I believe that customer service, especially for telecommunications providers, needs to be more of a value set or culture that is instilled within a company’s core. Employees need to genuinely believe in it. From my experience, organizations either have this true value set or they don’t, and it becomes apparent it’s either one or the other pretty quickly in most cases. Immediately upon entering a phone conversation as a customer, I can tell if I am the entity that is indeed ‘always right’ or if I am simply a burden amongst a sea of similar burdens that someone must take on during their work day.

In my opinion, we need to get back down to basics. Nothing works perfectly 100% of the time, we all know that. But what a difference it makes to know that in the event that something does go wrong, you can expect a fully qualified, living human being to pick up your call rather than a recording that is “sorry, but didn’t get that … please state the reason for your call today.” We have all been there, and never want to go back.

We’ve heard it a million times, and as cliché as it sounds, it is the truth. The customer is always right. They can make or break an organization. Technology today allows an unsatisfied customer to broadcast their opinion and experience to the world with the click of a button. As a service provider you need to be more than just a self-proclaimed, well-oiled customer service machine; because in the end, if the customer doesn’t believe it, you simply have a menu of services with nothing behind them.

Many service providers today tend to walk into sales meetings with a menu and ask a potential customer what they are looking for. But that prospect may not need what’s on their menu; a different solution may be required. That’s why today’s sales HAVE to be more consultative. What is required by a customer to run their business as smoothly as possible? What exactly are these services going to be used for? Once we have the answer to these questions, we can customize and deliver the best possible solution.

There are basically three flavors of disaster recovery planning for which clients engage with carriers. They can be provided in conjunction with each other or separately. These plans mean different things to each individual company utilizing them as defined by their business. Each has varying levels of importance based upon business need:

1. Internet Access: A company needs internet access in order to conduct day to day business. However, companies that gain business via the web are looking for diverse routes and more than one carrier. Due to the nature of their business that centers on Internet transactions, they cannot afford to put all of their eggs in one basket.

2. Basic Connectivity: When a business has multiple facilities, connectivity between these locations must be available at all times. From a disaster recovery planning standpoint, a network that will maintain that connectivity to each geographically dispersed location at all times is ideal.

3. Data Center Back Up: It used to be that a company’s primary data center was located at a company headquarters while their secondary backup centers would be remote. We are seeing more and more customers will have a primary, off-site data center in addition to secondary backup locations that are also remote. Connectivity is needed between all of these sites. It is the organization’s business model and goals that determine the need for this connection and at what level. For example, pharmaceutical companies require huge amounts of data storage, so they will keep all information in two or three places. If one of those data centers goes down, this information can be found in the alternative locations. Some companies have applications that are running at all times, i.e. their customers are constantly tracking their online orders or making purchases, etc. If anything happens to either the server connectivity or the servers themselves these companies have an absolute need for another that is standing by, ready to go online.

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Check in next week for Part Two of The Consultative Approach to Disaster Recovery Planning.

Chris Williams, Veroxity’s Director of Technology, along with Russ Pelham, our Senior Sales Engineer, will discuss the differences between MPLS and VPLS solutions for the Enterprise. If you have specific questions related to this topic, we would be happy to answer them during Thursday’s session so please email me at: rpicard@veroxity.com.

Hope you can join us!

Cheers,
Renay

There is no question that oversubscribed networks need some type of mechanism to ensure no interruption but my doubts about implementing a QoS system are rooted in my view of how a customer might be affected. As a customer, if you are not buying the highest priority level, then your service quality becomes a function of the priorities level purchased by other customers. This leaves you pitted against other customers on the same network where your status can constantly change based on others willingness to purchase an advantage. Increasingly, customers are looking for networks that don’t deploy QoS because they prefer the idea of a level playing field. Their preference is to shape their own traffic before it gets on to the network.

Recently, Veroxity has reached a decision to take a capacity management approach designed to ensure that there is always adequate capacity such that prioritization and classes of service are not required and SLAs are met. Customers that need assistance in shaping their own traffic are offered a managed solution, adjusting their traffic at the edge so that no prioritization is necessary at the core. My belief is that QoS, while positively utilized on some networks, is not something that is a necessity on a VPLS network such as our own.

For my colleagues, the concept of cloud computing is “old hat.” Veroxity’s goal is to enable technology projects and applications via powerful Internet connections and Ethernet solutions so we are well aware of the power that comes with operating in the cloud. But I find that many of us non-techies are still trying to sort it out. What does cloud computing really mean? I found a few great clips out on YouTube that I found helpful.

I particularly liked the concepts that I found in this clip by CNET News entitled, “What is cloud computing?” If you think of “the cloud” as the Internet, this makes a lot of sense: Dan Farber, Editor in Chief of CNET News, states “”When there’s enough bandwidth, security, and reliability, the notion of the cloud will disappear – just like serving up electricity, we’ll be serving up data, applications and writing apps directly to the cloud.”

Salesforce describes this idea as “shared infrastructure” without software. Whatever the app is, just login, customize and you are ready to roll. It requires less IT resource while delivering security and performance. Think streamlined – no servers, no complex applications that are a nightmare to upgrade.

I believe that we have been doing much of this through SaaS products already and now the concept is being extended.

Cheers,

Renay

Read the press release: Veroxity Technology Partners® Named an Inc. Fastest Growing Company

Cheers,

Renay

Equipment Protection – For each Active component in a piece of equipment, a Stand-By component exists to recover in the event of a failure to the Active component.

Critical components (Processors, Matrixes, High-Speed Line Cards, etc.) in a “carrier-class” network should maintain a 1+1 protection scheme.  Meaning, for every 1 active component, 1 standby component exists.  Less critical components (Low-Speed Line Cards, etc.) in a “carrier-class” network will maintain an n+1 protection scheme.  Meaning for a number greater than 1 active components, 1 standby component exists.

Hand-Off Protection – Active and Stand-By Interfaces are utilized to establish connectivity between a Service Provider and End Customer.

Hand-Off Protection is only available for TDM based interfaces.  Hand-Off Protection Technologies do not currently exist for Ethernet based services.

Network Protection – A technology which performs pre-defined steps to maintain functionality in the event of a failure.

For SONET services, network protection is ring-based.  When an equipment or fiber outage occurs, steps are taken to re-route the traffic over standby network.  The standby network is predetermined and reserved.  Fail-over time for SONET protection schemes is sub 50 milliseconds.  I plan on going into the definitions, advantages, and disadvantages of the available SONET protection schemes in a later blog entry.

For Ethernet or IP services, network protection can come in varying flavors.  Data Networks utilize technologies (OSPF, BGP, MPLS, etc.) to re-route traffic in the event of a failure.  As the failure occurs, all nodes in the network communicate to determine the best routing for future traffic.  Because the re-routing, or convergence, is not predetermined, fail-over time can be from seconds to minutes.  Data Network equipment providers are continually striving to develop technologies to minimize the convergence time.

Circuit Protection – For each active-path across a Service Provider’s network, a protect-path exists to recover in the event of a failure.

With traditional SONET based protection-schemes, protection occurs across entire rings, with all traffic on the ring failing-over simultaneously.  The major disadvantage of ring-based schemes is that traffic has to hop across rings, frequently collaping into a single location where the rings interconnect.  Circuit Protection allows the Service Provider to create two paths from end to end.  When traffic enters the network, it is duplicated and sent across both paths.  Each path is routed so that no single location is utilized by both paths.  When both data streams are received at the last piece of equipment in the network, a selector utilizes the best signal.  Circuit Protection is sometimes called Path Protection.

Veroxity utilizes Circuit Protection for routing of all SONET and Ethernet-Over-SONET services.  By utilizing Circuit Protection, Veroxity guarantees complete circuit diversity from end to end for each circuit provisioned.  Which leads us to our diversity discussion.

In it, Michael Murphy talks about the benefits that social media has for the Telecom industry. Too often, more traditional industries are concerned with negative feedback and comments, thinking that by blogging, Tweeting, etc. they will open themselves up to a heap of trouble. I could not disagree more. As Michael mentions, opening up the dialog between you and your customers brings trust, better customer relations and product improvements. It leads to transparency which is something that is very important to this industry.

I would also encourage Telecom organizations to look at which social media technologies their customers and prospects care about. Do they follow Twitter? Which blogs do they read? What organizations and online communities do they belong to? These are all key pieces of the social media puzzle.

Cheers,

Renay