Asia-Pacific has emerged as a critical growth market for global VPN providers. According to a recent study, APAC will soon become the world’s largest VPN market and occupy 27% of global market share. The report also predicts VPN growth in APAC will be faster than other regions, and names China and Japan as key VPN markets.
But despite favorable market conditions, APAC is a difficult region to penetrate. Service providers today face rising competition throughout the region, in addition to logistical barriers like connectivity gaps, limited infrastructure, regulatory challenges, and high operating costs.
While these challenges are significant, it’s possible to overcome them with the help of regional VPN enabler like Zenlayer. Read ahead to learn how one VPN provider is overcoming these challenges and thriving in APAC with the help of Zenlayer’s leading edge cloud services.
Key takeaways:
· The company successfully expanded into to APAC and added more locations by leveraging Zenlayer Bare Metal.
· Switching to Zenlayer’s 95% burstable aggregate bandwidth billing led to a simpler process and cost savings.
· Leveraging Zenlayer’s premium network blend improved service availability and reliability.
About the company
The client is a well-known global service provider offering VPN in addition to other privacy and security services for individuals and businesses.
The company was experiencing surging demand for VPN, partly due to rising censorship from governments and other agencies. Internet users in restricted countries increasingly need VPNs to browse the web freely and access information. This is especially true in APAC’s developing markets.
The VPN provider needed to capitalize on this demand and make inroads into APAC. Its main goals were to grow its regional user base and enrich its VPN service by offering more location choices for existing customers in other regions.
The challenge
The company faced multiple barriers to entry in APAC. For example, many parts of China and the surrounding APAC region lack modern network infrastructure, making it difficult to provide local VPN services. On top of that, the company needed geolocated servers across multiple countries. Deploying services manually is time-consuming and expensive.
Due to the ever-evolving nature of VPN services, the business also needed to quickly spin up test servers in various locations. As VPN servers need to constantly reroute user traffic all over the world, the combined costs of keeping existing servers running and frequently spinning up new ones for tests heavily cut into the business’s bottom line.
It was clear that the company needed an infrastructure partner to overcome these challenges and expand quickly into APAC. However, it was difficult to find a provider offering the right performance, global coverage, and pricing.
Solution: Zenlayer’s global edge computing services
The client discovered Zenlayer and was immediately impressed with the company’s portfolio of edge computing services.
· Zenlayer partners with the largest telco providers in APAC, for deep coverage throughout the region.
· The company provides access to thousands of peers around the world, and a has strong track record of successfully helping businesses expand into emerging markets.
· Zenlayer also maintains a strong network of edge PoPs throughout APAC.
After seeing the speed at which Zenlayer was able to set up servers, and the strong test results, the business decided to partner with Zenlayer to deploy VPN PoPs in Beijing, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Manila, and Moscow.
Results
· With the help of Zenlayer, the client successfully switched from unpredictable data transfer pricing to a more predictable aggregate bandwidth model. This helped the business cut costs with unmetered bandwidth billing.
· Zenlayer’s pricing model not only helped the business simplify and improve cost efficiency, but also enabled them to move traffic between underutilized and overloaded servers. This helped to reduce downtime and conserve bandwidth.
· Zenlayer’s pay-as-you-go model with 95% burstable bandwidth gave the business more agility to scale their operations. It also helped prevent them from overcommitting to higher bandwidth tiers out of the fear that sudden spikes of traffic would accrue huge financial penalties down the road.
Before finding Zenlayer, the company tested servers from other providers in the region for network performance. Not only did few providers offer geolocated servers, which were vital for VPN services to give users the option of selecting their desired regional IP address, but even fewer were able to meet their performance requirements while remaining fiscally feasible.
Zenlayer’s geolocated servers passed their tests with flying colors with 15% lower latency on average compared to other providers in the area. Additionally, Zenlayer’s network blend of the best local carriers in APAC ensured stable performance that keeps the Client’s VPN service at maximum availability for their users worldwide.
Zenlayer: A trusted VPN enabler
Looking forward, Zenlayer will continue to provide edge compute services that include bare metal and virtual machines — giving the company the agility it needs to quickly scale and test out key markets for further expansions.
With a trusted partner like Zenlayer, the business is now able to dedicate less of its resources to infrastructure and focus instead on developing new features and services that maximize value for its global users.
Discover the power of Zenlayer
If your business is looking to expand its global footprint, improve experiences for users, or accelerate apps or services, talk to a Zenlayer solution expert today!
For instant provisioning, head over to zenConsole — our self-service platform that lets you deploy around the world in minutes.
