Interview with Gina Nomellini, CMO of GTT for ITW
Data Center POST recently spoke with GTT Communications Inc.’s (GTT) Chief Marketing Officer, Gina Nomellini, about the company’s goals for the upcoming International Telecoms Week (ITW) event, the world’s largest meeting for the global wholesale telecommunications community. ITW 2016 will take place at the Hyatt Regency and Swissôtel in Chicago, IL from May 8-11, 2016. In our Q&A with Ms. Nomellini, we explored topics such as the critical role that network connectivity plays in cloud services, and key attributes to consider when choosing a network provider. GTT is a leading provider of cloud networking services, with a global top five Tier 1 IP network, and the ability to connect its clients to any location in the world and any application in the cloud.
Q and A with Data Center Post’s contributing editor, Kathy Xu
Data Center POST, Kathy Xu (DCP-KX) Question: With the adoption of cloud solutions and their reliance on data centers, what is the best way for enterprises to connect to the cloud?
GTT, Gina Nomellini (GTT-GN) Answer: Many enterprises today rely on the public Internet to access their mission-critical, cloud-based applications and services. This is challenging, as the Internet is “best effort,” with no guarantees with regard to application performance and service prioritization, and is unable to safeguard critical corporate information as it traverses the network. Relying on the public Internet to connect to cloud services and applications can thus come at tremendous cost to a business – including financial risk, operational inefficiencies and inability to collaborate as effectively as possible.
GTT offers enterprises a better way to reach the cloud, connecting clients to all of the applications, partners and cloud service partners (CSPs) that they require. The company provides secure, private connectivity to the cloud via EtherCloud wide area networking services, which are backed by industry-leading service-level agreements (SLAs). By partnering with a solutions provider that can build these connections across its private backbone network, enterprises get direct, secure access to the cloud, ensuring better performance of critical business applications and services. Simply put, the cloud becomes part of the corporate network, allowing enterprise users to reach any application in the cloud from any place, at any time and on any device.
DCP-KX Q: What are the most important network functions that companies should consider when deciding on a provider, and why?
GTT-GN A: When evaluating network providers there are several critical factors that enterprises need to consider, namely:
- Global reach and capacity – The provider’s geographic footprint must be considered, as this will impact end-user interaction. Cloud services involving transfers of large amounts of data in short periods will be particularly susceptible to latency, packet loss and jitter, and require traffic to stay local or regional for optimal performance. GTT owns and operates a top five, Tier 1 IP network, capable of reaching any location in the world and any application in the cloud. We have more than 250 points of presence (PoPs) located in the top metropolitan markets in the world to ensure optimal performance.
- Privacy, security and reliability – Enterprises connecting to the cloud should consider a customized, private WAN connection versus using the public Internet. This will ensure they have consistent and seamless access to their cloud applications with a service that scales with their business needs and prioritizes latency-sensitive traffic. The private network will also secure sensitive corporate information.
- Flexible billing options – Cloud traffic patterns can vary widely based on application, time of day and season. Applications such as data replication, database backups and storage, or regular backup activities can vary in usage. GTT offers billing options including fixed rate, bursting and aggregate committed data rate programs in order to provide clients with maximum flexibility and cost efficiency.
DCP-KX Q: What do you hope to accomplish at ITW 2016 this year?
GTT-GN A: ITW is the largest wholesale telecommunications event in our industry, providing a key forum for service providers to meet and discuss business opportunities and industry trends and challenges. GTT is proud to be a prime sponsor of ITW this year, and we will have a large team attending the event. We look forward to meeting with our wholesale partners, learning more about their challenges and requirements, and sharing how GTT can help them meet their goals. We are especially pleased to be able to discuss our new PoPs with our clients, as well as our significantly expanded suite of services, made possible through two acquisitions last year.
DCP-KX Q: Since GTT is located in some of the top data centers of the world, what advantage does that provide to enterprises?
GTT-GN A: GTT has a presence in some of the most prominent, globally diverse data centers in the world. This enables us to ensure maximum cloud ROI for our clients through direct, secure connections at these data centers to many of the largest CSPs, including IBM Cloud, Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. This allows us to provide the highest possible performance for our clients’ mission-critical applications and services.
DCP-KX: Thank you for your time and best of luck at ITW 2016. Readers, if you are interested in learning more about GTT, please visit their website: http://www.gtt.net/.
