Virtela

Company: Virtela, Greenwood Village, CO
Entry Submitted By: Greenough Communications
Company Description: Virtela delivers award-winning network and security solutions to multinational companies spanning 190+ countries. Virtela's Global Service FabricSM delivers critical applications via the company's acclaimed service methodology, including MPLS- and IP- based VPNs, security services, remote monitoring and management of WAN/LAN infrastructure, and converged services.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Telecommunications

Nomination Title: Virtela’s Network-Based SSL-VPN Service

1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

In February 2010, Virtela, the world’s largest independent managed network services company, announced the industry’s first cloud-based remote access solution backed by a 100% global availability guarantee. Virtela’s Network-Based SSL-VPN Service offers flexible and secure remote access without the capital expense associated with traditional approaches, such as deploying dedicated gateways.

SSL VPNs have grown in importance as companies strive to find a simple, secure and cost-effective way to provide anytime, anywhere remote access to increasingly centralized applications and resources. Remote access is critical for a number of business situations from enabling telecommuting and supporting traveling employees to ensuring disaster recovery preparedness.

Virtela’s new service provides SSL VPN remote access as a managed service hosted from within the Virtela global network. This cloud-based approach eliminates the up-front capital expense and extended time period required to deploy dedicated gateways. The extended time period can be especially burdensome for international locations where customs issues play a role for new installations as well as equipment replacement activities. In addition, the cloud-based service scales more readily than traditional offerings, with pricing based on the number of active users a customer has each month. To ensure business continuity, corporations can also reserve capacity on the network for same-day activation should employees need to stay home from work during a pandemic, for example. With Virtela’s service, access is not limited in terms of throughput as a typical appliance-based solution would be.

In addition to this unique cloud-based approach, Virtela’s load-balancing integration capabilities and reliable underlying network infrastructure distinguish its remote access service from others on the market. Unlike other carriers, Virtela offers load balancing integration whereby remote access network traffic is automatically balanced within and between regions on a worldwide basis, preventing bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring the highest performance and availability in the industry. The proof? Virtela stands by its service with industry-leading SLAs of 99.99% availability within region and up to 100% availability using regional failover. The 100% availability guarantee offers an SLA credit of up to 100% of the customer’s monthly service fee.

Virtela’s underlying MPLS infrastructure ensures the highest performance around the globe. Upon login, users are seamlessly routed to the closest Virtela-managed remote access gateway in their region. This means they benefit from Virtela’s multi-carrier backbone with automatic failover if necessary, so traffic is always optimized as users connect back to their corporate data centers. Remote access users also have access to an array of cloud-based services enabled by Virtela’s new Enterprise Cloud Services (ESC) architecture. This includes the company’s Cloud-based Application Acceleration service, which speeds applications from 5-25 times faster for $5 a day per branch office, and is backed by a 250% money-back guarantee.

Customer Paul Nutter, network engineer of Williams Controls, says: "Using Virtela's cloud-based SSL service enables our employees travelling on a regular basis throughout Europe, Asia and Russia, for example, to easily access centralized network applications in the U.S. without the need to maintain our own remote access systems and infrastructure. We avoid sizeable costs associated with the equipment and can rely on Virtela's expert management of a network-based platform that delivers excellent performance and uptime at an attractive price."

Whatever challenges companies face – whether remote workers, a pandemic or natural disaster, or M&A activity – Virtela’s Network-Based SSL-VPN Service provides the best solution for scalable, anywhere-anytime connectivity backed by leading performance guarantees.

b) List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents
that support the claims made in the section above.

Press Release: First Global Cloud-Based Remote Access Solution With 100% Availability Guarantee - http://www.virtela.net/press_release_details.aspx?ID=323

Press release: Virtela Cloud-Based Remote Access Solution Named Global Product Excellence Finalist - http://www.virtela.net/press_release_details.aspx?ID=324

Press release: Virtela Named 2010 Hot Companies Award Finalist
http://www.virtela.net/press_release_details.aspx?ID=322

Press release: Virtela Named Stevie Award Finalist for Outstanding Customer Service
http://www.virtela.net/press_release_details.aspx?ID=316

Reduce IT costs and boost employee productivity with remote worker initiatives - TechRepublic

Cloud VPN services can take the bite out of SSL VPN gateway expenses - SearchEnterpriseWAN.com

Virtela Clouds Up Remote Access - Light Reading

Flu pandemic planning: Don't forget WAN security and remote access - SearchEnterpriseWAN.com

c) Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization

Vab Goel is CEO of Virtela, which he founded in April 2000. Vab is also a general partner with Norwest Venture Partners, a venture capital firm. Previously, Vab served as vice president of emerging technologies at Qwest.

Prior to Qwest, Vab worked at Sprint, where he was a principal architect for the Sprint Internet backbone. He created the optical Network Strategy which drove the world's first IP over Sonet and the first IP over DWDM network. He played a key role in the Global One IP network, a partnership among France Telecom, Sprint, and Deutsche Telecom.