Communications service providers (CSPs) will go to great lengths to deliver a compelling customer experience. This includes valuable network services backed by meaningful, easy-to-interpret performance intelligence for their business customers that maximizes the network service' value. To do so, often requires development of APIs plus expertise unique to each network equipment vendor, and software programs to comb through databases, OSS and other systems to find the exact metrics enterprises require.
It can be a challenging, time-consuming practice, as was the case for XO Communications, one of the largest CSPs in the United States. Absent a single, comprehensive platform, XO's staff would spend time and resources building an infrastructure that could supply sufficient SLA reporting to its customers, sprawled across more than 50 countries.
According to John Caskey, technical staff for XO Communications, this approach wasn't sustainable. So, XO turned to InfoVista to help them deploy a single, highly configurable Carrier Ethernet service assurance platform, which XO's network engineering, network operations and management teams could query when needed for network performance management, capacity planning, proactive troubleshooting, as well as SLA management. Caskey wanted the platform to deliver robust, customized, and MEF-compliant customer reporting, as well as individualized dashboards for their internal teams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oDBIKeAUe0
After a successful proof-of-concept exercise, Caskey expanded the service assurance platform to other devices and network services. And looking to the future, there's potential to expand the platform to encompass application performance monitoring.
Caskey also explains that, in choosing InfoVista, XO has significantly reduced the time it spends troubleshooting, and has allowed XO to accelerate time-to-market, improve alignment with market demands, increase customer intimacy and develop a more professional look to its SLA reporting.
InfoVista's platform also supports XO's capacity planning team. XO receives reports every morning that point out hot spots and provide early warning of any potential threshold crossings, allowing Caskey and his team to plan ahead by up to 90 days.
Caskey says that InfoVista's Carrier Ethernet service assurance platform has been a "huge time saver" because it creates a single API — a "one-stop shop" — that XO can query. And Caskey points out that without having InfoVista's service assurance platform XO would suffer from greater customer churn.
As Caskey explains: "The industry is demanding, the customers are demanding as they get more sophisticated, they want to see these types of metrics, and it's going to be up to to provide it to them."
To learn more, please see our video case study, “Carrier Ethernet Service Assurance & Customer Reporting Pay Off for XO Communications.”
