The new bonded VPN products make it possible, and more affordable for SMBs to connect medium-sized branches at much higher speeds, while the new uncapped VPN products are designed to remove the headache of managing traffic caps at smaller branches.
Both new offerings are fully integrated into MWEB Business' current MPLS-based Multi VPN products allowing companies to mix and match existing Diginet/fibre leased-line VPN access with capped, uncapped and/or bonded ADSL access.
According to Bernard Kur, head of Product Management and Development at MWEB Business, the launch of MWEB Business uncapped VPN and bonded VPN is a natural progression of the company's recent introduction of uncapped ADSL Internet access for SMBs.
"The uncapped and bonded VPN offerings, as well as a new, low-cost alternative that gives customers direct access to the MWEB Business Data Centre only, effectively offers customers the greatest possible flexibility when choosing connectivity that best suits their needs and budget," he says.
MWEB Business has also enhanced the security and management capabilities of its VPN infrastructure, providing greater control of VPN traffic and break-out from the VPN to the Internet.
Kur points out that ADSL-based VPN technology has found considerable favour among SMBs for its ability to offer all the security advantages of a private, leased-line wide area network, but at lower cost and with no management responsibility.
However, difficulties in apportioning cap-based traffic to different sites and the fact that the cost of the VPN has traditionally included Internet access, often resulted in SMBs having to pay for unused, unnecessary ADSL capacity and access. "For many businesses, particularly those wanting only to provide secure inter-branch/site connectivity, cap-based Internet access from each branch or site has been an unnecessary expense.
"By stripping out the Internet connectivity costs from the VPN offering, we are able to offer an uncapped VPN service at significantly reduced rates," he says. (see table below)
For businesses with high-speed, high-volume requirements, the new MWEB Business Bonded VPN option allows up to four ADSL-VPN links to be channel bonded, creating a virtual, single-channel high-speed link of up to 16Mbps (4 x 4Mbps lines) at an extremely affordable price.
Finally, MWEB Business has introduced a low-cost connectivity option for SMBs that don't require a VPN service or Internet access, but only require access to applications that are hosted in a MWEB Business Data Centre.
Until now, access to the Data Centre required businesses to invest in a standard Internet link. The lowest rate for an uncapped ADSL Business link is R499 per month; now Data Centre-only access for Cloud Computing applications is available at R69 per month for a 384k connection.
Costs for MWEB Business's uncapped VPN solution (vs previous costs) are:
| VPN + uncapped ADSL Uncapped VPN % difference |
|---|
| 384Kbps R499 + R350 = R849 R522 38,52% |
| 512 Kbps R699 + R350 = R1049 R544 48,14% |
| 4Mbps R1999 + R350 = R2349 R973 58,58% |
