Key points

• Gained faster, more reliable access to cross-border Megaport environment via Zenlayer Private Connect and Metro Fiber
• Enabled direct, compliant access to AWS and Azure cloud resources within China with Zenlayer Cloud Connect
• Achieved high availability through a redundant, fault-tolerant network architecture

 

About the customer

Industry: Pharmaceutical technology manufacturing
Needs: Cross-border connectivity, public cloud access, network redundancy, compliance
Zenlayer services used: Private Connect, Cloud Connect, Metro Fiber

The customer, a global healthcare technology manufacturer, needed to connect their Shanghai office to their existing global Megaport network to support secure, high-performance access to cloud resources and internal systems across regions. As the company’s reliance on public cloud resources like AWS and Azure continued to grow, they wanted a more reliable alternative to the inconsistent IPsec tunnels they’ve been using for cloud access.

As a longtime Zenlayer partner, Megaport introduced the manufacturer to us for our track record in delivering fast, compliant, and performance-optimized networking solutions throughout the Asia-Pacific. The customer needed cross-border connectivity, streamlined cloud access, and regionally compliant infrastructure to ensure their hybrid environment could operate and scale smoothly and securely.

 

The challenge: overcoming cross-border connectivity issues and regulatory complexity in China

The customer was using IPsec tunnels from Shanghai to access their internal global network on Megaport’s backbone but encountered persistent packet loss, latency spikes, and overall unreliable performance that presented security risks and slowed productivity. These are issues commonly experienced by organizations routing traffic from within China to networks outside the mainland, like Hong Kong.

They also needed public cloud connectivity within the mainland, particularly to AWS in Beijing and Microsoft Azure China, which proved challenging for them to establish while remaining compliant with the country’s strict and rapidly evolving local regulations. Managing multiple vendors to achieve this level of connectivity would have introduced further complexity and delays.

 

Extending Megaport access with high-performance connectivity

To remedy the customer’s ongoing cross-border performance issues, we replaced their unreliable IPsec tunnels by provisioning a high-performance private link between their locations in Shanghai and Hong Kong. This dedicated route serves as a direct bridge to the customer’s existing Megaport environment, dramatically reducing latency and packet loss.

Leveraging our global private backbone to ensure end-to-end performance and visibility, we were able to give the customer greater confidence in the reliability and consistency of their data transfers. Instead of routing their traffic through unpredictable public network paths, their network is now optimized for high-volume enterprise workloads.

We also established last-mile connectivity via a metro fiber from the customer’s Shanghai office to our local data center, offering a fully integrated solution that eliminated the need for piecing together multiple vendors.

 

Establishing compliant local connectivity to essential cloud services

Beyond improving external connectivity, the customer also needed secure, reliable access to AWS and Azure cloud platforms. To ensure connectivity quality and provide redundancy, we provisioned an additional metro fiber from the customer’s Shanghai office to our nearby data center, which connects to the cloud services delivered to the customer. We also built a high-performance private link between our Shanghai and Beijing nodes for added resilience.

From there, we leveraged Zenlayer Cloud Connect, our direct onramp to the world’s top clouds, to give the customer low-latency access to their AWS and Azure cloud environments within China.

Our local solutions team worked closely and proactively with the customer’s team to ensure every deployment met local regulations, eliminating compliance risks and accelerating their time-to-market without the burden of navigating China’s complex policy landscape alone.

 

Future-proofing operations via network redundancy

To ensure reliability and business continuity, the healthcare technology manufacturer strengthened their networking architecture with dedicated secondary connections from our data centers in Shanghai to their cloud platforms in Shanghai and Beijing. This dual-path setup minimizes the risk of downtime and enables seamless failover between network routes to keep critical operations online.

By building redundancy into their infrastructure from edge to cloud, the customer gained greater resilience without added complexity. They can now manage connectivity across multiple environments with ease to ensure smooth data flow and consistent performance.

This flexible, fault-tolerant network design gives the global manufacturer a strong foundation for their hybrid cloud expansion and empowers them to scale quickly as their operations evolve across regions.

 

Looking ahead

With a strong hybrid cloud foundation in place, the healthcare technology leader is now better equipped to scale their operations across China and beyond. Zenlayer will continue to support the customer’s need for flexibility, performance, and regulatory compliance as they expand their global IT infrastructure.

 

Streamline enterprise networking with a one-stop shop

We leveraged our ultra-low latency global backbone, direct cloud onramps, and end-to-end solutioning and support to help the customer streamline Megaport and public cloud access in mainland China and Hong Kong.

If you’re looking to expand your business’s global footprint, streamline operations, or accelerate apps or services to improve user experience, talk to a Zenlayer solution expert today!

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