CHALLENGE
One of the largest communications companies in the U.S. for voice and data services needed a way to automate provisioning for hundreds of routers to get new business customers up and running faster while improving the quality of service with fewer onsite resources.
SOLUTION
Combine the capabilities of Itential Intelligent Network Automation Platform, a multi-tier platform designed to improve network operations, with Cisco NSO.
RESULTS
By automating service activation processes with Itential and Cisco NSO, activation times were reduced by 70% despite being managed by just one team. The number of touch points was decreased from six to one, getting customers online faster and adding two more weeks of revenue per customer.
Speedy Deployment Needed with Ultra-Fast Business Fiber
As one of the top five communications companies in North America with one of the fastest business voice and data plans, success demands efficient and flawless new customer service deployments.
With more than 10,000 buildings pre-qualified in its fiber network, the company’s operations staff was stretched thin to maintain the network and support new customer activations. Resources were also shared to integrate a recently acquired communications company. This level of demand and limited resources made automation a top priority.
To get new business subscribers online, the company relied on three teams that oversaw the receipt, manual configuration, and installation of high-end Adtran routers. Under these conditions, the total time to reconfigure routers and finalize overall onsite service provisioning for a large business customer could take weeks and involve three to six touch points where a technician had to put hands on the device to modify a configuration. The goal was to reduce these to a single automated step that was completed in less than one week.
The company needed a way to automatically provision its new fiber solution to set up customers faster, with fewer resources, and without negatively impacting customer satisfaction. If they could accelerate error-free customer installations, the company could start collecting new subscription fees faster while assigning its personnel to more critical priorities.
Itential and Cisco NSO Automate Zero-Touch Provisioning
After evaluating multiple options and conducting an Itential proof of concept (POC), the communications company selected Itential Intelligent Network Automation Platform (Pronghorn) and Cisco NSO to automate its service activation process.
Itential worked with the company’s network engineers to create a base configuration that the vendor, Adtran, placed on each router shipped from their warehouse. This approach allowed the devices to be shipped directly to the customer location, connected to the network, and remotely configured in an automated fashion.
Workflows were then built within Itential to manage the activation process between the ordering and inventory systems, Cisco NSO, and the Adtran router.
The combined solution replaced the company’s manual process with a customized, automated provisioning workflow to automatically update the pre-installed base configuration from Adtran, oftentimes with no onsite support required. In these cases, the router was shipped to the customer site where it was turned on and connected to the network. The automated process continued from there once the router was recognized on the network.
Provisioning and Activation Times Reduced by 70%
Before the migration POC, the bank estimated it would take their engineers several years to manually migrate all 7,000 services to the new F5 load balancer platform. With Itential’s network automation and Cisco NSO, engineers now predict the job will be completed in a few months with almost no contract engineering resources.
The self-service portals, combined with the ability to conduct real-time pre- and post-checks on servers for each migration, provide a level of simplicity and quality that is especially helpful for the bank’s engineers.
“It’s one thing to configure a network,” HughesParry said. “It’s entirely another thing and another level of quality to make sure their existing systems are automated correctly, so they’re not just pushing problems further down the road.”
Itential’s ability to take advantage of the service reconciliation capabilities of Cisco NSO was integral to the project’s success. Itential maximized the full potential of NSO by adding the necessary layer of automation to make projects of this magnitude possible.
“The fact that we can make the migration happen in a few months with less outside help is where Itential is providing immediate value,” HughesParry said. “For a while, the bank doubted whether or not our plans were technically feasible, but we were able to put in the work to prove that it wasn’t just smoke and mirrors.”
As a next step, Itential is working to enhance the financial institution’s lifecycle management of load balancing services by performing tasks such as site failover and automated patch updates. This capability is especially important because of extensive IT regulations that require financial institutions to keep services up and available at all times, even during maintenance periods for patch updates.
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