Simplifying connectivity across multiple clouds and manufacturing sites across the globe
In today’s fast-paced, everything-on-demand business world, industries are faced with the continual challenge of keeping up with evolving customer demands. The manufacturing sector is no different.
Cloud adoption has risen rapidly over the past 10 years, with 92% of enterprise business strategies now relying on the cloud, according to a 2021 Foundry survey. The manufacturing industry, in particular, is almost as high at 87%. Foundry’s latest 2022 Cloud Computing Survey also found that only 16% of organisations are relying on public cloud deployments, while 83% are already researching into, implementing, or have already deployed, a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy. Cloud demands are rising sharply, and enterprise processes and networks need to be able to keep up.
Manufacturers can utilise cloud solutions to maximise efficiency and minimise costs with additional smart capabilities, flexibility and scalability across factories. With an increasingly dynamic and complex ICT ecosystem, a simple approach to interconnection across clouds is vital for success in manufacturing. At the same time, manufacturers need visibility and control into where their data, workloads and applications are stored in the cloud, and the peace of mind that they are secure.
The Challenge
Technological advancements such as Industry 4.0, and associated technologies including the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and automation, present new challenges to manufacturing companies. Manufacturers are seeing increasing demands for new products and services as part of these tech advancements, which cannot be fully met with existing IT.
Manufacturers are more prone to attacks today than ever before, due to increasing connectivity between external networks, operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT). Legacy systems and technologies are not fit to stand up to the network challenges of today. They need a new approach to wide-area networking, as well as a multi-cloud management solution with the security required to avoid cybersecurity breaches. Such breaches can impact factory production and result in thousands, if not millions, of dollars in losses.
With traditional network architectures struggling to cope with today’s cloud-oriented manufacturing environment, Software-Defined Wide-Area Networking (SD-WAN) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) have surged in popularity. They offer connectivity and security capabilities to protect remote branches, users, devices and cloud applications from cyber threats, as well as dynamic management for manufacturers to improve employee and customer experience.
According to Deloitte, 82% of manufacturing executives surveyed in the latest 2022 Manufacturing Industry Outlook expect their organisations to invest more in cybersecurity in 2022, with nearly one quarter budgeting at least 10% more than in 2021.
The Solution
Epsilon can help all kinds of manufacturing companies maximise efficiency across sites and take their cloud strategy to the next level. With fast and scalable deployments, they can keep up with demands without adding complexity to operations.
Epsilon’s simplicity-driven networking solution, with an SD-WAN overlay and multi-cloud capabilities, helps manufacturing companies to increase the capability of their network to support their distributed business, whilst directly improving customer and internal business performance.
Manufacturers can leverage on Epsilon’s SD-WAN and SASE solutions to gain a secure, cost effective, highly available and flexible data communication network between clouds and factories across geographically dispersed locations and cope with surging customer demands. Centralised management provides complete visibility end-to-end, supporting manufacturing companies with intelligent decision-making. With WAN Optimisation, Epsilon’s SD-WAN prioritises manufacturers’ business-critical applications, dynamically routes traffic, automatically mitigates performance issues, and deploys application-aware failover to enhance WAN performance and increase WAN availability.
SD-WAN can also lower capital and operational costs by lessening manufacturers’ reliance on expensive network architecture such as MPLS, and providing cost-efficient provisioning and maintenance utilising software rather than requiring costly and timely on-site visits. On top it this, it can enhance cloud connectivity and improve employee and customer experiences thanks to intelligent routing and optimisation – resulting in lower latencies and increased performance for users.
With SASE, manufacturers can increase their cloud security further with additional network and security functions incorporated into the WAN. It helps to reduce the risk of cyberattacks with additional firewalls, zero-trust network access, secure web gateway and more.
Epsilon’s intelligent cloud-centric network solution provides a modern WAN architecture that can drive maximum value from cloud and digital investments. Manufacturing companies gain secure, private connectivity to leading cloud providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud and more. They can bypass the unpredictable and vulnerable nature of the public internet, gaining the performance, speed and control needed to succeed.
Manufacturing companies can gain all the tools, expertise and 24×7 network monitoring from Epsilon as their dedicated partner without having to heavily invest in in-house specialists. With Epsilon’s diverse MEF-certified Ethernet network, they will also get direct connectivity to more than 280 data centres across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas. They will also be able to leverage on Epsilon’s private backbone network for better resiliency, faster service delivery, stronger redundancy, and reduced latency to keep up with demands, enhance customer experiences, and grow with confidence.
Mini Case Study: Belton Technology Group
Belton Technology Group, a manufacturing company headquartered in Hong Kong with offices across the Asia Pacific, wanted a cost effective, highly available and flexible data communication network between its offices and manufacturing plants across the Asia Pacific to cope with surging business growth.
Epsilon’s SD-WAN solution provided Belton Technology with seamless, high-performance connectivity without sacrificing security. It played a pivotal role in the transformation of Belton Technology’s geographically dispersed operations by lowering capital and operational costs, enhancing cloud connectivity, and providing the best experience for employees and customers alike.
“Keeping up with customer demands can be a challenge, especially without the in-house knowledge and expertise needed to adapt existing network infrastructure and scale up quickly. Epsilon’s intelligent networking with multi-cloud and SD-WAN is ideal for companies in the manufacturing space to take their operations to the next level and really ramp up productivity, simply by taking a deeper look into their behind-the-scenes connectivity between factories, and data across clouds. We’re pleased to be helping manufacturers to meet their goals and exceed customers’ needs.”
Warren Aw, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Epsilon
Benefits
- Speed of Deployment – Increase time to market with our plug and play deployment model, and quickly meet customer demands
- Visibility & Control – Gain the control, insights and intelligence needed to optimise connectivity performance and customer experience
- Comprehensive Solution – Centrally managed platform with WAN optimisation and security features, plus access to hundreds of points of presence and cloud providers
- Trusted Partner – Gain access to highly trusted services and a partner committed to operational excellence, proven by Epsilon’s 2022 Net Promoter Score of 57
Manufacturing the Future
Epsilon’s intelligent networking solution enables manufacturing companies to digitally transform their operations and better connect between multiple clouds and factories across the globe. They can seamlessly expand their manufacturing capabilities and utilise the cloud to maximise efficiency and production with a single platform and experience.
With responsive and scalable networking capabilities, it is simple to evolve manufacturing processes with cloud applications and IoT in a fast-evolving industry. By partnering with Epsilon, manufacturers will have the tools and expertise needed to accelerate their businesses into the next phase of manufacturing.
