Peninsula Canada: Multi-Cloud Case Study
Peninsula Canada’s disruptive new service model is reshaping the Canadian HR service landscape. Peninsula clients have access to comprehensive around-the-clock HR and health and safety support at an enterprise service level that has been streamlined to meet the needs of small and medium businesses. The Peninsula Canada corporate mission dedicates the team to reaching companies unable to afford expensive in-house HR and safety resources. Peninsula works to ensure those clients are in full compliance with Canadian employment law, HR practices, and occupational health & safety standards. Their unique service offers clients a protection package that enables small businesses to benefit from the same expertise that larger organizations typically delivery in-house.
Peninsula Canada’s disruptive new service model is reshaping the Canadian HR service landscape.
The Challenge
In 2017 Peninsula Group leadership selected key staff members from their global workforce to lead an initial entrance into the Canadian market. The goal for rapid market launch required replacing legacy IT infrastructure with Microsoft Azure and Office 365 services that will synchronously scale with the growth of a new office in a brand new market. The challenge to the new Canadian team included delivering an equivalent service level to their global counterparts that benefit from a mature IT support model with infrastructure and services using in-house staff and a Tier 1 colocation facility. Rapid sales growth and the enthusiastic response from the Canadian market drove significant staff augmentation and a need for larger dedicated office space. With the addition of nearly 150 staff in under two years, Peninsula began evaluating whether the bandwidth and quality of service that could be delivered to end users over an Azure VPN connection would still match the service level guaranteed to staff at their primary office locations that benefit from colocated infrastructure. A vendor selection process was initiated to identify the following:
- Azure Express Route service availability for connectivity for private peering to Azure Compute (IaaS)
- Service quality improvement for delivery of SaaS services via traditional IP transit
- Vendor selection process uncovered the availability of multi-cloud private connectivity as well as private peering for Azure PaaS/SaaS services, Office 365 and Salesforce Express Connect
The Solution
The Peninsula Canada vendor selection process uncovered the local availability of multi-cloud private connectivity including private peering services for public Azure PaaS/SaaS services, Office 365 and Salesforce Express Connect. Additionally, those services could terminate directly in their new Toronto office bypassing retail colocation facilities. Peninsula selected Beanfield Metroconnect as the primary vendor for private metro ethernet service between the new office and the Megaport PoP location inside the Allied Properties Data Centre at 905 King Street West. Working In partnership together, Beanfield, Megaport, and Scalar Decisions successfully deployed CPE equipment and terminating VLANs for IP Transit, Azure Express Route, and Salesforce Express Connect over a 10 Gbit ethernet service using a single pair of fibre optic cabling.
The Outcome
Peninsula Canda completed the project delivering multi-cloud services via metro ethernet to their new office space after a lengthy implementation and testing period. Beanfield, Megaport, and Scalar Decisions are jointly celebrating breaking the LAN latency barrier with this solution and reaching the first in market milestones achieved with these new service activations by successfully privately peering Peninsula Canada with public Azure, Office 365, and Salesforce services.
The Highlights
- First Canadian approval from Microsoft for Azure Express Route Microsoft Peering to Office 365 services including Exchange, Skype for Business (Teams), and Azure PaaS services (Azure AD, InTune)
- First Canadian Salesforce Express Connect service activation
- 2ms latency to Azure IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and Office 365 customer node servers
- 90% reduction in latency between office network and Microsoft Cloud Platform
- 20ms latency to Salesforce NA50 servers
- 50% reduction in latency between office network and Peninsula Salesforce lighting deployment
- Security and route resiliency has been improved by providing connectivity to those services over redundant wave protected private lines
About Beanfield Metroconnect & Megaport Canada
In partnership, Megaport Canada and Beanfield Metroconnect provide your business with the comprehensive service needed to connect your enterprise to the cloud directly. With the fastest circuit activation times in Toronto and Montreal, you can connect directly and get reliable performance — all over a private network that scales easily and delivers the lowest possible latency.
About Scalar Decisions
Scalar is a leading Canadian IT solutions provider, focused on security, infrastructure, cloud, and digital transformation. Founded in 2004, Scalar is headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, London, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria. Scalar was recently named one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies, named to CRN’s 2017 Solution Provider 500 List, and listed on the PROFIT 500 for the seventh year running.
About the Author
Daniel Simmons is the Director of Cloud Strategy at Beanfield Metroconnect, a cloud product manager, cloud evangelist, and a solution architect for cloud and data centre services. Daniel has spent the past year overseeing the launch of the Beanfield and Megaport partnership with the goal of bringing multi-cloud connectivity to every office building in the city. He lives in Toronto with his partner and dog.
