Service providers are continually needing to find new ways to increase revenue, so how can their business strategies be adapted and growth objectives achieved?

For a start, consider adding Ethernet services for high-capacity services, from 1GbE to 10GbE and 100GbE and beyond, to offer a differentiated and competitive service to your corporate customers. Not only will it add a cost-effective alternative to some existing services, it will also ensure your business Ethernet offerings are set up to complement SD-WAN and hybrid network services.

Here are seven compelling reasons why integrating business Ethernet services into your portfolio could be a lucrative new opportunity:

1: The business Ethernet market is growing fast

The commoditisation of voice and data services and fiercely price-conscious business subscribers will no-doubt play a role in limiting revenue opportunities. This means that service providers increasingly need to look elsewhere to grow their customer base, open new revenue streams and boost margins.

According to Ovum, the global enterprise Ethernet services market will grow at 10.7% CAGR, exceeding $70bn by 2020 (Ovum’s Ethernet Services Forecast, Sep 2015) and is now the de facto WAN data connectivity technology. Driven by enthusiasm for higher bandwidth services, Ethernet will be a very major portion of the data service market, and this growth will continue as we adopt more cloud-based applications and enterprises embrace digital transformation.

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2: Bandwidth-hungry customers are everywhere

With applications and data volumes exploding in organisations of all types and sizes, there is an increasing need for 1GbE+ connections, with 10GbE+ connectivity for company headquarters, and even 100GbE+ connections for data centre connectivity. Specifically, demand is being driven by the proliferation of bandwidth-hungry applications. An MRI scan, for example, can be a 300GB file, which would take around 7 hours to download over a 100Mb connection. Over a 10GbE link, that time falls to just 4 minutes, and to 28 seconds on a 100GbE link – this can be the difference between life and death when a consultant needs to make a time critical decision on how to best treat their patient.

An MRI scan can be a 300GB file, which would take around 7 hours to download over a 100Mb connection. Over a 10GbE link, that time falls to just 4 minutes, and to 28 seconds on a 100GbE link.

3: Business Ethernet tackles your complexity and cost challenge

Enterprises know all about cost-containment and budget constraints. When it comes to delivering WAN connectivity, MPLS-based IP VPNs have their place. IP VPNs can offer any-to-any connectivity and scale to thousands of sites – but, at the higher speeds needed for high-bandwidth applications, they can be significantly more expensive than business Ethernet to deploy and maintain.

In addition, the MPLS routers needed for IP VPN have acquired more and more protocols and complexity over the last few decades. The cost of implementing all of these protocols, and securing them against attack, has driven leading service providers to demand a radically simpler way of building networks.

With business Ethernet, you can simplify the network infrastructure, making the network easier to plan, deploy and manage at scale. This means fewer routers, more remotely programmable services, and fewer truck rolls resulting in a lower cost per bit than comparable IP VPN.

This all combines to make you more competitive in the market enabling you to drive margins for your organisation and cost savings for your customer – a true win – win. These savings scale across 1GbE, 10GbE and 100GbE connections all with less CAPEX investment, helping you to increase the predictability of your delivery costs over time.

4: SDN and NFV unlock a host of new service opportunities

Integrating business Ethernet into your portfolio isn’t just about delivering basic connectivity for enterprises. It also unlocks a range of other commercial opportunities, such as SD-WAN and the ability to provide virtualised network functions (VNFs), along with platforms and services for orchestrating and automating customers’ network functions.

In the first instance, you could help your customers replace their legacy customer premises equipment with new platforms, capable of hosting any number of virtualised functions. As well as generating new revenues for your organisation, your customers can benefit by replacing multiple on-site network devices (including firewalls, routers and load-balancers) with software running on a single, cost-effective network interface device (NID).

As the SDN and NFV markets continue to expand, the opportunities to build new virtual network functions into your business Ethernet portfolio will continue to expand, providing new and much-needed revenue streams long-term.

5: Route determinism increases security and eases regulatory compliance

Security and data sovereignty are at the top of every organisation’s agenda these days, especially with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force. Business Ethernet services help your customers to improve security and compliance with determinism – meaning that you can determine the exact path that customers’ traffic will take between network endpoints. Never before have enterprises been able to audit with such precision, where is my traffic and where has it been? 

In a market where the ability to track data flows is critical, business Ethernet can help you differentiate your business, generate revenues from data determinism and, critically, to gain new customers as well.

In a market where the ability to track data flows is critical, business Ethernet can help you differentiate your business, generate revenues from data determinism and, critically, to gain new customers as well.

6: Win more bids based on compelling customer benefits

Winning business depends on one thing and one thing only: your ability to deliver compelling, differentiated customer benefits. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why growing numbers of carriers are including business Ethernet in their connectivity portfolios.

Specifically, it helps you to respond to customer needs faster, with programmable services that can scale on-demand. Scaling up a customer’s bandwidth requires no site visits, reducing truck rolls, staffing requirements and costs. Factor in the lower cost of deploying and managing business Ethernet services, and you can choose to pass on a percentage of the cost savings to your customers – giving them even more reasons to select your service.

In addition to these benefits, the manageability of business Ethernet services allows you to deliver compelling SLAs for your customers, reassuring them that their network will be performing and constantly available. With tools for centralised network management, monitoring and troubleshooting, you can provision resources proactively, speed up issue resolution, and deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.

7: You become a key enabler of your customers’ cloud strategies

Almost every organisation is using the cloud in some capacity, whether it’s for development and test resources, or software-as-a-service applications. While the cost and flexibility of the cloud is compelling, many IT executives overlook the importance of fast, high-bandwidth WAN connectivity to make cloud-based applications work as they should.

With business Ethernet, you can set up super-fast connections for your customers and connect their locations and end-users with the cloud-based services they use. As new cloud offerings, users or locations are added, you can scale up connectivity seamlessly to ensure that applications always provide an excellent end-user experience, and that connectivity is never a limiting factor for your customers’ cloud strategies.

This all combines to make you more competitive in the market enabling you to drive margins for your organisation and cost savings for your customer – a true win – win.

A clear roadmap for adoption

Ciena and our customers are working together to accelerate business Ethernet connectivity services. Are you ready to realize all of these benefit from adopting business Ethernet? We are here and ready to help.