The solution

A reliable network underpinning a high-quality, secure online retail experience

Distrelec chose GTT’s hybrid WAN and SIP Trunking, bringing benefits such as:

A reliable network underpinning a high-quality, secure online customer experience

Distrelec’s hybrid WAN ensures sites and systems have assured connectivity in place, minimizing the potential business risks of downtime. The solution is supported by the global Tier 1 internet network owned and operated by GTT. This ensures the company has high-performance, low-latency connectivity to any location in the world and every application in the cloud. Because the Distrelec website is directly connected to one of the world’s largest internet backbones with Points-of-Presence around the world, shoppers are rarely more than a couple of “hops” away between their own internet service provider’s network and GTT’s network backbone. This reduces latency and improves the web shop browsing experience.

In addition, GTT is among the first large-scale global Tier 1 providers to deploy the advanced verification system for IP addresses called Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) across its entire global internet backbone. This provides an additional validation check, making it much harder for criminals to imitate, or “spoof,” genuine website IP addresses and redirect traffic to a fake look-alike site. GTT clients with IP routes covered by an RPKI Route Origin Authorization (ROA) record can be assured that internet traffic to their site is fully secure throughout GTT’s entire global network footprint.

Optimized connectivity to the cloud

Distrelec uses Microsoft 365 and AWS for running much of its business and web presence infrastructure, complemented by other systems hosted in the cloud and data centers. GTT’s internet backbone can serve to connect the company’s users between locations and optimize traffic to reach any cloud providers and internet destinations. As Distrelec expands its business to new locations in the future, it can do so confident that GTT can support it with any connectivity requirement globally.

Unified communications for flexible collaboration

Distrelec leverages GTT’s SIP Trunking service together with Microsoft Teams to create a truly unified communications and collaboration platform. GTT is directly peered with Microsoft. Users are able to enjoy the many rich collaboration features of Microsoft Teams supported by the low-latency connectivity between Microsoft and GTT’s voice network. The service includes telephone numbers for all purposes with global termination. Distrelec engaged GTT and a partner to migrate to Microsoft Teams from an end-of-life Microsoft Skype for Business service. GTT’s expertise in supporting SIP Trunking direct routing to Microsoft Teams contributed to a quick and seamless uptake among Distrelec’s users.

A protected enterprise network from a single provider

Working with GTT, Distrelec has all its connectivity, voice and security needs met through a single supplier, which ensures ease of supplier management. GTT delivers managed firewalls and VPN concentrators to protect the company’s network and to ensure traffic is exchanged securely between users, regardless of location, as well as with its chosen supply chain and distribution partners. Distrelec also relies on GTT for protecting its web shop and any other internet-exposed applications against DDoS attacks with a cloud-based mitigation solution.

The result

A network that just works

Distrelec now enjoys an international Hybrid WAN solution that is secure, resilient and built for managing the high internet traffic volumes its business plans to grow. The company’s network from GTT helps it connect its systems and website to offer end-to-end visibility of supply to meet its customers’ critical delivery times. GTT SIP Trunking enables its in-house technology experts to advise customer callers on purchases through voice and video calls over Microsoft Teams.

“It’s quite simple, really. Our services from GTT just work,” said Scholey. “The carveout of our enterprise WAN was a complex project and took place almost entirely during the pandemic, but everything ran smoothly and the GTT team managing it was fantastic! With GTT, our network is secure, stable and resilient. Our network uptime is as close to 100% as we can get, which is exactly what we need to support our web shop and business-critical applications and ensure the best experience for our customers.”

Distrelec has been able to expand its customer service experience in new ways following its migration to Microsoft Teams.

“Working with GTT and its partner we have been able to do a full Teams migration, which was a very good experience — smooth sailing,” said Scholey. “We now have greater flexibility in how we take and handle calls, including the ability to switch to video when it makes sense to demonstrate and discuss our products with customers. Where we have multilingual employees and experts based in one country but able to support others in local languages, inbound calls can now be routed seamlessly between them. This means we can cope with customer demand much more flexibly and serve buyers faster.”

The connected future

Distrelec is in the process of expanding its development teams and organizing its product management around the digital customer experience. It also expects to continue to build its market presence across Europe.

“GTT has proven itself as a partner to us. We’re confident GTT has the services, experience and customer-centric approach to support our requirements as we continue our digital transformation journey and grow our digital services and international footprint,” said Scholey.