www.comms-dealer.com
TECHNOLOGY REPORT E NEXT GENERATION EPOCH
Andy Lockwood: “For many, the process of migration has already started”
customers are looking for more,” said George Williamson, Director, Strategic Network Design at Openreach. “Next generation networks build on high speed packet networks that are more capable of supporting a wider range of services including voice, data and multimedia. The user benefits lie in the many integration opportunities with voice and data services delivered on common wiring, saving money for customers and increasing their flexibility.”
Transition
Migration can be a complex process so ensuring customers understand the benefits in cost and experience must be a priority, and according to Williamson this is still a ‘nut not cracked’. “There are operational issues around any migration process including any requirement for parallel running or outage. Again, making sure the benefit opportunity is understood will help this story,” he said. “During migration it will be important to keep the customer informed, managing any
issues that they have in a proactive and transparent fashion. Post migration it will be important to help the customer understand the new features and capabilities so that the promised benefits will be delivered.”
NGA and resilient backhaul connections become a fundamental requirement to support the higher demands of connectivity required to convey business and consumer applications 27/4. As more applications are served from the cloud, higher access line throughput speeds and QoS VLANs are required. “Openreach’s NGA deployment strategy to two thirds of the UK by 2015 will provide the access architecture to enable our CPs to deliver the right customer experience today and tomorrow,” added Williamson. “Consumers will be able to enjoy high resolution cloud services such as IPTV, online shopping and 3D gaming without the need to constantly churn and/or update their devices by using a future proofed NGA line offering
much higher downstream and upstream speeds. Equally, content providers will be able to deliver a higher quality of service and exploit opportunities to cross sell and promote media and applications within this environment.”
Flexibility
NGN solutions are more scalable, flexible and easier for resellers to deploy than previous technologies, affirms Andrew Saunders, Head of Product Management and Marketing, Zen Internet. “Typically, a wide area networking solution is deployed as an IP VPN across a NGN, and with Zen that solution is managed by us,” he said. “This leaves the reseller free to focus on their core business of deploying solutions and applications. With older technologies, resellers needed specialist WAN skills to manage routers, IP Sec and networked solutions. With NGNs this is no longer the case.”
NGN solutions tend to be managed by the network operator rather than the reseller. However, this means
Andrew Saunders: “NGNs support the value adding applications and solutions”
some loss of control for the reseller and therefore it’s important that the NGN operator provides reliability backed by SLAs, and offers performance monitoring and reporting options. “It’s also important that the NGN provider offers a range of connectivity solutions to cope with the wide range of customer locations frequently included in a NGN solution, from corporate HQ to home- based workers with a range of options in between,” added Saunders.
His message is clear: If resellers are not already selling a NGN solution they should start now. “WANs based on NGNs create sticky, strategic relationships with clients,” noted Saunders. “NGNs provide the infrastructure to support the value adding applications and solutions, with adoption being accelerated by the availability of QoS across the network. The introduction of fibre- based broadband looks likely to accelerate this adoption and will help drive enterprise solutions down into the SME.”
With the NGN provider running the network solutions are easier and cheaper to manage, and flexible for adding, removing and expanding locations. They provide a more efficient network topology allowing centralised firewalls, security and other
management applications – all leading to cost savings and reduced management of on-site devices, allowing in-house IT teams to move on to more strategic and value adding activities.
Open access
“NGNs enable application access across sites,” added Saunders. “When multiple sites are accessing the same apps it makes sense to locate the apps within the cloud, in effect in the network. Commercial and management benefits of centrally located apps, plus business efficiency benefits of all sites having access to the applications, all support the concept of the virtual enterprise and collaboration. However, this requires the NGN to offer data centre and hosting services.” Continued on page 36
www.comms-dealer.com
Considering mobile? Turn to page’s 44 and 45 to find out why choose Abzorbplus+ Mobile. COMMS DEALER OCTOBER 2010 33
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60