Liza Adams

This article was originally published on Brocade.com.

Today, vCPE (Virtual Customer Premises Equipment), SD-WAN (Software Defined-Wide Area Network), software-defined security and cloud managed WiFi promise big things to customers:

• Innovative and personalized services
• Better user experience
• Faster service delivery
• More cost-effective offerings

It seems logical that because of these technologies it should be much easier for CSPs (Communication Service Providers) to develop and take cloud-based or virtualized managed services to market. They also make providing incremental services faster and easier, simplify and automate operations, offer better visibility and analytics, and more. Although technology and ecosystems have a big role in fulfilling the promises, go-to-market (GTM) approaches have an equally big role. It’s time to put the GTM speed bumps in the forefront as more services are developed and launched.

Here are four GTM myths that CSPs and their vendor and integrator partners should think about.

Myth 1. Keep the Power

Traditional thinking puts control and data in the hands of the CSP and its partners to manage and ensure the best service performance. This was necessary when assurance was dependent on someone manually configuring and managing the infrastructure plus piecing together multiple views and reports to gain full visibility of everything happening in the network across all customers. With today’s network intelligence and automation, it’s time to shift power to the enterprise customer without having to worry about any one customer negatively impacting its network and others. This is similar to what Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others have done for compute, storage and network services.

More enterprises want direct control to make things happen when they want it to happen; hence, the idea behind self-service portals. They also want the data, analytics, and recommendations for what they need to do or change next. The CSP can provide analytics that reflects the need to increase bandwidth, add or reconfigure access points, enable load balancing, and improve the security posture by activating DDoS mitigation services. What a great upsell/cross-sell opportunity for the CSPs. Everyone benefits from that shift of control and data to the customer.

Myth 2. Better Safe than Sorry

SLAs (Service Level Agreements) have long needed a swift kick. With technology innovations, we’ve lost our excuse to not kick ourselves into gear. SLAs have been backstops – safe but toothless. It’s bean counting on availability, latency, packet loss, jitter, and other complicated and less relevant parameters to customers. If we fall short on the beans, the customer gets back — you guessed it — beans. CSPs and the industry as a whole have the opportunity to be bold with SLAs given all the smarts in the network today. Again, customers are more interested in outcomes and experience. Dare to offer a service satisfaction guarantee?

Virtela (now part of NTT Com) was ahead of its time when it launched a cloud-based application acceleration service with a service satisfaction guarantee in 2010. If the customer doesn’t “feel” that their applications are running faster, they don’t pay. Instead, the customer gets paid 250% of the service charge and Virtela deactivates the service. No reports necessary to prove that it wasn’t faster. No questions asked. Imagine what happened when the service was deactivated. You think there might have been groups collaborating in real-time around the world who would’ve noticed that the apps are now running slower and screamed? That’s exactly what happened and service was restored. It was bold but the risks to the CSP were low.

Myth 3. Load It Up Like a Baked Potato

Oh, how we love to load it up! Every possible topping. Every possible bell, whistle, or combo … multiple VNFs (Virtualized Network Functions); three classes of service; five flavors of security; on-demand, scheduled, always on; full service and ala carte; complementary options; pricing bundles plus some pricing that’s off the grid; and if it’s not on the standard list, we’ll customize something for you. It’s like ordering from a 35-page Chinese menu starting with A and ending with ZZZ (yes, the customer has fallen asleep).

This is often a symptom of not knowing exactly who we’re targeting and what that target segment wants. We describe what we have rather than what we solve and we throw everything at our customers. We hope, not only that something makes sense for them, but that they have put in the thought we didn’t and can tell us how our service can help them. This may seem intuitive to us as technologists, but in a digital world, this feature-oriented GTM approach negates the agility enabled by technology innovations.

Myth 4. It’s All or Nothing

vCPE or CPE? SD-WAN or MPLS? Cannibalize or not cannibalize? These are tough questions when we put them that way. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Change is tough but what makes change easier is when we can ease into it. We need to strike the balance between showing the customer the value of the new offerings and mitigating customer concerns in adopting new technologies. For example, why not give customers the flexibility to choose between cloud and premises offerings based on their applications, resources, and traffic? Or, better yet, package these options into services designed for specific use cases described by business value. Allow customers to mix and match and provide seamless interoperability between different implementations on the same network. We’ve then changed the conversation from cannibalization to co-existence. This approach also gives enterprises a way to try new technologies in smaller or less critical locations and deploy more over time, change back, or do something else. It’s a win-win for enterprises and CSPs.

The customers shouldn’t have to choose the best technologies and implementations because the service would be designed for specific applications and inherently use the best networking technologies. Think user outcomes and experience. Think vertical-, application-, location-, and user-based services like the ones described in my article on B2Me managed services with service offering ideas. However, in situations where the underlying technologies are relevant to the customer, offering some degree of choice and allowing for migrations make sense.

We can always refer to situations where these myths have kernels of truths. But the takeaway is that we must challenge these fictions as most of the underlying factors from which they have sprung have disappeared. To change and compete in the new world of digital business, CSPs need to quickly unlearn old thinking and design services that take full advantage of what the network is capable of doing today. The network has become a platform for business innovation. There are customer expectations around agility, simplicity, and user-centricity that come with that. GTM must likewise evolve to match those expectations so as not to delay adoption.

I would love to hear your thoughts and other ideas for accelerating the adoption of virtualized managed services.

This article was originally published on Brocade.com.

The long-standing yearly prediction that virtualized or cloud-based managed services will take off in the next couple of years is now much closer to reality. While there are still challenges, many of the critical pieces have been addressed and are coming together as discussed in SDxCentral’s vCPE (virtual Customer Premises Equipment) and SD-WAN (Software Defined-WAN) webinar on Building the New Service-Defined Network.

1. Open architecture with hardware, virtualized network functions (VNFs), SDN controller, and orchestration layers.
2. Automation, analytics, and security across layers.
3. Integration with OSS/BSS.

As a result, the list of CSPs (Communication Service Providers) launching market trials or commercially available services continues to grow.

Focus on Go-to-Market Approach

Although we’ve made some great strides, as an industry, we need to turn more of our attention to service creation, launch, and adoption. This isn’t just a service provider problem. Just as the technologies, processes, and ecosystem are industry challenges, so is the go-to-market approach for virtualized managed services.

 In the past, CSPs launched more general horizontally-packaged services that met the needs of many customers to drive top line revenues but relied on the customers to determine where, when, why, and how to use these services. But nowadays, with built-in visibility and analytics at multiple layers, policy-based management, workflow automation, smart positioning technology, deeper insights into traffic types and applications, machine learning, and much more, the networks have gotten smarter. The smarter the network, the less users need to know about the network, and the more valuable the service becomes.

Customer- and User-Centric Offerings

CSPs can offer a myriad of virtualized managed services including branch connectivity offerings that package router, firewall and VPN services; advanced security; WAN optimization and application acceleration; load balancing; WiFi; unified communications; etc. It’s multiple services running on the same platform enabled by a variety of VNFs. But the idea goes beyond that. What if we took even just one of those VNFs and created multiple services targeting different markets out of it? Or created industry-, application-, or location-based offerings enabled by new network “smarts.” Also consider services that not only serve IT groups, but also serve the IT groups’ users or the company’s customers directly. Together, as an industry, we can truly redefine managed services to be user- or customer-centered without the CSPs losing their shirts.

In a digital world, the users and customers become central to the business like patient-centered healthcare, student-focused curriculum, guest-centric services, fan-based experience, user-controlled options, and other personalized offerings. Often, it’s less about the network and technologies; it’s more about the outcomes and experience.

Here a few examples that hopefully spark more and better ideas.

R&D, Developer, and Collaboration Service Packages

Imagine an offering that compresses time, one that shrinks the world as if everyone’s working collaboratively in the same room. This value prop would resonate with companies that have R&D or developer teams around the country or the world that need to share large files and collaborate in real time on a regular basis. How about giving researchers or developers the ability to subscribe, schedule, or even turn on WAN optimization or application acceleration services when they need it (e.g., to share large design files, real-time collaboration, etc.), where they need it, in combination with SD-WAN? The service then negates the performance implications imposed by distance and bandwidth competition from less critical applications. Rather than simply offering a SD-WAN plus WAN optimization service, take 2-3 developer and researcher applications, for a specific vertical or across industries, and optimize services around those. Market how much better the performance would be for those tasks, in general. Share sample outcomes and case studies.

Digital Transformation Vertical Offerings

In Education, particularly in primary schools, there’s significant effort to transition to digital learning where content, like text books, will be digitized and hosted in the cloud. Packaging a managed SD-WAN service that is specifically designed to deliver the best performance to and from the cloud and not disrupt the learning process puts the network in the heart of ensuring the best learning experience.

Education is evolving towards personalized learning. Students and educators alike get constant feedback on how well the student is learning versus getting feedback primarily through results of standard tests. That data reflects individual student information as well as aggregate insights across many students to help educators improve curricula. With all this information being collected and the necessary real-time feedback, a more agile network directly benefits educators and students by enabling learning progression.

In Healthcare, on the hand, the patient experience is at the center of digital transformation. Virtualized managed services can be packaged to provide the desired level of performance and security for video-based diagnosis and procedures, electronic health record storage and retrieval, and even access to cloud-based applications like scheduling, email, and health management and monitoring, just to name a few. A sample initial offering might be a service that offers a different level of service and security for a hospital system’s guest network versus the network supporting physician and other healthcare worker applications. The service could also provide physician offices faster and secure access to electronic health records. The network then enables improved physician effectiveness, patient satisfaction, and better patient care.

As a CSP, if you’re going down the virtualized managed services path, you’re already going through a pivotal evolution in delivering services differently—part of the transformation to a digital business. Similarly, your enterprise and SMB customers aspire to transform their business. Make the network more strategic–a platform for innovation–to help them become more agile and competitive, better meet the needs of users and customers, evolve business models, and successfully grow revenues. The examples above show how virtualized managed services can enable digital transformation for your customers.

We generally know what people buy but not necessarily what they use it for and why. Enabling a digital business will put added pressure on CSP product managers, marketers, and sales to get this right but enhanced network intelligence should alleviate some of that stress. Think about B2Me, not just B2B or B2C. Think about every user potentially getting his or her own personalized network.

Now more than ever, the idea of service co-creation plays an important role in the development, launch, adoption of virtualized managed services, particularly as we move towards B2Me. As an industry, if we go together (CSPs, hardware and software vendors, integrators, application developers, IT groups, users, etc.), we’ll go far. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, and other service ideas to help accelerate the adoption of virtualized managed services.

As we gain wisdom, we learn that the best gifts are often not physical gifts that we can easily put a price tag on. Many of us know what it’s like for someone to give us their precious time. There’s that satisfaction we get from learning, safety, joy, belonging, confidence, energy, and all sorts of feelings we get from that interaction. But it wasn’t until much later that I better understood what I need to do to fully embrace this valuable gift that people have given me.

I don’t yet have the perfect answers and probably never will. But at least, for now, regifting is my answer. That might seem odd as regift typically refers to giving to someone else a gift we received that we didn’t want. But for the purposes of this discussion, regifting refers to giving a gift that we find so valuable for ourselves that we have a strong desire to also give it to others knowing that they would benefit in similar ways. While I’ve focused much of this discussion on some of the best gifts in one’s professional career, many of these apply to our circle of family and friends as well. In fact, those lines blur fairly easily.

Here is my top 7 list of gifts, all of which I’ve been blessed to receive, that I believe should be regifted:

1.     Critical Feedback and Tough Love. Everyone loves to hear great feedback. We like it when people think we’re awesome and that we do fantastic work. But what a gift it truly is when someone provides constructive feedback, suggests changes, and helps us figure out how to make it better. Similarly, we can all name someone so selfless that it’s hard to envision that person doing something malicious or ill-willed towards anyone. It’s just not in their nature. When someone like that gives us tough love, it’s because they know it’s what we need. They know that we may flounder around a bit but we’d eventually figure it out, and come out of it a better version of our previous self.

2.     Belief Beyond Our Own. Fear of failing is paralyzing. It holds many of us back from doing something different, pushing boundaries, speaking our minds, asking for what we want and deserve, and more. Our minds can be our own enemies, keeping us from progressing in our careers. We begin to put ourselves in a box where we feel comfortable but unfortunately doesn’t allow us to grow. With today’s fast pace of innovation and evolving business models, this issue becomes a bigger challenge because we need to constantly reinvent ourselves to move forward professionally. What a precious gift to receive when someone believes in our potential more than we do.

3.     Encouragement When We Stumble. Yes, we all stumble. If we don’t, we’re not learning and growing. And there are those people who just know how to pick us back up and encourage us to try again. Often, those are the people that stumbled and got back up each time themselves. We’ve heard of many stories of high-powered people, athletes, celebrities, and CEOs who have failed so many times to the point that no one believed in them. Everyone gave up on them. But they kept going and finally succeeded against all odds on the umpteenth try. So how lucky are we when we have people that give willingly the gift of encouragement to keep us going and trust in us to succeed?

4.     Patience in this Culture of Immediacy. We’re living in a Culture of Immediacy and Age of Impatience. We so eagerly embrace instant gratification in many aspects of our work and personal lives. While I’m eternally grateful for the patience my early mentors gifted me in my career, I’m even more grateful for anyone that has shown me patience today. The gift of patience is significantly more valuable with all of today’s societal pressures and expectations around achieving something right now, not later. As we get older, we require more patience from people. It’s not easy to teach old dogs new tricks. Patience is no longer just a virtue, it’s a rare gift that we hope doesn’t succumb to obsolescence.

5.     Valued Relationships. We all value our relationships with good people—our connections and network—that we’ve built throughout our careers. These are people we know, trust, admire, learn from, follow, and defend. For many of us, we protect our network as it reflects who were are—our character, strengths, beliefs, values, aspirations, and work ethic. When someone lets us into their network, introduces us, or recommends us, that person puts his or her relationships, reputation, and credibility on the line. That, in and of itself, is a gift. What we get from our new connections is yet another gift. The value of all these human connections is priceless.

6.     True Compassion and Empathy. Misery loves company, right? When things aren’t going so well, does it feel like everyone else is running towards the opposite direction? The last thing we want is for others to not care about us or for us to wallow in our misery alone. Imagine the boost we get from someone saying, “I’m in the same boat as you. I completely understand. It’s happening to many and we’ll get through this together.” This gift of true compassion and empathy stands out so visibly especially when, at times, it all seems like it’s “every man for himself” nowadays. As they say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

7.     Sincere Appreciation and Gratitude. We know that special feeling we get when a small child says thank you and gives us a big hug. So sincere. So polite. Often, so unexpected. Because we don’t expect it, it catches us off guard and makes it extra special. Showing appreciation takes time and many don’t take the time to stop and smell the roses. We do something. We move on. Then we do the next thing. Much like other gifts on this list, this gift has become more valuable in today’s world. When someone stops to appreciate and express gratitude for our work, that says a lot about the strength of our relationships given the myriad of things that person could be doing instead.

Writing this reminded me of the many precious gifts that I’ve received and how lucky I’ve been to know some of the most generous people in my career. I’m forever indebted to them and this is just one small way of paying it forward. In sharing this with you, I hope to elevate the recognition and appreciation for these priceless gifts and promote regifting them, especially given the sociopolitical climate around the world and feelings of divisiveness. Let’s change each other and the world for the better, one gift at a time.

I’m sure you have your own list of gifts you’ve received that you feel are worthy of regifting. Feel free to share your favorites and thoughts in the comments below.