018
