Hughes Signs Contract Extension with Global Financial Services Giant
April 29, 2013
Hughes Network Systems, LLC announced that one of the world's largest multinational financial services companies has awarded it a contract extension for managed network services across Latin America. The contract is for five years and is valued at over US $11M.
The financial services giant operates one of the world's largest credit card and ATM networks, providing consumer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payment products and processing services, with a strong presence in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Hughes has been providing managed satellite network services for over ten years to the company's Latin American and Caribbean regional operations including network installation, management and field maintenance, connecting their banks to the company's regional headquarters.
"This contract extension from one of the world's most prestigious financial services companies is a testament to the high quality and reliability of our combined satellite and terrestrial networking solution," said Kamran Givpoor, vice president of Global Services at Hughes. "We've been providing managed services to this customer for well over ten years and it has proven to be a very successful relationship."
The Hughes High Availability satellite network serves as backup to the customer's terrestrial network at over 100 locations in Central and Latin America (CALA), automatically taking over without interruption in case of terrestrial failure. Additionally, the Hughes solution load balances the traffic between the networks, doubling available bandwidth and saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrade costs.
Based on the high performance and scalable HX System, the Hughes solution is ideal for carrier-grade IP broadband applications and incorporates many advanced features pioneered by the company. These include WAN optimization for high-bandwidth applications and powerful IP routing features such as Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP). VRRP with policy-based routing enables the remote satellite terminal to implement automatic WAN routing in the case of terrestrial link failure, as well as traffic balancing during normal operations.
The network carries critical credit card processing data, pricing information and other back-office business data between the banks and the company's regional headquarters. Reliability is essential to operations. Consequently, the disaster recovery, dual-path redundancy and load balancing created with the Hughes solution not only boosts performance, but ensures the network stays online. For instance, following the terrible Haiti earthquake in 2010, the Hughes satellite network was able to keep the company's banks in the region operating, serving the population in crisis while it took weeks to restore the terrestrial network.