Belnet will completely renew the optical backbone of the FPS Chancellery of the Prime Minister. The project allows the Chancellery to make its ICT service offering available to other government organisations more efficiently and more quickly. In this way, Belnet further strengthens its role as a trusted connectivity partner of the federal government.
Higher performance connections
The FPS Chancellery of the Prime Minister provides various ICT services to other federal organisations. The Chancellery will offer these services via a renewed backbone by the end of March 2020.
Belnet will build an optical ring between the data centre of the Chancellery and other federal data centres in Brussels. For the construction of this optical ring, Belnet will be using DWDM, a technology that allows several network services to be brought together on the same fibre-optic cable, with complete separation of the data flows. In this way, we increase redundancy, but we also provide more efficient connections. In addition, the optical ring offers almost unlimited possibilities in terms of capacity.
“Thanks to the optical ring, our public service will be even better integrated into the federal ICT landscape”
Nicolas Locoge, FPS Chancellery of the Prime Minister
New Point of Presence
The data centre of the Chancellery will be connected to the Belnet network in the same way as the existing federal data centres and other Points of Presence (PoPs), through fully redundant fiber optic paths. In this way, the Chancellery’s data centre becomes a new Point of Presence on the Belnet network. This is a win-win situation since we can also connect other government organisations to our network via this new node.
Due to its location within the buildings of the FPS Chancellery, the new Point of Presence also offers additional benefits in terms of information security. Some federal institutions have already expressed their interest in connecting their organisation via the new node.
Operational synergies and cost savings
For many years the FPS Chancellery of the Prime Minister has been creating operational synergies in the field of IT. Nicolas Locoge, General Director a.i. of the Support Services at FPS Chancellery: “Belnet has been one of our partners for connectivity since many years. By bundling the global delivery of that aspect, we can significantly reduce technical complexity and entrust the overall management of our needs to Belnet. The cost saving is further enhanced by the fact that Belnet is present in the majority of federal organizations. Moreover, thanks to the optical ring, our public service will be even better integrated into the federal ICT landscape.”
Single point of contact
Belnet will act as a single point of contact for the complete management of the Chancellery backbone. In the past, Belnet has already carried out similar projects for other federal public services, such as the WAN network for the FPS Economy which connects the geographically dispersed sites of the FPS with each other and with the headquarters in Brussels.