Challenge
FlexITy, one of Cisco's leading value added resellers in the Canadian market, made a decision to launch a new CLEC business to address the growing managed services opportunity in their region. They had been offering managed services for a number of years, but decided to acquire their own CLEC license.
FlexITy currently operates two businesses:
- Reselling Cisco voice and data solutions, coupled with a systems integration business. They target large to medium businesses in Canada
- New CLEC business where they offer managed voice services to large and medium sized businesses
In both businesses FlexITy recognized the need for a unified communications service delivery platform (UC SDP) to help standardize their processes and lower their cost base.
Solution
The VOSS 6.1 UC SDP was deployed initially within the managed CUCM platform to provide a layer of automated service management and provisioning for FlexITy's customer base.
FlexITy has also started to bid VOSS 6.1 as part of their standard response to large enterprise RFPs.
Both business models will be supported from a common management portal, providing economies of scope.
Benefits
FlexITy has seen a number of benefits:
- Faster customer acquisition, leading to a reduction in associated costs and a reduction in the number of pending customers changing their mind
- VOSS Day-1 deployment tools meant that the site deployment costs were significantly lower
- VOSS Day-2 support tools enabled customers to perform their own MACs in real time
- Engineering staff are able focus on new UC applications rather than basic administrative tasks
- Consistency in based configuration has removed the risk of data drift and inter-customer data conflicts
- All services are now managed in a central service catalog, allowing for better reporting and billing integration
- New services can be added quickly, and are more easily bundled within existing or value-add packages