As part of a survey, Avaya’s Jean Turgeon, Vice President and Chief Technologist, Networking & SDN, WW Sales, delivered insights and evidence confirming the power of Avaya’s Fabric Connect network technology and its benefits of customers.
Customers were interviewed to understand the impact Fabric Connect deployment had on their business. The survey focused on two categories of network performance, namely, agility and performance.
The results soundly supported the performance value of Fabric Connect and revealed that Avaya Fabric Connect brings a significant competitive advantage to Avaya customers. A combination of customer’s performance metrics (performance, agility) and verbatim comments derived from the research are an impressive confirmation of the power of the Fabric Connect technology.
Summary of results the Fabric Connect Customer Experience Research 2015 (all in average and before and after Fabric Connect deployment)
• Avaya’s network is 11 times faster to implement
• Configuring a Fabric Connect network is 7 times faster
• Troubleshooting time is 6.5 times quicker.
• Failover time lowered from 13.6 minutes has been lowered to an astounding 320 milliseconds, 2,553 times faster
• 100% improvement on outage due to human error – outages dropped from an average of 3 per annum to zero
What is Fabric-enabled Networking?
Fabric-enabled networking technology uses an innovative approach to network design, operation and management to avoid the bottlenecks that slow the deployment of applications and services. This approach involves deploying Avaya’s Fabric Connect solutions leveraging the only standardized IEEE Ethernet Fabric solution known as Shortest Path Bridging(SPB, IEEE 802.1aq). It is an evolutionary leap forward because it lets organisations completely virtualise their networking technology.
Jean Turgeon, Vice President and Chief Technologist, Networking & SDN, WW Sales, explained, “Our new approach to networking is the foundation for transforming India’s cities into truly smart urban centers poised to support economic and social development and value-creation. Our networking technology is the backbone for rebuilding the country’s manufacturing and services sectors and unlocking their potential in building locally and internationally competitive businesses.”
Survey Results
Dynamic Markets provided the following key points from their research.
Agility Measurements –
Implementation time: 68% of Avaya FC customers say it takes less time to implement the FC network compared to other networks (of equal size). The average figure for implementing a new network has changed from 14 days to 1.3 days. This means that an Avaya FC network is 11 times faster to implement. Customers provided quotes on an anonymous basis (blind survey): “It has really simplified the way we plan and configure the network; it has reduced risks and errors because the protocol is simplified. It is quick now we have to configure fewer devices than before; because there are fewer devices, there is less to do.”
Configuration time:
86% of respondents say it now takes less time to configure a network. The average time has come down from 110 hours to 17, making it nearly 7 times faster, which represents an improvement of 85%.
Troubleshooting:
Qualitative comments below show that some of these customers have not had any network problems for some considerable time now, with implementations going back as far as October 2013. It also shows that customers who implemented only a few months prior to the research are already realizing this benefit. Despite this, the research shows that the average troubleshooting times changed from 39 hours down to just 6 hours, which represents an 85% improvement and times that are 6.5 times quicker.
Outages due to human error:
Before implementing Fabric Connect, 85% of respondents had problems with network outages caused by human error in the core of the network. However, since implementation of the Fabric Connect network, 74% have seen improvements and such outages dropped from an average of 3 per annum to zero (i.e. 100% improvement). Indeed, the majority have seen dramatic improvements to this area of their business. This line of questioning reinforces again that many customers simply have not had these sorts of traditional network problems since their FC implementation.
