Network decisions get made one site at a time, usually under deadline, usually with whatever the incumbent proposed.
We work the whole footprint at once.
How it works
Network projects almost never start with a plan. They start with a renewal notice, an outage the backup circuit did not cover, or a new application that made everyone notice latency that was always there. By the time the question reaches someone with budget, it has been framed as one site, one circuit, one carrier. It is rarely any of those things.
We start with what exists: every circuit, every contract end date, every site and what it does during the day. From there the work splits into traffic profiling, topology and redundancy design, an SD-WAN or SASE evaluation when one is warranted, and carrier sourcing across every provider serving your addresses. The comparison includes carriers your incumbent will not bring up. The scope ends when you have a design, a price, and a cutover plan you can defend.
There is no product to sell. Compensation comes from the vendors through the TSD model, so the engagement carries no cost to you and the recommendation follows the requirements rather than a quota.
Start where it applies
Performance complaints have no owner and no measurement
Sites were added over time and every one is built differently
SD-WAN is on the table and nobody can run a bake-off
Circuit contracts are auto-renewing at legacy rates
Site and Traffic Profiling
Slow is not a measurement. Without per site data on utilization, application mix, and time of day, the blame rotates between the circuit, the firewall, and the cloud. Profiling ends that argument by naming what is saturated and when.
Baseline every site
- Peak and 95th percentile utilization per circuit, by hour and day
- Application mix: voice, video, backup windows, SaaS, and guest Wi-Fi
- Headcount, operating hours, and seasonal load at each location
- Latency and packet loss to the applications people actually complain about
The site that generates the most tickets is often not the site with the worst circuit. It is the branch with a ten year old switch stack, or the one backhauling every cloud session through a data center three states away.
Topology and Redundancy Design
Footprints grow by acquisition and by whoever was available that quarter. The result is forty sites and twelve designs, with redundancy that exists on paper and shares a conduit in the ground. The work here is standardization plus honest failure testing.
Map the failure paths
- Physical diversity verified at the entrance facility, not on the order
- Failover behavior tested with live voice, not with a ping
- Site tiering: which locations justify a second circuit and which do not
- MPLS, broadband, and LTE or 5G failover mapped per location
Two carriers is not diversity when both lease the same fiber from the same underlying provider. Ask for the facility record and the building entrance point, and expect that answer to take two weeks.
SD-WAN and SASE Evaluation
Every SD-WAN vendor demos well. The difference shows up in brownout handling, who owns the last mile, and what the managed service covers when a circuit degrades at midnight. A bake-off only works when the criteria are set before the demos start.
Test the claims
- Underlay ownership: who supplies the circuits and who fixes them
- Packet loss steering measured against live voice, not synthetic traffic
- What runs on the appliance versus in the SASE cloud
- Co-management rights: what your team can change without a ticket
The expensive mistake is signing a three year overlay term against circuits that renew on five different dates. Align the contract end dates first, or you will pay to break something in year two.
Carrier Sourcing and Negotiation
Auto-renewal is the default, and the default is expensive. Rates set three to five years ago rarely survive contact with current pricing, but the savings only land if you cancel inside the notice window. Sourcing is a calendar problem before it is a pricing problem.
Price against the market
- Contract end dates and notice windows pulled from every current agreement
- Carrier availability confirmed by street address, not by coverage map
- Install intervals quoted per site, including construction and permit exposure
- SLA remedies read in full: credits, escalation path, chronic outage clauses
The incumbent's best number arrives only after a competing order is real, and never in the first conversation. Budget for 60 to 90 days of billing overlap on a switch, because disconnects lag installs and nobody should attempt a hard cutover on a Monday.
How the engagement runs
Understand your environment
Current inventory, contract dates, sites, and what the business actually needs the technology to do.
Define where you want to go
Target state, growth requirements, and success criteria, all agreed before a single vendor is contacted.
Evaluate solutions
The requirement goes to every provider that can meet it, and the responses come back on terms that can be read side by side.
Define a solution and negotiate terms
Pricing, term length, service levels, and exit language are settled before signature rather than discovered on the first invoice.
Oversee activation
We stay in the project through installation, porting, and acceptance, and we escalate on the client's behalf when dates slip.
What you walk away with
A current state inventory of every circuit, site, term date, and monthly cost
A topology diagram per site tier, with the failover path drawn for each
A carrier comparison matrix: pricing, install intervals, SLA terms, contract length
A cutover plan with dates, owners, and disconnect instructions for outgoing circuits
Questions we get
- We already have a preferred carrier. Is there a reason to run this anyway?
- Usually yes, and it often ends with the same carrier. A real competitive process gives your incumbent a reason to reprice, and it shows you which of your sites they cannot serve well. If the outcome is that you stay put on better terms and a shorter renewal, that is a good result.
- Half our sites are rural. Does a competitive process help there?
- It helps differently. Where two providers exist you get real negotiating room; where one exists you get an accurate read on fixed wireless, cable, and satellite as failover rather than a guess. Most of the work at those addresses is qualification: confirming what can be installed and what construction charges apply. Knowing that early keeps one address from holding up the entire rollout.
- Do we have to replace MPLS to move to SD-WAN?
- No. Plenty of designs keep MPLS where it earns its keep and put dedicated internet or broadband everywhere else. The common path is a hybrid for a year or two while circuit terms expire, then a per site decision based on what the traffic profile shows. Removing MPLS on day one is how you discover which applications were quietly depending on it.
- How are you paid if the engagement costs us nothing?
- Compensation comes from the provider through the TSD model, which stands for technology services distributor. When a contract is signed, the provider pays a distribution fee that would otherwise go to its own direct sales team. Your pricing comes off the same rate card either way.
- What if the right answer is staying where we are?
- That gets recommended when it is correct. A renegotiated contract with the incumbent, or leaving a working system alone, counts as a finished engagement and gets the same work as a migration.
- When should we start relative to our contract end date?
- Roughly six months out. Auto-renewal notice windows commonly close 60 to 90 days before term end, and starting inside that window removes most of the leverage. Check your specific renewal clause, since the window is the constraint rather than the end date.
The market we compare for you.
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
Bring a site list with street addresses, your two most recent carrier invoices, and any contract with a renewal date in the next twelve months. That is enough to say whether there is anything worth pursuing.
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
We ask what you have, what is expiring, and what is not working, then tell you whether there is work here worth doing. If Elk Run is not the right fit for the decision in front of you, we will say so.