Co-managed LAN: Taking your network to the Cloud era

The cloud is becoming more and more important for companies of all sizes. Despite their flexibility, cloud technologies remain dependent on the networks circulating data flows. To eliminate this problem, Mixvoip offers companies a new solution, the Co-Managed LAN, which can be used to manage networks most flexibly. Marc Tholl, Head of Network Operations at Mixvoip, and Loic Didelot, the company’s CEO, explain the main benefits.

Launched last December, Mixvoip’s Co-Managed LAN service is growing rapidly. The company has acquired nearly 20 customers for its SDN platform, and the first Managed Services Partner (MSP) has just signed a contract. Mixvoip’s platform is not only multi-tenant, but it is also multi-MSP.

“Our solution is based on iMaster NCE, the SDN platform by Huawei”, explains Marc Tholl. NCE is an intelligent network control and management solution. In addition to these functions, the platform also integrates analysis and artificial intelligence features.

“The customer places the cursor where he wants”

“With our Co-Managed LAN solution”, he continues, “we let the customer place the cursor where he wants between the workload he wants to take on himself and the one he wants to entrust to us. To add new equipment to the network, for example, a new switch, you can configure the device directly on the platform. The customer doesn’t need to connect the device to the network anymore physically. After a couple of minutes, the new device is ready to be used”. It has a centralized console from which it can manage all the elements that make up its network, VPN, switches, firewalls, Wi-Fi devices, etc., whether single or multi-site.

Reduce costs and gain flexibility

“The equipment connected to the network is managed from a single central point”, adds Marc Tholl. “Operations on the network can be done much quicker, and errors are less likely to occur. The increased reactivity improves network availability and reduces management costs”.

“We have too often seen customers taking longer to open a ticket and describe their need to their service provider’s helpdesk than to carry out the work themselves,” says Loic Didelot. “This is one of the reasons why we decided to develop this service.
Loïc Didelot – CEO of Mixvoip

Through its Co-Managed LAN solution, Mixvoip positions itself as a true team player at the heart of its clients’ companies. “We bring the skills that they lack, or if their teams are not available, we take over the execution of the required work. The role of Huawei’s NCE platform is to centralize the configuration of equipment and the network management, which strongly increases efficiency”, confirms the CEO of Mixvoip.

Security and availability

Mixvoip hosts Huawei’s platform in Luxembourg Tier IV certified data centers, the highest possible level of availability with a rate of 99.995%. “Huawei does not have direct access to the platform”, emphasizes Marc Tholl. “If necessary, we can, of course, profit from the manufacturer’s support, but this happens in a completely secure manner. Besides, he concludes that the communication between the devices connected to the network and the platform is based on the Netconf protocol that allows you to manage and configure all network equipment through an encrypted communication“.

What is SDN?

Mixvoip’s Co-Managed LAN solution relies on SDN (Software Defined Networking). This architecture decouples the control and transmission functions of the network, thus making the control directly programmable and abstracting the underlying infrastructure.

Through this, the engineers and network administrators can quickly respond to the evolution of business needs since they can intervene on traffic from a centralized console without working on each device separately. SDN also makes it possible to provide services where they are needed without the need to know the specific equipment to which a server or other device is connected.

Functional separation, network virtualization, and automation through programmability are key elements of this architecture.