IBM Build Partner GlobalDots helps some of the world’s leading brands keep their revenue-generating services running optimally at all times.
Francesco Altomare of GlobalDots explains how embedding IBM technologies into the company’s Super content delivery network (CDN) offering helps address the biggest availability and performance challenges for customers.
Intelligent network steering to protect revenue
When the availability and performance of online applications and websites are truly critical, organizations typically use one or more CDNs to route web traffic intelligently. CDNs provide alternative routes to domain name system (DNS) servers so that web addresses can continue to be translated into numerical IP addresses even when the preferred DNS is unavailable.
For most organizations, a single CDN is more than sufficient. However, at GlobalDots, we serve some of the world’s most demanding businesses. Typically, they’re major players in industry verticals where every second counts, such as finance and e-commerce. They’ve often grown from a free DNS provider to a premium DNS provider and more than one CDN.
For these companies, impaired DNS performance or service might represent an enormous loss of revenue. Conversely, enhanced DNS speed and resilience might significantly increase their revenue.
That’s where we come in: the GlobalDots Super CDN service adds another layer of intelligent routing on top of multiple CDNs, as we work with more than 30 of them. Not every organization needs a multi-CDN or multi-DNS setup. But for those that do, we provide a highly automated premium service that embeds IBM® NS1 Connect® and IBM Instana® Observability.
The logical choice of solution
The crucial embedded element in our modular Super CDN offering is IBM NS1 Connect, a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering. We use NS1 Connect to help us balance traffic across multiple CDNs automatically and in real time, depending on factors such as geography, time of day, cost, latency, throughput, availability, origin-infrastructure performance degradation or a mixture of these and other factors.
In making automated decisions about how best to steer web traffic, Super CDN relies on performance and availability as key performance metrics. For example, we detect when performance could be improved by moving some traffic to a different CDN, and we help customers tackle security threats by “blackholing”, which involves silently dropping packets in the event of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Using NS1 Connect, Super CDN also steers traffic based on commercial logic. For example, a retailer might switch traffic from a premium CDN back to a lower-cost service provider at times of day when demand is lower. That retailer could set different business rules in different countries and for various brands within its portfolio. We package all of that complexity into a single, intelligent solution, by using NS1 Connect to handle all the traffic steering via application programming interface (API) calls.
For many customers, we also embed IBM Instana Observability to monitor services and infrastructure components. This provides vital real-time data, including real end-user monitoring, to help make the right steering decisions. We host or integrate the data sources, connect these via API calls to the DNS layer, and tune that to output whatever HTTP or HTTPS endpoint is needed at any particular point in time, worldwide.
Building a close relationship
Our journey with IBM began with Instana, which we loved as an observability platform. When IBM announced its acquisition of NS1, we were delighted because this is a technology we have used from the start. Without it, we couldn’t offer Super CDN: if you need an intelligent platform to steer DNS, you need NS1.
We choose technologies after an exhaustive vetting process, and it’s great to see that we align with IBM on the best technology for managing DNS.
Working with IBM as a Build Partner means that we have a direct line into the development teams and can influence future direction. We have many demanding and technical clients, and they often come up with questions or feature requests that neither we nor IBM had considered. Together, we can turn these challenges into mutually beneficial opportunities. We look forward to working even more closely with IBM, particularly in the area of infrastructure as code (IaC).
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About GlobalDots: For more than 20 years, GlobalDots has been on a mission to introduce cutting-edge cloud solutions to businesses worldwide. The organization helps its customers thrive in a rapidly changing world by addressing topics such as cloud cost optimization, cloud security and website performance. GlobalDots’ experience and diverse portfolio enable it to seamlessly manage CDN migrations, cloud service provider (CSP) integrations and complex multi-CDN strategies.
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