Excellence award bestowed on Vertel

A global award has been won by Vertel for its carrier-grade wide area network that connects 89 schools across five major regions.

The MEF Excellence Awards recognise service, application, technology, professional excellence and innovation in the global Third Network community. Vertel won the global award for Enterprise Application of the Year in the Education category for providing critical connectivity services for schools in regional and remote areas, including Broken Bay, Lismore, Maitland-Newcastle, Canberra and Goulburn, and Wollongong.

A high-capacity, carrier-grade microwave access service was commissioned at each education site. This access service was then integrated back into the redundant MPLS core to provide an end-to-end, CE 2.0 certified, Layer 2 network service for the customer. Vertel overcame the traditional issues of high cost and long delivery times for fibre-based services to these locations.

Features of the network included cost savings, productivity gains, agility, performance and quality of service.

“Judging was highly competitive this year, with 36 companies — including 19 service providers and 17 technology vendors — competing as finalists for this year’s awards,” said Kevin Vachon, chief operating officer at MEF.

The global awards program focuses on advanced carrier Ethernet (CE) services and emerging Third Network services powered by CE 2.0, LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration), NFV and SDN networking technologies.

The judging panel for the MEF 2016 Excellence Awards comprised global and regional senior analysts from ATLANTIC-ACM, Current Analysis, Frost & Sullivan, IHS Markit, Metanoia, Ovum, SDxCentral and Vertical Systems, in addition to independent judges.

“It is very exciting to be recognised with this prestigious award for Enterprise Application of the Year,” said Vertel Managing Director Theo Belekas.

“We have been on the global radar either as finalists or winners since 2012, and it’s very encouraging for the Vertel team to get this year’s award too. It shows that our hard work is getting recognised globally.”

The 2016 awards were presented at the MEF Excellence Awards Dinner as part of the MEF16 global networking conference, which took place at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel in the United States.