Globalization is a core driver for digital transformation in the enterprise. With its high economic growth, and the strategic importance of the Chinese market, China is now top of the list of countries to expand to and to invest in internationally.
Developing business operations into China offers huge potential. However, enterprise network connectivity in China presents local challenges, ranging from the availability and quality of internet connectivity to providing proof of compliance with local regulations. The first challenge routinely leads to high latency and packet loss, while the second impacts the availability and flexibility of delivered services.
In this document, we will explore the top 5 challenges faced by global enterprises when connecting employees, customers, partners and suppliers in the China region.
The combination of infrastructure performance issues and strict regulatory compliance creates significant challenges for businesses to connect their users and mission-critical applications in China. Without a local presence, providers struggle to deliver an end-to-end application SLA that meets enterprise needs.
To ensure rock-solid application performance, the network Quality of Service (QoS) required by demanding applications must include a local footprint with dedicated in-country and international connectivity. Additionally, where possible, the solution should provide local handoffs to cloud providers and SaaS applications. This requires a provider with deep knowledge of the local regulatory environment and established partnerships. Aryaka’s seven in-country PoPs and dedicated connectivity, powered by Aryaka’s Global Private Core Network, deliver on these requirements.
Unified Communications has been growing steadily for a couple of decades. However, due to the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting permanent hybrid workplace, the need for communication tools like Microsoft Teams, Webex, Zoom, and others continues to accelerate globally. UCaaS applications have experienced consistent growth in adoption as hybrid workforces become more prevalent globally.
Building on the in-region footprint described earlier, the solution must optimize connectivity to the different UCaaS/CCaaS gateways, both within China and internationally. This requires optimization across the last-mile, a congestion-free middle-mile powered by dedicated links, and a direct first-mile handoff at the cloud edge to the selected collaboration application. Additionally, it requires configurability and visibility into the mix of applications via a simple-to-use cloud-driven portal. Aryaka’s regional SaaS handoffs directly from co-location facilities deliver on this requirement.
The network must offer the performance and flexibility to support any application IT deploys, rather than optimizing for specific content or sources/destinations. A generalized architecture provides a superset of the more limited CDN capabilities without introducing complexity such as usage-based charging. Aryaka’s scalable unified single-pass architecture, powered by Aryaka’s Global Private Core Network, delivers on this requirement.
The WAN must offer the performance and flexibility to support any application IT deploys, vs optimizing for specific content and sources/destinations. A generalized architecture also delivers a superset of the more limited CDN capabilities and doesn’t introduce complexity such as usage-based charging. Aryaka’s scalable cloud-first architecture delivers on this requirement.
As of 2023, it is estimated that 300 million people in China were working remotely, coexisting with various work models such as hybrid and fully remote work arrangements. Going forward, the CIO mandate is to treat these ‘anywhere’ workers as first-class citizens in terms of access to corporate applications, ensuring they have secure connectivity and highly predictable application performance, just as if they were working from a traditional office.
The offer must support the remote workforce in a scalable way, and with an architecture that distributes access and capacity. In order for the enterprise to maintain a consistent view across both on-premises workers and those remote, highly critical for both flexibility and security, both types of workers should have their traffic aggregated at a common services PoP vs a siloed architecture. Aryaka’s Private Access, available from all PoPs in China, delivers on this requirement.
For foreign businesses, addressing the compliance challenges of establishing a presence in China can be extremely complex. It requires a fine balance of legal and technical evaluation. Just relying on an existing, non-IP based IT infrastructure is non-optimal as described above, and a do-it-yourself approach without a keen understanding of the environment is fraught with risk.
The network provider must have extensive experience navigating the regulatory landscape and must have established partnerships that ease the burden of implementation and compliance for enterprises. This expertise cannot be developed overnight. Aryaka’s partnerships with Alibaba Cloud and other key players deliver on this promise, ensuring seamless compliance while leveraging Aryaka’s Global Private Core Network.
World Textile Leader Deploys Aryaka to Initiate Network Transformation in China
Headquartered in the UK with 19,000 employees across 50 countries, Coats had already achieved a 300% improvement in employee user experience since deploying Aryaka’s networking services. However, the company faced challenges connecting its locations in China to its European offices. Coats sought to replace its legacy, underperforming MPLS solution with Aryaka’s solution, leveraging Aryaka’s Global Private Core Network for better performance and reliability.
As existing MPLS contracts came up for renewal, Coats’ IT teams and executives recognized that their current MPLS solution was incapable of fully supporting new global applications like Microsoft 365, which is used across all worldwide sites. They needed a more robust solution to ensure seamless connectivity and application performance.
User collaboration tools and business applications are critical for Coats, especially in China, where they needed a solution that could guarantee user satisfaction when accessing these tools. Aryaka was the only provider capable of optimizing and accelerating traffic to critical applications hosted both in the cloud and in their data centers, leveraging its Unified SASE platform with a single-pass architecture for seamless performance and security.
Aryaka is the leader and first to deliver Unified SASE as a Service, the only SASE solution designed and built to deliver performance, agility, simplicity and security without tradeoffs. Aryaka meets customers where they are on their unique SASE journeys, enabling them to seamlessly modernize, optimize and transform their networking and security environments. Aryaka’s flexible delivery options empower enterprises to choose their preferred approach for implementation and management. Hundreds of global enterprises, including several in the Fortune 100, depend on Aryaka for cloud-based software-defined networking and security services. For more on Aryaka, please visit ww.aryaka.com.