Case Example

In one case, a major health carrier commissioned a study on new technology and cost tradeoffs. Their consultants recommended MPLS as a medium by which to offload their non-production data to from their ATM circuits to less-expensive circuits.

Their primary network is a hub-and-spoke design with three load-balanced data centers interconnected by DS-3 links.

They contacted their service provider, who recommended MPLS. Upper management wanted MPLS implemented 'today', but engineering and technology insertion staff were more cautious - they wanted a full understanding of the real numbers , the real tradeoffs, and where those tradeoffs would be. They ask:

• Own or outsource to service provider?

• What is the reliability?

• What are convergence times and network recovery times?

• What exactly do we gain?

Answers to their questions involving reliability and outages were not available, but because of a program developed by Redback, they were able to gain some concept of cost, in terms of both capital expenses and cost of operations.

Selling Services

Service providers and end users are demanding more for less. They want more services provided faster and cheaper. To successfully sell MPLS, a plan must be focused upon what they want.

One of the most sought-after new services is Video over IP followed by VoIP (Voice over IP) and network convergence.

The next important service is the ability to provide fully meshed VPNs at a fraction of the cost of services like ATM

Selling Hardware

Selling hardware is really the last point, and the issue of selling hardware only surfaces after the service has been sold and the user or carrier is convinced of the reliability of MPLS.

This is a process of examining feature sets vs. cost. Feature sets, in terms of what's available, run from slim to feature-rich. As far as sales go, the products whose number of features falls in the middle of the band stands the greatest chance of success.

For anyone needing more evidence that mid-range feature sets sell best: Go into your local appliance store and look at the best-selling appliances, and you will see that they are mid-range. Now, look at your phone. How many features do you have? How many do you use?