[23
MAY 00] MARCONI NEWS
New Centre Increases Marconi Support
BY ANTONY HOPKER
Marconi
today unveiled a purpose-built secure Network Operations Centre to
give telecommunications operators all over Europe 24-hour support.
The
centre, which is based in Liverpool, is part of a worldwide strategy
to reduce operational costs and improve efficiencies for operators.
It
follows last week’s announcement of 2,000 new jobs in Coventry when
a new headquarters is built on a disused airfield in Ansty.
The
new centre is part of an international network of NOCs which already
includes a new centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and will soon
incorporate centres in Germany, Australia and Italy.
The
round-the-clock service will be run by highly-trained telecoms experts
and is designed to free firms from the burden of running their own
networks.
It
will allow operators to save up to 50 per cent of their network
management costs – which can take up 40 per cent of overall
operating costs.
Neil
Sutcliffe, Chief executive Officer of Marconi Services said:
"Today's
multi-vendor, multi-service networks are becoming increasingly
difficult to manage because of the sheer complexity of the equipment
involved.
“For
operators this can translate into major headaches, in terms of both
overhead costs and the difficulty of locating the right expertise to
get the job done.”
"Marconi's
global presence means we've worked with the leading telcos in
countries all around the world.
“This
gives our technical engineers an unrivalled experience supporting
not only our own equipment, but a huge range of products from all
the major vendors."
The
Liverpool NOC will initially focus on management of Marconi's
best-selling System X switches.
Support
for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode
(ATM) equipment will be added in September, with management of the
full range of Marconi communications products, including voice over-IP
and packet radio systems, integrated by the end of the year.
Marconi
will also provide capability to manage multi-vendor network solutions.
The
centre is equipped with best-in-class network management and
performance analysis systems, which incorporate early warning alerts
to enable technicians to detect potential faults before they affect
quality of service on the network.
The
systems will deliver the most advanced network control available,
including real-time event monitoring and Web-based performance
management, allowing customers to review the status of their networks
at any time directly over the Internet.
A
trouble-ticketing feature will also generate alerts to specialised
engineers, with automatic escalation of alert messages to increasingly
senior staff after a pre-set delay, to guarantee a maximum level of
responsiveness.
A
team of engineers and support staff working in shifts around the clock
will provide NOC customers with direct, 24-hour support, proactively
monitoring traffic flows across their networks and responding
immediately to equipment faults or traffic overloads on high volume
routes.
Each
network management engineer can monitor four customer networks
simultaneously from his or her console and, in the case of a serious
problem, can move the display of graphical data on any of their
networks to a bank of large monitors at the front of the centre to
facilitate input from other team members.
Mr
Sutcliffe said Marconi also sees an opportunity to act as a part-time
manager for larger telcos which may already have their own management
centres, by taking over night-time and weekend monitoring or providing
stand-by or backup facilities.
He
added:
"We
see enormous demand out there for this kind of service, which meets
the needs of established operators looking to re-engineer their
operations to make them dynamic and more cost-effective, and
fledgling operators who want to take advantage of the enormous
opportunities in today's telecoms markets."
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