BT iVPN Improves Local Support and Standard Processes

| Mar 6, 2009 | Business Telecom Services - Europe | Competitive Update

| Analyst: Sandra O'Boyle

Current Perspective: Neutral/Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

March 5, 2009 -- BT has made enhancements to its global VPN portfolio with the launch of its Intelligent Virtual Private Network (iVPN) service in 172 countries. OSS enhancements, as a result of BT’s 21CN global network investment, enable BT to deliver faster implementation, fewer manual interventions, less interruption to service, enhanced site-to-site performance SLAs and local language support. Over time, iVPN will replace BT’s existing MPLS services.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on BT iVPN, as it is essentially a replacement for existing MPLS services with enhancements around faster service delivery, site-to-site performance SLAs, local language support and faster and proactive problem resolution. Collectively, these are internal improvements for BT rather than a significant improvement over what the competition offers.

• Vendor Importance: High to BT, as the rollout of a standard OSS system to all local operations means BT can address customer satisfaction with a consistent customer experience and address service delivery issues by automating provisioning and network management tools and service assurance processes. iVPN will eventually replace BT MPLS as the de facto VPN service on which other global solutions will be built (e.g., cloud computing, unified communications, video, etc.).

• Market Impact: Moderate on the MPLS VPN market, because BT‘s internal processes are improved, which should enable BT to do better on service delivery, assurance, accurate billing, etc. However, the proof will be in the actual customer satisfaction and BT’s ability to sell the customer additional managed services.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Competitors can dismiss BT iVPN as a new MPLS service launch by emphasizing that BT is merely playing catch-up in terms of standardising its global operations and unifying its back-end system processes for network services. Competitors can highlight that they already have improved their systems and in many cases have more sophisticated front-end customer online portals.

• AT&T can highlight that its backend iGEMS system has been in place for several years and powers its BusinessDirect portal. AT&T’s efforts to automate have greatly enhanced the time to initiate or complete transactions on its customer portal. AT&T’s BusinessDirect Web portal allows customers to reroute network traffic in real-time, report and track service problems, place orders and check their status, pay bills electronically and perform other network-management and customer-service-related tasks online.

• Orange Business Services can highlight that its Business VPN service is widely available and supported by solid SLAs and a variety of access options, including extensive DSL access and new Cisco network router upgrades to support Telepresence and multicasting. With IP enhanced reporting, Orange Business Services can provide real-time reporting starting within one hour of a router coming online. Reporting is done on router performance criteria and end-to-end reporting (RTD, PLR and jitter) with 30-second polling intervals.

• Verizon Business can highlight that its customer portal (i.e., VBCC) brings together different network and application management tools (tasks) into a single graphical user interface for performance monitoring, user self-service and proactive performance assurance. It allows Verizon Business to present a single, consistent user interface even as new capabilities are introduced and customers’ requirements change.

CLIENTS ONLY

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Business Telecom Services - Europe | More information

Top