A high-stakes challenge tests business network flexibility

In 2020, the pandemic put networks across the country to the test. Forced to quickly pivot to remote work and new business models, companies rapidly found out whether or not their infrastructure had the flexibility and scalability to handle new business demands. The year definitely presented new challenges for Shannon Hogan, senior product manager for Spectrum Business data products, who leads strategy for several key network services. 

I recently talked with Shannon about how Spectrum Business adapted to support clients as remote work and bandwidth needs increased significantly, what’s being done to ready our network solutions for future unexpected demands, and why having a flexible network is so important for companies right now. Here are the highlights.
 

Louis LaPlante: How did you adjust over the last year in the face of unexpected challenges?

Shannon Hogan: One big example comes to mind.

Before the pandemic, we were only issuing three or four VPN licenses about every three months. But once the pandemic hit and many of our clients started directing their employees to work from home, we had a massive surge in demand for new licenses. It was no longer acceptable to deliver them within a few days. We’d have clients calling us saying “My state is locked down. No one can come to work on Monday, so I need new VPN licenses immediately.” We changed our process basically overnight so we could issue the licenses within hours instead of days. As a result, we were able to quickly deliver more than 1,000 licenses over a four- to six-week period.

As for the surge in bandwidth needs from increased remote work, we were able to continue providing fast and reliable connectivity to our clients despite the spike in demand because we engineer our services with generous performance buffers.
 

LL: What product enhancements are you and your team making to help clients be ready for future unexpected challenges?

SH: We're working to expand our cloud services because they provide clients with the flexibility to easily support both increases and decreases in bandwidth demand and network capacity.

We also recently launched Managed Network Edge, which is a turnkey, cloud-based solution that simplifies network management and security with an end-to-end platform that can expand to support firewalls, routing, SD-WAN and other capabilities. It helps companies be ready for the unexpected by allowing them to deploy the right network and services to meet current requirements, and rapidly expand bandwidth or add new services when needed.
 

LL: Why is having a flexible network so important for organizations right now?

SH: Having a flexible network has always been important, actually, because companies have historically needed to change and adapt their networks for mergers and acquisitions, as well as to support other business opportunities as they arise. But it’s more important than ever right now because there’s so much uncertainty, and organizations need to be able to adapt to whatever it is they end up facing.

We’re focused on offering solutions that provide our clients with the flexibility and scalability needed to face challenges — or take advantage of opportunities — whenever and wherever they occur. For example, both Managed Network Edge and our Managed SD-WAN service allow clients to choose exactly the right type of connectivity for each location in their network. And Managed Network Edge enables companies to have every site set up just the way they want it.

When they need to make changes, they can choose to take care of it themselves, or request that we do it for them. So in addition to providing flexible solutions, we aim to be a flexible partner by doing whatever our clients need to ensure they’re ready for whatever comes next.