Tierzero

In the early 90’s with the internet boom underway, John Carter having already launched several successful businesses, partnered up to launch an internet service company. One of the first steps—procure high-speed connectivity to the internet.

John could not believe the hassle of dealing with the Phone Company to get the service turned-up, having to chase them down repeatedly just to get the line installed. In addition, he needed an agreement with an ISP, an equipment vendor and a consultant. When something went wrong they all pointed fingers at each other. When you added up their bills it was one of the biggest expenses and took time and money away from launching the company. “We were a start-up full of engineers used to dealing with technology and we were struggling.” John wondered how other less-technical businesses got through it and after asking around found that most businesses were as frustrated as he was.

After further research and development John re-launched the company in 1997 with a new objective: to bundle a T1 line, Internet access and all necessary equipment as a single service and deliver it to California businesses at a flat-rate.

Having grown Tierzero into a significant ISP in the region, John and his team kept their eyes on emerging technology and in the early 2000’s added business VoIP service to their network. Over the years, the company kept growing its business with larger bandwidth, managed services, additional voice offerings, and advanced networking services such as MPLS, BGP, Firewall service, and in recent years Software Defined Wide Area Networking or SD-WAN.

For those not yet familiar with SD-WAN, the key distinction from a traditional WAN is the addition of a software abstraction layer and centralized management - providing an easy to use point and click cloud-based interface.

One of the primary applications driving SD-WAN adoption for Tierzero’s customers has been its ability to provide dynamic QoS, prioritization, error-correction and seamless failover to ensure high quality of experience for real-time business-critical applications including voice, video collaboration and cloud SaaS applications.

Additional advantages include the ability to bond multiple broadband services into a single high-speed link, providing encrypted MPLS-like connectivity to/from all branch offices for distributed enterprises, and optimizing traffic for cloud applications. The analytics capabilities achieved by linking SD-WAN nodes to Tierzero’s Netflow service provides insight into policy changes needed based on intelligent reporting - no more wondering why your network is slow.

One of the primary applications driving SD-WAN adoption for Tierzero’s customers has been its ability to provide dynamic QoS, prioritization, error-correction and seamless failover to ensure high quality of experience for real-time business-critical applications

While explaining the value proposition of Tierzero, Carter recalls an instance when the company assisted their client RVR Distribution - a multinational medical cannabis distributor. RVR needed secure access to a critical business application hosted in a private cloud in a specific datacenter. Utilizing the SD-WAN services of Tierzero, the client was able to combine different connections in multiple locations and create a private network to enable secure application access. Furthermore, Tierzero’s expertise in business voice services helped the client establish a high-quality cloud-based enterprise wide PBX system with no CapEx required.

Continuing to look forward, the team at Tierzero is continuing to develop next generation technologies including more intelligent AI-driven distributed firewall services and joining a community developing open-source SD-WAN solutions. The whole operation continues to be laser-focused on its founding principle to make cutting edge technologies hassle-free and accessible to businesses of any size.