Access Kenya
AccessKenya is the largest Corporate Internet Service provider in Kenya. They have won many awards including five company of the year awards. Their focus is on corporate customers providing Internet services, IT services and advanced private networks.
The company started small, as most companies do, and started to suffer growing pains. The initial designs and technical implementations where sufficient to run a small service provider but a complete redesign was required to allow the growth of the company into the largest corporate ISP.
To facilitate this growth a consultant CTO was required to assist the talented local staff. This part time role required on-site work and remote support of staff. The outcome of the project was new network design, new point of presence (POP) design, new network operations procedures, a core engineering group and related roles.
This was a long term project that built up to 50% of a full time role. The overall project covered a 5 year time span. The project concluded just prior to their Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Kenyan stock exchange.
Solution
With the length of the engagement only a few of the key successes are noted below.
Network Design
The network was based on local leased lines, wireless local loops, connected to a backbone with links between major Kenyan cities. The international connectivity was provided by redundant satellite links (no international fiber until late 2000's). The leased lines were traditional fractional E1 circuits and the wireless was a layer 2 meshed WAN with full encryption across the backbone. The designed was based on standard ISP design from Europe with the addition of the security layer (using Netscreens from Juniper Networks).
POP Design
The splitting of the network into isolated segments allowed for the splitting of technical operations into focused groups and reduce the risk of network outages. The POP design called for a client facing segment where all connections to clients were handled. This segment was connected to the POP segment. In the POP segment handled any local functionality that must be handled within that geographical region. The POP segment connected to the backbone segment. This segment handled the traffic flows within the network, peering points and upstream network providers. This was based on Cisco's classic ISP design documentation.
Organizational Structures
The technical teams were organized into groups responsible for engineering, operations, and internal systems. The segmentation allows for greater accountability, more detailed focus on job the function and a greater level of ownership by the technical staff. The engineering team where the primary design team with the operations team acting as their customer. The operations team supported the day to day network function, building the operational policies for the network, and had client services as their customer. The internal systems team run the internal network, the application servers, communications services and all other internally focus systems.
Other Projects
- Build-out of data center with dedicated and co-location services
- Linking to public peering sites for exchange of local traffic
- Complete implementation of internal network and servers supporting all staff
- Deployment of CRM software solutions and internal web based monitoring and performance reporting
- Application selection process for replacement financial systems
Tags: CTO, CIO, ISP, Network, Data Center, Routing, Security, Operations