Month: September 2013

Sprint Rallies with New Wireline Business Services Developments

by , posted in Network
Brian Washburn
Brian Washburn

Summary Bullets:

  • Wireline revenue erosion aside, Sprint continues to invest and keep its wireline services portfolio fresh.
  • Sprint returns to transport with Ethernet Wave, but there is little room to differentiate in this highly competitive space.

For many years now, Sprint has been meeting its challenges in wireless while facing ongoing struggles in its wireline business services.  As a wireless provider, Sprint has household name brand recognition.  Fewer people know the company as a still-major national and global provider of an array of business services.  In wireline, the provider has focused on retaining existing customers with high-quality service instead of investing heavily to recruit new clients.  Sprint has shown very high customer satisfaction for its business wireline services.  However, factors such as falling prices, discontinued legacy services and natural attrition have taken their toll: For H1 2013, for example, Sprint’s net wireline revenues were down 10% year-over-year from H1 2012; wireless now represents about 90% of Sprint’s revenues and profits. Continue reading “Sprint Rallies with New Wireline Business Services Developments” →

Customers Expect Around the Clock Care from SMEs – Social Media is the Answer

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate
Gary Barton
Gary Barton

Summary Bullets:

  • Customer service is the best way to keep and lose customers, customer contact is the best way to increase sales. Social media is a cost effective way of keeping in touch with customers.
  • Increased use of video can help strengthen a businesses’ connection with its customers.

O2 has published a survey suggesting that 72% of customers in the UK will ‘never forgive’ a small business for poor customer service. In the majority of circumstances customers can accept some mistakes; it is the way they are dealt with that ultimately defines how the consumer views a business. O2’s survey also reinforces the known phenomenon that bad experiences are much more likely to be shared by customers than positive ones. Customers want to be able to contact businesses quickly and increasingly, to get that response at any time of day or night. Hosted contact centre solutions are an excellent way for SMEs to improve their accessibility to customers. Enterprises should also now expect that their contact centre solutions are truly multi-channel combining more traditional IP telephony with online features including IM and click-to-chat.  Continue reading “Customers Expect Around the Clock Care from SMEs – Social Media is the Answer” →

Microsoft Will Finally Have Its Own Devices After Buying Nokia

by , posted in Communicate
ITCB-TimBanting
Tim Banting

Summary Bullets:

  • In order to increase revenue in the “post-PC” era, Microsoft needs to create a compelling proposition to attract consumers and business buyers in foundational smartphone and tablet markets.
  • To fulfill its vision of becoming a devices and services company and to maximize profit, Microsoft needs to decouple its reliance on its current platform partners through building its own hardware. Nokia provides the much needed means of doing so.

My old school badge on my blazer read “Nemo Sibi Nascitur” (Latin: “No one is born unto himself alone”) highlighting the need to work together and support each other, something that true partnerships are all about. Continue reading “Microsoft Will Finally Have Its Own Devices After Buying Nokia” →

M2M Evolution Conference: Platform Battles and Optimistic Use Cases

by Kitty Weldon, posted in Mobilize
Kathryn Weldon
Kathryn Weldon

Summary Bullets:

  • M2M Evolution (in Las Vegas from August 27th to 29th) featured a ‘Battle of the Platforms,’ with the following winners: Etherios (winning for two categories – best horizontal and vertical platform), Amdocs (best provisioning platform), ThingWorx (best application development platform) and Xively (best non-platform implementation).
  • The ‘battle’ seemed to favor small companies that offer cloud-enabled development platforms to simplify M2M application development and management in a fragmented delivery ecosystem.  The implication is that this need for simplicity is being met with innovative solutions that empower businesses to bring together the pieces they need to create M2M solutions across device types, networks and disparate vertical industries.

The M2M Evolution Conference had an overarching message relating to the evolution of the industry; we are apparently evolving from a customized, expensive and difficult-to-implement one-off application environment to a simpler, gentler ecosystem where cloud-based platforms provide connectivity to and from any device; configure, manage, upgrade and troubleshoot devices even in very large deployments; and enlighten businesses through data visualization.  The winners of the ‘Battle of the Platforms’ have many of these themes in common when they describe their products. Continue reading “M2M Evolution Conference: Platform Battles and Optimistic Use Cases” →

Verizon’s Rapid Delivery Initiative Improves Efficiency and the Customer Experience

by , posted in Communicate
Cindy Whelan
Cindy Whelan

Summary Bullets:

  • Verizon has completely redesigned its service delivery model, fundamentally changing its approach and supporting technologies, as well as organization and process flows.
  • The initiative, dubbed ‘Rapid Delivery,’ has increased operational efficiency, leading to reductions in the time required for quotes, orders and contracting.  Tightened data integrity means greater accuracy throughout the sales process.

Improving the customer experience is on every carrier’s radar.  One of the charges often levied against very large carriers (and large companies in general for that matter) is that it’s often difficult to get things done.  If there is a service or billing error, resolution can become a time-consuming, frustrating effort for the customer.  Over the last several years, a number of providers have invested in initiatives to improve customer self-service tools such as portals as well as internal tools used by sales and support teams.  Revamping the customer engagement process from pre-sales through deployment and ongoing support is a daunting task for any provider, but for carriers that have grown through acquisition, consolidating multiple systems and processes acquired over many years adds another layer of complexity to an already sensitive, complicated mission.  Verizon is one of those providers that has taken on the challenge; so far, it seems to be making exceptional headway in its efforts. Continue reading “Verizon’s Rapid Delivery Initiative Improves Efficiency and the Customer Experience” →

Three Bits of Advice from Discussing the Impact of VMware’s NSX at VMworld

by , posted in Network
Mike Fratto
Mike Fratto

Summary Bullets:

  • Networking vendors need to embrace homogeneity and provide frictionless integration with virtual environments. Your value add occurs below the hypervisor layer.
  • Networking vendors—any vendor for that matter—should integrate with as many platforms as possible. Remove a barrier to adoption and you’ll reach a wider audience.

Embrace homogeneity. While walking the expo floor at VMworld last week, I spent a lot of time talking to vendors about software defined networking and what VMware’s NSX platform meant. There’s a surprising amount of confusion about what SDN is and how vendors can make the most of it, but the simplest way I can make sense of NSX is homogeneity. Server virtualization and all the processes make a data center dynamic like VM motions, robust storage, and scale-up/in/out architectures rely on running VMs being oblivious to what is happening underneath them. The virtual world is homogenous. It doesn’t matter if the CPU is from Intel or AMD. It doesn’t matter if the storage is FC or iSCSI based. Regardless of where a VM runs, the platform it sees is the same. That enables enterprises to swap out a FC SAN with an iSCSI array with nary a hiccup in the VM. Continue reading “Three Bits of Advice from Discussing the Impact of VMware’s NSX at VMworld” →

VMware and Collaboration: What a Long Strange Trip it’s About to Become

by , posted in Communicate
Brad Shimmin
Brad Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

  • First VMware pulls back from an early file sharing and sync tool; then it sells its email platform to Telligent. So, what’s left for collaboration at VMware?
  • In a unique but potentially risky move, the company has thrown its enterprise social networking offering into the waiting arms of its endpoint management suite, VMware Horizon.

When I arrived at VMworld 2013 in San Francisco last week, I didn’t expect much in the way of razzle-dazzle from VMware’s End User Computing product group. This conference has historically resembled a three ring circus, spinning around the many wonders of workload virtualization. On that, the conference did not disappoint, featuring much ado over both software defined networking and hybrid cloud services. Continue reading “VMware and Collaboration: What a Long Strange Trip it’s About to Become” →