Calence Picked To Refresh

"I think it was our focus and specialization," says Michael Fong, Calence CEO. "All we do is networking, and we have very deep and broad skills." Also helping was the fact that Calence employs MBAs with both technical and business acumen. And Dial CIO Evon Jones says Calence's ability to work with Cisco to come up with an architecture was a key factor.

Implementations where a company refreshes its entire network infrastructure are rare. But if a company is running applications that require quality of service, existing networks might not be practical. What is driving some of the refreshes is a growing number of IP telephony, IP contact center and IP video rollouts. "We're starting to see more companies do more refreshes in the advanced technology space," Fong says.

Now that Dial is transitioning its data-center operations to EDS, it's not clear if Calence will remain in the picture, particularly if Dial moves toward IP telephony. "My hope is we will still...do some of the strategic high-end architectural work," Fong says.