Delivering Business Outcomes: When Did You Last Reduce Time To Market?

Working in the Data Center and Cloud Professional Services team in Cisco on cloud and software defined networking, I am sometimes asked “What do you guys in Cisco Services really do?”  [especially by people in my office :-)]  I’ll use Cbeyond, one of our customers who offer differentiated cloud services enabled by Cisco Services, to illustrate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-nsfzcw7CI

I could tell you …..

I could tell you that we help customers design advanced data center architectures, that we help them adopt SDN and ACI, that we help them migrate applications to new platforms, that we develop cloud orchestration and service catalog solutions, and that we help customers identify their all-to-often excessive spend on “shadow IT”.  Sure, yes, we do all that.  However what we deliver amounts to way more than a series of technical deliverables.

It’s best to illustrate this with a customer example. Cbeyond, are an Atlanta (USA)-based managed services provider who deliver differentiated cloud services to their small and medium sized business customers.  They help customers through the complex evaluation process of deciding which applications to migration to cloud – and which not to.   And they help migrate those applications to  their advanced Cisco-UCS-based cloud.  You can find our more in the video above, and the case study write-up.

So what did Cisco Services really deliver for Cbeyond?  We delivered more than just a functional and robust cloud architecture. First, and possibly most importantly, the experts in Cisco Services reduced time-to-market for their new cloud offering by two months. (Have a think about how this would help your project!)  Cisco Services helped them leapfrog their own business plan when they secured new revenue opportunities earlier than expected.  And in their IT estate, Cisco Services, through diligent architectural design, saved them significant energy costs by reduced per-switch port power by more than 75 percent.

So what do we do in Cisco Advanced Services?  We deliver business outcomes.  We help customers meet and beat aggressive project timeframes, help them leapfrog competitors and help them reduce time to market for their critical initiatives – and more.  So the next time you need to meet or beat aggressive business goals, make Cisco Services your first point of call.