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Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead

By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent

Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.

When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.

The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.

Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.

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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, big data, customer care, KPIs, network monitoring, procativecare | Responses

10 Lessons from Volleyball

By Peter on Monday, May 20

I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...

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Tagged hiring, strategy, volleyball

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...

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Tagged emerging threats, interop, malware, security

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...

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Tagged bss, carrier, ericsson, huawei, interoperability, nfv, nokia siemens networks, nsn, oss, sdn, software telco

SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

By Rich Tehrani on Thursday, May 16

Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space...

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Tagged help desk, itsm, mdm, sysaid

Avaya Takes Networking Lead in SPB

By Rich Tehrani on Wednesday, May 15

At Interop Las Vegas 2013 Avaya was demonstrating their real-world Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) solutions and while interoperating with Spirent, HP and...

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Tagged alcatel-lucent, avaya, hp, interop, lucent, mpls, networking, spb, spirent, zeus kerravala

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, May 14

The software telco(r)evolution representing the move from hardware to software is perhaps the biggest trend in the world of carrier telecom this...

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Tagged acme packet, alianza, etsi, hosted ims, nfv, oracle, software telco, software telco congress, virtualization

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The Derby Capital Play

September 13, 2012

Sherman Henderson, former chair of Lightyear Networks and COMPTEL, has a new gig at Derby Capital. There were a few events where Derby Capital was explaining their deal, but my pal went and explained it to me.

So Derby Capital will bring new business to a carrier - like Star2Star and Windstream. The agent will be buying in for an equity plan. Not cheap either.

Posted in agents

Tagged: agents : Related Tags: derby capital, equity stake, derby, capital, equity

The VAR/Agent Comparison

September 12, 2012

At Channel Partners Expo in Orlando for TCA. Our first member networking event last night went very well with a good sized crowd. Today we have the TCA's 6th Channel Chief Summit with guest speaker John Zanni of Parallels.

The top Channel executives and even the bigger Master Agencies are all chasing VAR's. And this show is so cloud themed an agent would be hard pressed to find a telco element, which I think leads to less Agents, but perhaps not more VARs, since they have their own shows, including DreamForce this week.

While taking with one channel head, he mentioned that the numbers guys always want justification to continuing paying on that line item called commissions.

Posted in CLEC, TCA, VAR, agents, channel, commissions

Tagged: agents, channel partners, clec, TCA, VAR : Related Tags: household names, channel, cisco, value, agents, compare

The Renaming of Things

September 11, 2012

M5 Networks, the Hosted UC company that Shoretel bought, was renamed Shoretel Sky.

Smoothstone was renamed West IP Communications.

"The Rural Cellular Association has rebranded its organization as the Competitive Carrier Association to help all competitive carriers compete more effectively against the two biggest carriers in the market" - the former RBOCs, VZW and ATT.

Compuquip Technologies Divests Managed IT Services Division to All Covered, Continues to Operate Internet Security, Cabling and Software Businesses.

Posted in Marketing, mergers

Tagged: marketing, mergers : Related Tags:

Equinix Sells Off Data Centers

September 7, 2012

"Equinix today announced plans to sell 16 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers located throughout the United States to an investment group consisting of 365 Main, Crosslink Capital and Housatonic Partners in a transaction valued at approximately $75 million. After the close of the transaction, 365 Main will own and manage the 16 data centers, led by industry veterans Chris Dolan, CEO, and Jamie McGrath, COO."

"Nine of the 16 data centers are in markets Equinix will exit with the close of the sale. Those markets include Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Nashville, Phoenix, Pittsburg, St. Louis and Tampa.

Posted in data center, mergers

Tagged: data center, mergers : Related Tags: markets equinix, centers markets, centers, equinix, markets

Channel Moves

September 5, 2012

Zayo decided to keep the AboveNet channel intact with Angelo Germani in charge. Zayo announced that zColo's products and services will join Ethernet, Wavelength and IP products for sale via channel partners.

Windstream is partnering with Lifesize (a division of Logitech) for HD Videoconferencing equipment. Paetec has long offered equipment for lease to SMB to go with services.

Posted in TCA, agents, channel, conferencing, hosted uc, jobs, voip, wireless, xo

Tagged: 8x8, agents, hiring, mvno, paetec, TCA, video conferencing, windstream, zayo : Related Tags: channel manager, channel, manager, service

Brad Thor's Black List

September 4, 2012

I like spy novels. Since James Bond, I have been reading spy novels from Ludlum, Lustbader and Jack Higgins. The new breed of authors in this gnre are very good - Barry Eisler, Vince Flynn, Daniel Silva, Brian Haig, Randy Wayne White and David Hagberg. When I was reading Richard Clarke's novels, it was said that sometimes you get more truth in fiction than non-fiction.

Posted in Internet, cellular, politics, privacy, security, technology

Tagged: att, books, cellular, facebook, google, privacy, rant, security : Related Tags: power, thought, internet, google, security, novels

3 Lessons From Radio Shack

September 4, 2012

Before a plane ride, if I am out of books to read, I run to B&N. The last two trips have been a waste of time. One trip the sales clerk asked me what I was looking for, but they were out of stock on two of the books, but offered to order it online for me. Lately sales is about "Is it in stock, because I want it now."

Posted in Internet, Marketing, Web 2.0, sales and selling

Tagged: customer service, facebook, marketing, sales, sellecom : Related Tags: radio shack, explain policy, customer expectations, store clerk, store, customer

Casting a Wide Net

August 31, 2012

When I read that VZ and Sprint signed of to offer Office 365, I thought, "More me-too for this industry." Then I read further down where 42,000 Microsoft partners are also going to be reselling Office 365 and I about fell over. Everyone is offering Office! One big Red Ocean.

Looking at the Talking Cloud 100 cloud providers, a large number of them are data backup providers and Google Apps integrators. I can see how a Google Apps integrator can be competitive, but 30 or 40 data backup companies?

Posted in CLEC, sales and selling

Tagged: clec, microsoft, sales, sellecom, selling : Related Tags: everyone, google, start, going, office, sales

The Moment of Truth in Sales

August 31, 2012

ZMOT is the zero moment of truth. It has changed significantly. If you believe the HBR article about solution selling being dead, then you believe that for savvy buyers, the salesperson is relegated to being a price jockey. It might be true for really technical services like IAAS.

Posted in Marketing

Tagged: google, marketing, web dev, zmot : Related Tags: moment truth, right questions, google, moment, truth, better

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