The decision to seek out Vanco started when Siemens' central management decided that the company needed to migrate corporate networks to state-of-the-art technology that would use more flexible and efficient Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks, allowing Siemens to "get rid of proprietary networks and tools," Kuhn said. "So we went for a managed network... to manage things from the customer edge routers, end to end, across the whole network."

Kuhn attributed the performance improvements to the use of MPLS technology and to Vanco's role "as a spider in the network," meaning Vanco manages data at every point at which traffic crosses from one major service provider to another. Siemens' major global network providers are AT&T Inc. and T-Systems Enterprise Services GmbH.

He explained that at each handoff between the two major physical networks, Vanco prioritizes traffic based on its importance (as established by Siemens), so that traffic for an SAP application, for example, gets get higher network priority over, say, e-mail or a file transfer. Vanco works in 2,000 Siemens networks points of presence in five continents, Vanco said.

About 100 network administrators at Siemens have reported that they "see and feel improvements with fewer outages, better service levels, and a better feeling overall," according to Kuhn.

Kuhn said the migration from the old network, called the Corporate IP Network, to the new network, called Siemens Network Exchange, with its managed services and the public MPLS networks, involved a "big learning curve."