Essilor
Colt services make it quick and easy for Essilor to transfer, access and back up critical services and terabytes of data.
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The Essilor Group’s mission is to help people see better and protect their visual health.
Colt services make it quick and easy to transfer, access and back up critical services and terabytes of data.
From humble beginnings in Paris 170 years ago, Essilor has expanded into a global company that today designs, manufactures and distributes ophthalmic lenses and equipment to more than 400,000 customers and eye care professionals around the world.
A regional operating model allows Essilor to stay close to its customers. For AMERA — Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Africa — the regional head office is in Singapore. Centralised functions at the Singapore head office support around 25,000 people working in commercial entities, distribution centres, laboratories and R&D centres in over 30 countries.
A vision for cloud adoption
In common with many forward-looking enterprises, Essilor Singapore has developed a cloud migration strategy. Top drivers for cloud adoption include increased resilience, cost savings through elimination of on-premises hardware maintenance, and simplified billing.
With multiple internal and customer-facing services to migrate, as well as many terabytes of data, the network team in Singapore recognised that a ‘big bang’ migration was out of the question. Instead, they’re taking a phased approach. For some services, the first step is migration from Essilor’s own data centre to the Colt data centre in Singapore.
The Essilor and Colt data centres were previously connected using a pair of 1Gbps circuits, backed up by a pair of 500Mbps circuits. However, that wasn’t enough bandwidth to support the increased data transfer load as migration began. So when the circuits came up for renewal, the network team seized the opportunity to look for an alternative solution.
They chose two 10Gbps Colt Optical Wavelengths to connect the data centres. As the network team explains:
“The Optical Wavelengths deliver great value. We’re paying about the same as we did for our previous circuits but now have 10 times the bandwidth. So we have the flexibility to transfer much more data in much less time than was previously possible.”
Secure, direct access to the clouds
In parallel, the network team is already moving other data centre–hosted services to the AWS and Microsoft Azure clouds. For access to both clouds, they’re using Dedicated Cloud Access services from Colt that provide secure, high-speed connections. Among the key business services those connections support are:
- Essilor’s Singapore call centre. Colt’s AWS Direct Connect service routes all of the incoming calls to the call centre’s IP voice server in the AWS cloud.
- Backups of the AMERA inventory and ordering system. The system has been migrated to the Colt data centre and is backed up to the Microsoft Azure cloud over a 10Gbps Azure ExpressRoute connection from Colt. The network team explains the benefit: “The latency is so low — 2 to 5 milliseconds on average — it’s as though the cloud and the data centre are on the same LAN. This allows almost real-time backups of terabytes of critical data that simply wouldn’t be possible over the internet.”
Better value, less complexity
As well as delivering great value, consolidating services with Colt reduces complexity for the network team. They report smooth service rollouts, highly reliable services, superior SLAs, and a Colt team that’s very responsive during circuit orders, turn-up and activation. “We’re pleased with the performance and reliability of our Colt circuits,” say the network team. “In fact, we’re so impressed with Colt, they’ll be one of our preferred providers for any new networking needs in Singapore.”
“ The latency we get with our Azure ExpressRoute connection from Colt is so low, it’s as though the cloud and the data centre are on the same LAN.”
Network team, Essilor Singapore
COMPANY NAME
Essilor
INDUSTRY
Healthcare
CHALLENGE
To increase resilience, to save cost through elimination of on-premises hardware maintenance, and to simplify billing
