Centralized sourcing for your global connectivity

Even the biggest global telcos don’t have a presence everywhere, so coverage for your global enterprise might have gaps on the ground. Choosing partners one-by-one means a lot of paperwork, and conflicting SLAs. And even if local partners offer full data on what’s happening with your network, you’ll still need to stitch that data together to see the Big Picture.

Our take: winning starts at the beginning, with your approach to sourcing.

In this piece, you’ll see how a unified approach to network sourcing can overcome the common pitfalls of fragmented management – delivering maximum resilience, greater cost-effectiveness, and ultimately, peace of mind.

The many-provider problem isn’t just about providers

If your organization crosses borders, it is common to buy your bandwidth from many companies: perhaps a telco for your leased lines, smaller local ISPs for your WAN, and a 5G or satellite partner for your vehicles. But it’s not one team sourcing the whole set: each country is doing its own thing, too. Leading to that many-to-many confusion.

Pierre in Paris gets his “plaisir” from three ISPs. Sho-fang in Singapore specs fiber from competing telcos. Fred in Florida takes services from the national carrier and a local ISP. And when an office goes down, everyone turns to the global IT Director … who has no idea what’s happening on each desk.

Here’s what to put on your shopping list of non-negotiables.

1. The data’s there, but in a hundred silos

The problem: “performance data available” doesn’t mean easily available. A large MSP may have real-time on-the-fly SaaS with a whizzy UI, while a small ISP may add daily updates to a Google Sheet. And useful information may be lost at the edges: the owner of a single stretch of fiber may only have a few measurables flowing through his pipe. Even differences in dashboard design can lead to poor communication of what really matters.

So the first thing to look for in your solution is unified data and metrics. Not necessarily the same type of dataset at all locations – but a way of bringing all available data together.

Note: while SD-WAN platforms can offer performance stats, they often miss what’s going on with the underlay. Having access to this data, in a similar centralized manner, will save our IT Director from unnecessary finger-pointing.

2. The service levels don’t sync – or agree

SLAs are a key pain point, too. The problem: HQ’s DIA can guarantee 1Gb, but your SD-WAN covers offices connected by public broadband. At the same time, remote sites rely on a single cable snaking through the forest, with no diversity option.

What you’re looking for is the minimum level of service you can depend on that extends across the entire network, and take advantage of a single SLA that covers it all. There might be practical exceptions where bandwidth is offered on a best-available basis, but the principle holds: one SLA to rule them all, with one team to contact for incident resolution when things go wrong. 

3. The paperwork stack is more complex than the tech stack

The problem: even consumer agreements can span dozens of pages of legalese – and business contracts are typically longer. Now imagine a contract for every provider of bandwidth, in every country you operate, each written to fit a different regulatory framework and legal culture. It’s a nightmare even before the invoices and renewals start rolling.

The ideal here is a single contract that supersedes all those separate pieces of paper – bringing all the suppliers together on a single invoice and agreement.

Sounds difficult? It is – but it’s what we do at GNX, with skills honed over many years.

Heart of Glass: the power of a single pane

Let’s get to the core: you can only understand network performance when you can see what’s happening at scale. The best conceptual model is the Single Pane of Glass: a unified view of all data, showing you the “weather” across your network landscape in real time. That’s exactly the core to GNX+: the GNX platform for sourcing, setting up, and managing your global WAN – from wherever you happen to be.

Data that delivers visibility over your connectivity worldwide…

• GNX+ offers centralized management of your global services, no matter how many territories or ISPs
• It offers integrated tools for KPI tracking, like latency, packet loss, jitter, and other sources of network friction
• It lets you check actual performance against SLA guarantees on an ongoing basis

… with tools for actionable control and management

• GNX+ brings together all service details into one: contracted services, renewal dates with automated alerts, ISP and LMP details, and more
• Makes it easy to scale, offering service design and sourcing features for new services – all the way to ordering and deployment
• It gives you immediate budgetary quotes from thousands of ISPs, so you can look at different alternatives for your network
• And it simplifies global compliance, with GNX absorbing local legal headaches and consolidating all into one single global contract  

Plus: an easier route to genuine diversity

As a (deliberate) bonus, all this data lets you ensure diversity requirements are met by actual separate infrastructure (different fiber cables or a mix of technologies) and not just two ISPs ultimately using the same pipe. It’s a huge issue for the average multinational – and GNX+ solves it with confidence.

One of our customers believed sourcing and managing all connectivity at country level would give them greater accountability and hence control. But in reality, every outage was dumped upward to the CIO at Head Office. By turning to GNX as the single point of contact for all local ISPs, and one source of data with GNX+, we returned control to where it mattered.

A leap forward: centralized sourcing + transparency = control

We don’t blame you. The illusion of control gives us comfort… until something goes wrong.

This is why we bring transparency to the core of our aggregator model with GNX+. It goes beyond simply showing you what’s happening on your network; to help you manage it for continuous improvement. When issues arise, you’ve got GNX’s dedicated team of experts to solve them, saving the hassle of trouble tickets in a dozen nations.

And since GNX+ is carrier-agnostic, your choices aren’t limited to a set of “approved affiliates”. Anyone offering bandwidth can join the GNX directory, subject to quality checks. Giving you the broadest choice possible – and the information you need to get the best prices, too.

Wanna give it a try? Let’s talk.