X2nSat: Making Satellite Communications Accessible to Enterprises

Garrett C. Hill, CEO

In one of his blogs—Aliens, Earthquakes, and Zombies: A Tale of Redundancy, Garrett C. Hill, CEO, X2nSat writes, “It seems like most action movies in theatres and on TV these days have one or more of these three elements unleashing chaos on the world while the hero saves the day and gets the girl.” In movies, every incident is well scripted, and consequences are usually favourable. However, in real life, one cannot foresee the calamities or expect the best out of a situation. Founded in 1996, California-based X2nSat is always prepared for the worstcase scenarios with its business continuity solutions so that organizations never get interrupted and carry out the essential communications even during unfavourable conditions.

X2nSat was founded with a mission to deliver highly reliable, wireless network and communication solutions to several North American industries. Over the years, the company has strengthened relationships with its partners, employees, and clients who have consistently contributed to its successful journey. In an interview with CIO Applications, Hill talks about X2nSat’s strengths and unique value proposition in the business continuity landscape.

What led to the outset of the company?

We came across situations where many satellite technologies were being developed to cater to the consumer market. However, more than the consumers, satellite technologies deliver great capabilities to enterprises and industrial markets. Taking account of this scenario, we steered the technology in a direction where it could deliver benefits to commercial markets. We provide capabilities that one cannot get with any other solution.

What are the stumbling blocks in the business continuity landscape, and in what ways does X2nSat help its clients deal with them?

The two critical aspects that our customers struggle with are security and resiliency. The recent hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Florida, and Texas justify the fact that natural disasters are often the cause of outages in numerous business sectors. In such situations, satellites perform very well as the need for local infrastructure is less. After the storm, almost all of our sites continued to operate and there were locations in Puerto Rico that were receiving service only from us. From our point of sale (POS) customers’ standpoint, security is a significant factor, as they do not want to compromise their customers’ data in a breach. We offer private network solutions that are not connected to the internet and prevent hackers from tracing any physical path to the database. We provide better security than any firewall.

Could you describe X2nSat’s service portfolio?

We are a full-service network operator and provide services for broadband/data networks, voice communications, and machine-to-machine/IoT.

We are large enough to provide services to the Fortune 50 customers and small enough to have personal relationships with the customers

We also offer engineering consultations along with network design and integration.

With regard to business continuity, we understand nearly every business is dependent on their voice and data connection to the outside world. When that connection fails, whether by natural disaster, man-made accident, or hardware/software failure, the ensuing result can be costly. Our solutions are not only secure, but enable automatic failover for your mission critical applications, keeping your business fully functional until the primary connection is restored.

What strategies does X2nSat employ to deliver business continuity solutions to enterprises?

Most companies buy a second source of the same technology to provide redundancy, meaning they backup fiber with fiber. They miss out on the opportunity to buy diversity with a second technology. Even if they employ a 4G type service, the same fiber feeds the 4G tower and the company suffers from the same outage culprit. The backup plan for business continuity should be reliable and satellite is the only solution, which can live up to that promise with diversity.

What is the unique, disruptive element that X2nSat brings to the business continuity space? What sets the company apart from the competition?

Most IT departments are accustomed to employing the standard products available from the phone company. Since we own and operate the entire infrastructure for our satellite networks, we can build custom solutions that are instantly available throughout America and can be easily accessed globally. We can customize data rates from Bytes to GigaBytes, and can control quality of service (QoS) settings of the network to optimize the performance of any application or voice/video service.

We are one of the only providers who offer Layer 2 metro Ethernet style services in addition to typical Layer 3 (routed) solutions. For instance, many clients are commonly willing to use their own IP number scheme. We can provide such clients with solutions that do not use network address translation (NAT) or generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnels. This simplifies network management and troubleshooting for our customers.

The X2nSat network is built on an entirely different infrastructure unlike its competitors allowing us to scale and reach to our customers instantly. We interact with our clients on calls to review performance and ensure their needs are met. We are large enough to provide services to the Fortune 50 customers and small enough to have personal relationships with the customers.

Can you share a case study where the company helped a client in enhancing their business performance and achieving strategic goals?

One of our customers—a large hospital operator—was using Cisco VoIP and Legacy DMS 100 switches, and needed a solution that would back up their voice services across all their locations. We developed a solution protecting them from local telco outages on their T-1’s or fiber for inbound and outbound calls enabling them to perform hundreds of simultaneous calls across the network. This cost them only one percent of what it would take to backup every line at every site. That’s pretty cheap insurance for a hospital emergency room or call center to have guaranteed service.

Where do you see X2nSat in the next few years?

We take pride in X2nSat’s ability to stay at the forefront of satellite technology. Our engineering team always works towards improving our offerings, and we heavily invest in R&D. In terms of geographical expansion, we have recently been able to complete the construction of our fully redundant satellite gateway in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is now operational and is accessible online. Counting the Las Cruces hub, our National Access Network now comprises of multiple satellite gateways and points-of-presence (PoPs). We celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2016, and are excited for what’s to come in next twenty years!