Article content
Founded in 1999, Cloudmax is a leader in web hosting services in Taiwan, focusing on network operations infrastructure and professional consulting services. With a presence in Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan and Southeast Asia, its services range from domain name registration and website hosting to website intrusion detection.
Challenge
With over two decades of industry experience, Cloudmax was conscious that its infrastructure needed to develop in step with its evolving business to stay competitive. However, with the advent of the digital era, the company found that the available technology locally fell short of its requirements for stable multi-cloud connections and global network interconnections. As such, Cloudmax turned to Telstra for a more advanced technology platform that could enable a smooth global interconnection to support its business growth and deliver value to customers. Cloudmax’s Technical Director Lawrence Pan said:
“We started looking for a new kind of network as our business demanded an agile network which is flexible, secure and integrated. Our network needed to provide data centre interconnect services using virtual routers at reasonable costs.”
Solution
The need for better network connections and a single platform for connecting to multi-cloud prompted Cloudmax to reach out to Telstra. After understanding Cloudmax’s requirements, Telstra recommended the Telstra Programmable Network (TPN) solution, an integrated Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) platform. This offers on-demand, high-performance and yet cost-effective network connectivity.
As part of the process we:
- With the aid of TPN, Cloudmax were able to create multi-cloud connections with leading global cloud providers;
- Were able to offer on-demand connectivity for online service companies in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, with flexible commercial terms.
Outcome
With TPN, Cloudmax was able to select virtual network functions such as vFirewalls and vRouters from leading vendors using an online marketplace platform. This meant it could lower the cost of field construction for places where it did not have a physical presence. By integrating TPN into its managed services, Cloudmax was able to offer customers a fast, stable and secure data exchange environment. In addition to an on-premise service, customers connected to the top five major cloud service providers. Through a ring topology where they could choose their cloud specifications, customers were able to build the most appropriate network environment which reduced the movement of key data and the associated risk of leakage.
“TPN helped us to unlock the full potential of Cloudmax’s services, and it came with a great commercial flexibility,” Lawrence explained. “In its absence, we would have had to make a hefty investment in hardware, licensing and maintenance in various countries, as we scaled up our services.”
Lessons learnt along the way
Using TPN’s self-managed platform, Cloudmax was able to deliver a truly exceptional experience for its customers. This included the ability to back up its network service, and order and scale up bandwidth within minutes to mitigate failures at other parts of the network. With these new capabilities, Cloudmax is currently focusing on building its services in hybrid cloud connections and on-premise dedicated network back-up – opening new avenues of growth as it enters its third decade of operations.
