Service Opportunities With Network Upgrades

Frank Scanga, executive vice president of Axispoint, a New York-based solution provider, sheds light on how to take advantage of service opportunities when upgrading customers' networks.

EACH VERTICAL IS UNIQUE: We are a horizontal company. And for upgrading the network, the size of the network matters more than the vertical. The applications matter more than the industry. Even so, there are specific opportunities for each vertical. In health care, digital radiology, the ability to see the film and diagnose from anywhere, would improve health care. When there are 70-, 80-, 90-Mbyte files zipped over the network, upgrading the network means better performance and faster diagnosis. In education, long-distance learning is possible with video and voice.

SOME NOW, SOME LATER: Upgrading the network is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It's possible to do a partial upgrade, to upgrade the sections that need the increased bandwidth and leave the rest of the network alone. An assessment is important in deciding the necessity of the upgrade and in selecting the areas that can benefit from the upgrade. Maybe the data center component requires the upgrade but the servers connecting to the desktops don't.

NETWORK MANAGEMENT: Every network needs to be maintained, regardless of size or type, and consistent management is essential. Traffic and performance need to be monitored regardless of bandwidth. Managing the network depends on the organization: Some people have a very technical IT staff that can do it all on their own. Some people have a small IT group, maybe one or two people, so they prefer to outsource it all to other companies—the support, design and installation of the network.

CONSULTING: We offer consulting services. Before deciding on the upgrade, we do a network assessment, to decide, 'Do you need it?' It's a combination of, 'What am I doing with the network today?' and 'What I am going to be running a year, five years from now?' As part of the assessment, we also study the network traffic analysis reports. The consulting engagement is 100 percent services.

SELL SOLUTIONS: We don't try to sell 10G just for the sake of selling 10G. Our business is in unified communications—voice, video, wireless solutions. When we are working on a solution for our client, we present to our client the option that 10G is available today. Sometimes, the client asks us to prepare the pricing for a 10G solution. Most of the time, the customer is telling us, 'I am having trouble with this application. Can you put together a solution that would improve connectivity?' In order to design [the network] correctly, we look at what the applications require.