TECHNOLOGY REPORT
www.comms-dealer.com NGN: THE BIG MIGRATION Continued from page 33
When deciding to make the move into NGN territory resellers should consider the types of market they want to serve, advises Darren Farnden, Entanet’s Head of Marketing. “The needs of a residential or SoHo customer are likely to be different to those of a small business or a larger corporate,” he said. “While a residential customer may want the fastest speeds possible in order to browse websites, watch IPTV, game online, all for the lowest possible price, a business user is likely to be more attracted by resiliency, SLAs and care options to ensure their business critical service is guaranteed.
Priorities
“They will also view upload and download speed in terms of their ability to support applications such as VoIP and other hosted services like SaaS. Larger corporate customers meanwhile are likely to put even greater importance on the reseller-supplier’s network presence and technical expertise when considering comprehensive solutions such as leased lines or Ethernet-based IP Virtual Private Networks.”
Deciding on the right time to migrate to selling NGNs also depends upon the reseller’s target market. “The time is right when customers are starting to want to do things that demand next generation services,” said Farnden. “If by this stage a reseller’s competitors are already offering next generation services and they are with a wholesale provider that doesn’t have a clear NGN strategy, they could find themselves being left behind.”
Farnden has some big recommendations for resellers who have not yet strategised the migration to a NGN strategy. He explains: “Resellers should be asking their existing wholesale provider for details about their NGN strategy, how and when they plan to implement it. They need to find out precisely how this strategy will benefit them and their customers. Armed with this information resellers should then research the market, investigating what other wholesale providers are offering in terms of NGNs, who their competitors are partnering with and what they are able to offer and when.”
Farnden also urges resellers to look at their own customer base and their own strategy for growth and use the information they’ve collated to identify two or three communications providers that would appear to meet their requirements. “Contact these shortlisted suppliers and ask them a common set of questions, look at the answers and identify which strategy best fits their business model and the requirements of their customers,” he added.
In general, business customers want faster, more secure and more reliable connectivity, highlighted Andrew Dickinson, Managing Director, Griffin Internet. “Faster because they are using more bandwidth hungry applications like online back up and streaming video, but mainly because if they are to be persuaded to get rid of the server under the stairs in preference for the cloud, they must be convinced that
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36 COMMS DEALER OCTOBER 2010
their office applications will run at least as fast when being accessed remotely,” he said.
“Similarly, the more that critical data is hosted away from the office the more businesses are concerned about security. The Forrester survey last year predicted that 25 per cent of UK SMEs will upgrade to a private MPLS network by the end of 2011. That’s around 150,000 networks. The move is away from the Wild, Wild, Web and resellers should probably be looking for partners that can supply a range of connectivity from xDSL through bonded to leased lines and Ethernet, in a private MPLS cloud.”
Step ahead
Many resellers will be using NGNs already and may not even know about it. For example, if they’re currently ordering broadband services from O-bit Telecom then they’re getting access to BT’s 21CN as well as offerings from Opal and Tiscali. The strategic upgrade of data networks is a move towards an IP-centric environment which many businesses are
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Darren Farnden: “Resellers should be asking their existing wholesale provider for details about their NGN strategy”
now opting for. Resellers and companies not moving with the times in terms of NGN technology will find themselves inefficient and taking risks with mission critical data, warns Paul Cloudsdale, Technical Director, O-bit Telecom.
“Get on board or be left behind,” urges Cloudsdale. “When it comes to NGNs, the only thing resellers have to fear is fear itself. NGN is a buzzword but it really is the future. It’s here, it’s now and resellers should get on board and embrace it. Be prepared for the change. There is going to be a change in how resellers do business. From how they bill customers, what services they take, the products they offer. NGNs offer a much broader scope to use a common network to deliver pretty
much any communication need resellers want to give their customers.”
Key offering
At the very least, notes Cloudsdale, if resellers are not convinced by NGN technology they need to be offering it as an alternative to their core product set. They may well be turning down revenues while also losing the confidence of clients in terms of technology aptness. He added: “Marketing teams should be focusing on what’s in the media – cloud computing, streaming everything, video, VoIP, super fast Internet, not to mention the tweets. NGNs are the enabler for these services. They are a great opportunity to have a technology refresh and stay ahead of the competition.”
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