Sell more, save more, and spend more wisely with Ciena Services

Often consultancy, maintenance and other professional services from technology vendors are seen as a necessary expense, rather than a way of creating value. But what if services were designed differently and set up to deliver tangible and quantifiable business outcomes? What if you could fully understand the value of each service before buying it? And what if you could fully justify the investment in a particular service based on the quantifiable ROI it generates?

At Ciena we have enabled this by building our entire portfolio around three key business outcomes. These are: How we can help you sell more; how we can help you save more; and how we can help you spend more wisely and get higher returns on your network investments. 

Conveniently, these outcomes all start with an ‘S’, so let’s take a look at what each of them means for your business. Hopefully, this article helps to address any misconceptions you might have about the business value of services from technology vendors.

Sell more

Typically, the complex processes and multi-team hand-offs required to provision and activate a new service slow down your time to market and negatively impact time to revenue. In some cases, defining a new service, building the business case, designing and deploying the right technology to support the new service, and training sales teams can take up to two years, with no revenues generated during that time – only cost.

To help you get market ready faster – both technically and operationally – Ciena Services can support every stage of the new service introduction process (including sales enablement, ongoing operations, and support). This ‘white label’ managed service approach, is based on clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and can help you get to market in months, rather than years. A shorter time to market means you are able to capitalize on first-mover advantage and unlock revenue faster.

Over time, we can return management of the new service to your teams, if that’s your preferred operating model. However, many customers decide to continue with the service long term, enabling them to focus on their core business and sell more.

We’ve invested in a range of tools and applications to automate infrastructure deployment and configuration, including Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for network equipment at remote sites.

Save more

Henry Ford was one of the first people to understand that efficient, repeatable processes save time, resources, and – ultimately – money. At Ciena, we have embedded these principles into our services proposition, and invested in automation to optimize efficiency and deliver cost savings wherever possible.

Specifically, we’ve invested in a range of tools and applications to automate infrastructure deployment and configuration, including Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) for network equipment at remote sites. This means equipment can be plugged in, configured, and turned up automatically, using validated ‘profiles’ that are pushed out by the Network Operations team. 

In addition to ZTP, we have built automation into a range of other common networking tasks, including planning and design, network troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and fault-fixing. All of these mean we can address a wide range of issues quickly and remotely on your behalf, removing the need to deploy skilled engineers, and to dispatch costly truck rolls.

Spend more wisely

We recently looked at how taking a Lifecycle Management (LCM) approach can deliver cost savings and performance benefits – especially in terms of extending engagements beyond standard deployment and maintenance services. In particular, Ciena teams can help you optimize your solution post-deployment, and make optimal spend decisions going forward.

One way we do this is to conduct in-depth audits and assessments of your network estate on a regular basis. This allows the identification of spare capacity and creates opportunities to exploit underutilized assets across the network.

These optimization services are focused on boosting existing network performance and capacity – reducing the need for costly upgrade projects – and maximizing returns on your existing network investment. In other words, you can start to do more with what you already have, which is great news for your bottom line.

If you want to know more about how Ciena Services can help you improve your business outcomes in tangible ways, contact us today and we’ll be very happy to help.

This is the second post in a series about services, don’t miss the other posts: ‘How you can accelerate and de-risk your network modernisation with Lifecycle Management’ and ‘A new, more efficient (augmented) reality for network operations'.