A Leased Line For AllWhite Paper

We’ll show you:

How your customers can afford it

Why your customers should consider it

by Anthony Cross

www.eclipse.net.uk

A Leased Line For All

A White Paper from

üü

From our own market analyst

With more organisations than ever viewing Leased Lines as a business-critical service.

A Leased Line For All

ProFiLe

Anthony Cross is employed by the KCOM Group Plc as a full time marketanalyst. His role is to seek out and monitor market trends, statistics, surveysand research relevant to the technology and communication serviceprovider industries.

Until recently, Anthony’s work has benefited the three service providerswithin the KCOM Group Plc: Kcom, KC and Eclipse Internet – giving thesecompanies an independent and bespoke source of research and adviceenabling more focussed marketing and sales.

Eclipse Internet has decided to share Anthony Cross’ invaluable insightand priceless data with the Reseller market. We believe a good ISP shoulddo more than simply provide great products and services to our Resellers –we aim to become an independent source of business support as well.

read on for:

A picture of why so many businesses are relying on Leased Lines

Insight into how the market has changed and become more accessible and affordable

Practical advice on how your customers can increase resilience and protect their reputation using a Leased Line

And watch out for more White Papers “From our own market analyst“ over the coming months.

introduCtion

The days of a Leased Line being accessible only to enterprise-level businesses are well and truly over. Did you know that almost half of all businesses with 10 or more staff now rely on dedicated internet access – more commonly known as Leased Lines – for their connection?

Increasingly, small businesses are also finding that a reliable, rock solid, dedicated internet connection is an absolute necessity in order to compete in today’s demanding markets. And with connectivity becoming ever more critical to businesses of all sizes, the market for Leased Lines has boomed. That’s great news for buyers because it’s forced a once arguably elitest market to diversify, broaden and become accessible to all.

This White Paper will show you how this has happened and what it means in practical terms. We’ll start with the reasoning behind why so many businesses have chosen to invest in Leased Line solutions, then look at the risks of downtime versus the benefits of high availability, before exploring how a Leased Line service can be sourced to fit the needs and budgets of all modern organisations.

üüü

A Leased Line For All

The need for a Leased Line is directly connected to the need for high availability. When I speak to customers who are buying these types of connections, they’re investing their money in the promise of reliability, a high (as close to 100% as you can get) availability rating all backed up by Service Level Agreement guarantees.In real terms, that all means that the business knows they have invested in a dedicated, reliable connection to the internet, which is guaranteed to be available all

the time – and comes with robust SLAs in the case of unavoidable failure. In other words, it’s the best you can get. It’s the platinum standard in connection – and it’s the best way to protect a business against downtime.This can clearly be seen when the Ofcom Business Connectivity Services Review 2011 asked what the most important features of a dedicated internet access service were. Here’s how the answers stacked up.

WHy businesses need A LeAsed Line - (or what happens when it all goes wrong)

% 2011NET Business critical /

very important

97%

88%

87%

78%

78%

70%

65%

58%

58%

1009080706050403020100

Range

Symmetry

Jitter

Dedicated connection

Latency

Bandwidth - upload speed

Resilience

Bandwidth - download speed

Availability

DK/not sure Not at all important Nice to have Very important Business critical

1

1

1

1

2

2

3

3

6

6 12

7

6

13

4

2

10

10

18

16

17

23

32

24 37 21

41 17

43 22

37

30

29

57

35

79

32

48

49

30

53

17

A few months ago now, I published another White Paper called “Do your business customers have a Plan B?” which looked at digital dependency and the cost of downtime. It’s never been a more current topic. The cost of downtime in today’s uber-connected world goes far beyond the literal. A dropped connection doesn’t

just mean inconvenience – it means lost business, lower productivity and a damaged brand. Given today’s financial pressures, none of these outcomes sit favourably with customers, owners or shareholders. But when it comes to impact, the latter is by far the biggest threat.

relative importance of service features

A Leased Line For All

2012 has not been a good year for mobile giant O2 who suffered two major outages – first in July and then again in October. The most recent problems saw 1 in 10 of their customers unable to make calls, send texts or use data services. The company were forced to apologise and issued compensation to a number of its customers. Although the downtime lasted barely 24 hours, confidence in the brand was severely dented and customer patience soon ran out. O2 denied it was the same problem on both occasions but the damage was done.

Back in the summer, the Natwest bank suffered a series of issues after a major systems collapse left hundreds of thousands of customers unable to withdraw money or use online banking. Embarrassingly for Natwest, it was just the start of a series of “technical glitches” which had customers held to ransom by a dodgy piece of software. Their troubles were exacerbated by a social media backlash , further damaging their brand.

As we entered Autumn, it was retail and online-platform mega-brand Amazon’s turn to trip up. A failure in their AWS hosting service took a number of high-profile customers off line altogether. Sites such as FourSquare, Netflix and Pinterest all fell victim to the failure, which Amazon initially billed as a “degraded performance” . Yet again, it was the second major outage for the company who had failed customers earlier in the year with a similar problem.

o2 nAtWest AmAzon

OK, so these examples all came about for very different technical reasons, and are not necessarily connectivity related. O2’s original outage was caused by a problem during the transition of subscriber details from one database to another; Natwest’s glitch was in software used to process banking transactions and AWS suffered as a result of replacing a data collection server.

But what’s important is that the customer doesn’t know that. From a customer point of view, their services weren’t available and that wasn’t good enough. Today’s demanding customer expects 24/7 access and service from any organisation they choose to do business with – and companies who want to keep competitive in their market must keep up. After all, margins are tight and that’s led to customers now differentiating on service.

Leased Lines can be seen as the cornerstone of any businesses’ insurance against any sort of technical glitch like these. Downtime means no services – public facing or procedural – are available, so getting the right connection is essential. A really good, well-serviced, expertly supported Leased Line connection can make the difference between a successful public image and smoothly running cloud services, and a PR disaster.

but tHAt isn’t An issue For my Customer-bAse...

Recent high profile service failures have highlighted that downtime goes beyond the financial, and in fact, impacts the customer experience and therefore brand value. Let’s look at some examples of the damage downtime can to do today’s brands.

A Leased Line For All

HoW A LeAsed Line ProteCts businesses - (or what do they use it for?)

So what do businesses use Leased Lines for? In short, a Leased Line, or other dedicated internet access connection usually replaces the general broadband connection that your customers have and takes on all their vital workloads. Leased Lines are used for fundamental day-to-day functions

%

97

82

88

71

50

41

46

1009080706050403020100

Data - video

Voice - PSTN grade quality

Voice - VoIP/Vo Broadband

Data - storage network

Data - shared enterprise app/info

Data - remote access to EN

Data - email & internet

2011

30

Base: All using Ethernet Leased Lines (n=133)

Despite being the workhorse of an organisation, it’s surprisingly easy to underestimate the importance the connection plays. It’s a little like how no-one appreciates the importance of our water supply until they can’t make a cup of tea or have a shower. No-one worries about the electricity supply until a powercut when they realise they can’t watch TV, cook a meal, enjoy central heating. Connecting to the internet has arguably already become as important as these other basic amenities, and for good reason.

What ethernet Leased Lines used for (specific)

So, whilst more and more organisations rely on the connectivity which underpins their applications and often entire communication structure and the impact of any outage has on them – they also need to consider the impact on customers, suppliers and brand.

A Leased Line For All

I can speak from experience in the case of the supermarket in that example. As a production planner for a well known supplier to one of the “big 4” in a previous job, I was unable to provide an accurate production plan thanks to an outage. The knock-on effect was that the transport company responsible for delivering to the national distribution centres couldn’t plan their loads and raw materials were unable to accurately plan for future demand.

Ultimately we found a way to work around the issue - but it was at great expense. A lot of manpower went into solving the problem, a lot of product went to waste and although it was never disclosed how much it cost in terms of pounds, a great deal of damage was done to

relationships, suppliers and ultimately customers – all thanks to a single downtime incident preventing access to a vital planning tool.

In my previous White Paper: “Do your business customers have a Plan B?”, I offer a realistic estimate of the cost of downtime, specific to any business. When consulting with customers, using this simple fraction is a useful way to get the importance of reliability in connectivity terms across. But I suggest going one step further and suggesting your customer looks more closely at his partners, suppliers, colleagues and customers and takes stock of the level of knock-on damage his personal outage could cause.

WHy LeAsed Line is tHe AnsWer - (or what can it do for my business?)

As the growth in cloud computing continues, and inevitably will do so exponentially, a reliable dedicated

connection to the internet is essential for the day to day function of modern businesses. To be taken seriously

Travel Agentcan’t access

central database

Web Host can’tconnect to

the Internet

Customers cannot see or book anything.

Lost sale (today), lost sales (future business). Damaged brand.

Supplier unable to see or plan next-day demand.

Orders are not met - Lost sales for supplier and supermarket. Damaged brand for both.

Customer’s online business is disabled.

Lost business (Customer), potential lost business (Web Host), damaged brand (customer and web host)

Supermarketcan’t process

real-time demandfor fresh foodfrom supplier

Just as we don’t appreciate the part our other utilities play in our day to day lives, until they’re no longer there – most businesses aren’t fully aware of the scale of the impact of a loss of internet connection. Here’s a very simple illustration of the issues it causes.

A Leased Line For All

in your market, a business must demonstrate reliability, accessibility and high availability.

As we have proved here, connectivity goes beyond enabling productivity and becomes a symbol of the status of an organisation’s brand. That’s because it has a vital role to play in the customer experience. Basing your reputation on a dodgy internet connection is like taking to sea in a sieve.

The Cisco Business Barometer of 2011 showed that successful businesses were most likely to see technology as an enabler of change, as well as providing a competitive advantage. It stands to reason: not only does a really competent connection provide new opportunities but it preserves your reputation for great service. After all, how often have you heard “I’m sorry, I can’t access our system at the moment” and either thought less of the company as a result, or even taken your business elsewhere?

The key to “What can a Leased Line do for my business?”

is that it’s more than just a great connection. It’s a really reliable internet connection, backed by robust SLAs – and it’s these SLAs which provide even more protection to businesses. A small to medium size operation (particularly one without an extensive in-house IT department) doesn’t just need a connection – it needs the peace of mind that comes with a market-leading SLA. One which ensures that, should the worst happen, it’s dealt with as quickly as humanly possible, efficiently and proactively, by staff who really know their stuff. They need to choose a provider who understands that downtime is not an option – and who are willing to back that understanding with financial guarantees.Of course not every business needs a dedicated Leased Line, but an increasing number do – and it’s the small business end of the scale who may benefit the most. After all, most larger organisations are already likely to have invested in the security of a dedicated internet access connection, and in doing so, achieve less of a competitive advantage among their peers than that of the smaller business which has the foresight to put their money where their mouth is.

ConCLusionAs the economy sparks back into life after a tumultuous economic period, the brands that have survived and flourished have been those that reacted favourably to the changing behaviours of consumers. As pennies and pounds become prisoners, customers demanded more from their brands. For those brands, faced with unprecedented competition, and subsequent commoditisation, the customer experience has become the foremost means of differentiation between providers of products and services, whether that is in the B2C or B2B space.

Previously, a poor customer experience meant a lost sale. Today, social media and online customer forums mean a poor customer experience equates to a tarnished brand, and hundreds of potential customers

put off by negative ratings. Equally, a great customer experience can lead to a significant boost in sales.

Ultimately, the customer experience is defined by an organisations internal culture and processes. However, each interaction between customer and provider is now underpinned by reliable infrastructure, whether that’s simply a website being ‘up’, or having access to customer information in real-time.

An ‘always-on’ connection, twinned with industry-leading SLA and proactive monitoring, ensures your infrastructure will not let you down, leaving a business to concentrate on the far more tricky business of improving internal systems and processes.

www.eclipse.net.uk 01392 335254