SAN JOSE, Calif. - April 8, 2002 - Further demonstrating its unique capabilities and commitment to customer and partner success, Cisco Systems Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced its new Advanced Services program. Cisco enterprise and service provider customers operate their networks under a variety of challenges, including the need to lower operating expenses, maximize network availability, speed migration to new network applications, improve staff productivity and more accurately predict network budgets. The goal of the Advanced Services program is to provide Cisco enterprise customers, service provider customers, and partners with real world tested processes, procedures and knowledge transfer required to achieve a high-performance network with superior performance, availability, security and support for next-generation networked applications. To achieve this goal, Cisco has staffed the Advanced Services program with engineers whose depth of experience in network engineering, access to innovative support tools and commitment to customer satisfaction make them uniquely capable to deliver industry-leading engineering support.
"The Advanced Service program's breadth of network application support, its delivery methods and its improved network budget predictability through subscription-based pricing can offer service providers and enterprises an effective way to support highly complex network infrastructures," said Richard Dean, program director, IDC. "By combining these characteristics with an experienced engineering support team, the Cisco Advanced Services program represents the new model for customers to consider to achieve a high-performance network."
Cisco Advanced Services Focus and ValueCisco Advanced Services consists of a unified suite of professional engineering support offerings that are designed to assist enterprise and service provider customers in realizing business return on investment (ROI) through high-performance networking and communications applications enablement. Through a unique portfolio of complementary service components, these services span the continuum of device, network and application support for the Cisco high-performance network. The Cisco Advanced Services program includes Focused Technical Support, Network Optimization Support and Technology Application Support.
Building upon the foundation of the Cisco SMARTnetTM and SP Base programs for technical support and continuous software upgrades, Focused Technical Support provides enterprise and service provider customers personalized access to specialized engineering resources for increased operational efficiency. Focused Technical Support provides operations management for rapid response to problem resolution and trend analysis, enabling customers to apply internal technical resources to more critical functions, such as network planning.
Network Optimization Support provides customers with expert advice on capacity planning, configuration management and software migration. This support offering helps customers evaluate and improve the performance aspects of their network infrastructure. The Cisco programmatic approach helps minimize future network outages and performance degradation that affect network availability, quality of service and security.
"Bank of America has multiple TCP/IP, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and optical networks, which must be available at all times to meet the needs and expectations of our customers," said James Brown, VP of Operations, Bank of America. "Cisco Advanced Services has enabled us to achieve a high degree of operational excellence while maximizing our networking investments. Cisco onsite and remote support, knowledge transfer and tools give our staff the right combination to ensure we deliver a reliable, high-performance network."
Communication applications such as IP telephony, virtual private networks (VPNs), packet telephony and enhanced IP require specialized support to help speed migration to
these new business enhancing technologies. Technology Application Support provides additional consultation to identify the design, configuration and security issues that may affect a customer's network when implementing or optimizing communications applications. For comprehensive support coverage, customers may opt for a complete bundle of these support services.
"Working closely with Cisco, BellSouth Internet Services has focused on developing our Next Generation networking capabilities in order to offer a comprehensive portfolio of new networking services to our customers," said Kenny Edgerton, Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, BellSouth Internet Services. "The stability and reliability of our networking platform that we've achieved through best practices and engineering expertise is reflected in the confidence our customers have in running their own applications over our infrastructure."
Advanced Services for the Cisco Partner Ecosystem
Cisco Advanced Services offer a strong complement to Cisco ecosystem partner offerings such as vendor-neutral ROI analysis, project management, multivendor network support and systems/network integration. Cisco Advanced Services provides several opportunities for partners to take advantage of the Cisco engineering expertise according to each partner's unique business model. Cisco partners can choose to resell advanced services to their end customers, as required or deliver their own branded services built on advanced services engineering expertise. Cisco plans to actively support both models globally. In the future, Cisco will work to provide partners both engineering and onsite project mentoring to further enhance deployment and support services partner capabilities. These partners can offer their own brand of services to their customers. Moreover, Advanced Services partner program offerings will soon become available to partners after pilot programs are complete. These services will enhance the partner's ability to access Cisco expertise and tools, such as assessments. The new Cisco Advanced Services program is designed to enhance partner participation and engagement, allowing for maximum customer choice and success."Customer success is integrated into everything we do. As a customer driven company, we realize that at the end of the day, our service has to be just like our products, clearly the best in the industry," said Gary B. Moore, Senior Vice President, Advanced Engineering Services, Cisco Systems.
For specific information on Advanced Services program offerings at Cisco Systems' locations around the world contact your local Cisco representative.
