Cisco has a comprehensive service provider solution and technology portfolio that can help service providers transition existing networks to be more scalable, agile, and easier to operate. The end-to-end Cisco architecture employs a holistic approach to enabling you to achieve these benefits and position your organization to take advantage of new opportunities.
Grow Revenue
To grow revenues in a competitive marketplace, you’ll need differentiated service offerings. A major way to differentiate your network is to build unique network experiences for your clients. To provide this, you first need end-to-end granular control for different traffic types so that you can meet demanding SLAs required by clients. This requires a robust but flexible foundation, from the end user to the application--wherever it may reside. Segment Routing acts as the foundation by providing the ability to slice available bandwidth into performance segments and offer varied Quality of Service (QoS) on those segments. Segment routing automatically routes traffic along different paths aligned to their SLA requirements, in a flexible and simple fashion and can provide automatic rerouting to maintain performance during congestion, maintenance or outage events.
The second step toward growing revenues is pushing applications deeper into the network and extending SLAs into those applications for a superior end user experience. Building application specific performance into your transport network allows clients to use your network in a personalized way which changes their perception of your service offering. If using your network is seen as a simple extension of their private WAN, then your service offering is a partnership and will increase customer loyalty and long-term revenues.
Reduce Cost
Enabling segment routing also provides OpEx cost benefits. It gives you the ability to smoothly converge multiple services and applications over the same network infrastructure ensuring efficient use of network resources and maximum return on investments (ROI). This service convergence is less expensive than building siloed networks for each service type and provides a simplified operational structure helping network engineers take control of the network.
You can also reduce costs with layer convergence, integrating the optical transponder layer functions into routers to minimize the need for additional equipment. This further reduces costs with streamlined operations with less network elements to manage and reduces physical footprints needed to power and house these infrastructure elements.
Another major cost savings initiative would be to increase automation within network operations. By using streaming telemetry from infrastructure elements, orchestration and management tools can proactively alter transport routing paths and other areas to avoid congestion or outages. These proactive steps maintain client experiences and empower network engineers to help them be more efficient in management operations.
Controlling costs with automation and orchestration
Managing complex, multi-vendor networks can be time consuming and resource intensive. To control costs, you need to drive operational efficiency by applying automation at scale. This requires:
Mass awareness, by collecting massive amounts of data in a standardized format
Augmented intelligence that enables you to run analytics and apply machine learning for insights
Proactive control that empowers to you to take rapid action with an organized approach
Implementing closed-loop, mass scale automation across your end-to-end network helps you achieve cost-saving operational excellence, while ensuring faster innovation, so you can offer the compelling experiences that customers crave.
Mitigate Risk
To mitigate risk, you need a secure baseline from which to offer your services, otherwise your service offerings are fundamentally vulnerable. Starting with your hardware and software, you should be able to validate that the elements and components operating are genuine to their manufactured state and unmodified. By establishing a hardware-level root of trust and a device identity that cannot be altered, you have the ability to prove that you have complete control of your network infrastructure. The operating software should give you the ability to automatically “call home” to download an un-tampered software image and validate it against your environment’s hardware. With the right combination of automation and security capabilities within your operations, you can minimize risk and confidently deploy services.