Solutions

One of the reasons companies will invest in Communications as a Service (CaaS) is that they no longer have to assume the costs and responsibility for maintaining and supporting the network. The hosted applications should be housed in a highly secure and resilient data centre and the solution is usually built around a redundant architecture able to ensure the system uptimes expected from a business telephony application.

Multiple platforms are generally used to provide redundancy and it is recommended by Ofcom that they be geographically sited with sufficient distance to avoid any disaster having an impact on both data centres.

Both layer 3 and layer 4 based security plus strong access controls can be used to provide robust security against malicious attacks.

Power

Independent incoming power feeds from separate national distribution networks which use separate ‘risers’ within the building, and solutions where the primary supply is backed up by generator ensure automatic failover of the primary and secondary supply in the event of a power outage in the distribution network.

System Hardware

All hardware key to system operation should be redundant and, ideally, active/active resilience should be provided between alternative components to ensure that no down-time is experienced and to avoid problems with system switch-over.

Internal Connectivity

The core network should be based on an active/active architecture without compromises being created by having routing between data centre nodes. Dual structured cabling and technologies such as network teaming adaptors and redundant Ethernet switches should ensure full resilience.