Southern Communications Group (SCG Connected) is a rapidly growing, award-winning telephony, broadband, mobile, and cloud solutions provider that supports businesses of all sizes across the United Kingdom. The company has realized a 12-fold increase in revenue over the past decade from a strategy of organic growth and acquisitions fueled by its commitment to customer service and innovation.
In our new customer case study, “SCG Connected Expands Business Security Solutions with Corero” we spoke with Matt Wring, the company’s Chief Technical Officer responsible for developing value-add solutions for business customers, many of which rely on voice services, not only internet.
Following are a few highlights from our discussion about the challenges SCG Connected faced, their key criteria for selecting the Corero SmartWall ONE™ platform, and the benefits they are realizing.
The challenge
Wring explained that the shift from ISDN/PSDN to VoIP expands the threat surface and makes voice services vulnerable to DDoS attacks, which are complex to mitigate. Building quality of service (QoS) profiles is not an option with broadband and using firewalls to filter traffic creates VoIP jitter. So, Wring and his team were searching for a DDoS protection solution that would help them maintain service availability and provide scalability and flexibility to accommodate future acquisitions without a huge jump in cost.
Why Corero
After a rigorous evaluation, Wring and his team selected Corero SmartWall ONE which monitors traffic at the ingress point, inspects packets directly, and surgically blocks malicious traffic without disrupting legitimate traffic, crucial for voice services. Integration with the Juniper MX platform and feature-rich APIs simplify deployment and save costs. Additionally, built-in multi-tenant capabilities make it easy to provide highly customizable DDoS protection-as-a-service, while maintaining consistency and scalability.
The benefits
SCG Connected’s platform strategy focuses on proximity to the factory gate and exceptional customer service, both of which are enhanced by Corero’s SmartWall ONE DDoS protection-as-a-service offering.
- Revenue generation: According to Wring, “The integration of Corero SmartWall ONE on the Juniper platform allows us to get DDoS protection into the core of our network, add value, and then sell it to more customers which adds margin – that’s a force multiplier.”
- Differentiation: The deployment strategy also allows SCG Connected to differentiate in two ways – by offering premium DDoS protection-as-a-service, and at a fraction of the price of other service providers. “Instead of paying hundreds of dollars per month, customers can pay tens of dollars which adds immense value to their service,” added Wring.
- Customer service at scale: The more vendor types introduced into a technology stack the more training required and the greater the risk of service degradation. “Standardizing on the Juniper MX platform and managing Corero through an API stack simplifies operation, and that leads to consistency of service delivery as we scale, which is one of our key criteria,” said Wring.
Download the case study for all the details.
