The Orange Business Live event is split into large conference style presentations and keynotes from industry experts. There are also "Buzz Session" that are running in-between those sessions. These 'Buzz Session' are smaller group session of which there are 7 running simultaneously. The reducing costs 'Buzz Session' was one of the most popular sessions here at Orange Business Live, which is no surprise as we all know the state of the economy and the shifting focus of most IT Businesses.
Michael Burrell from Orange led the presentation in an innovative way. Michael's first slide was a games showesque wall of options, those options being the topics that were going to be presented. Here are some of those topics that the audience choose and asked Michael and his team to present on with a focus on reducing Telecom spends.
How to save up to 10% of access spend
Local access is a growing part of the network and increasing market complexity and a wider choice of access along with alternative carriers providing greater competition. Thus by reviewing your access inventory over time, leased line tariff decreases of up to 10% per year are achievable.
A case study for a New Zealand financial institute indicated up to 16% reduction through change of supplier with the important statistic of payback coming in six months.
Reducing access by 20% by replacing high speed leased lines with Ethernet
Telecoms commentators had forecast that data traffic will double every 18 months which in turn drives the need for more bandwidth to cope with this demand. Therefore businesses are looking to replace traditional SDH access circuits and replace them with a product that provides more bandwidth at a lower cost and Ethernet is a true alternative and is up to 25% cheaper.
Ethernet allows a single protocol to be used both within the LAN and WAN and future upgrades are cheap as the same router and frequently the same card can be used. Orange has Ethernet in 32 countries and the product provides a great technology when targeted at headquarters, data centers and key sites with high capacity.
Reducing access costs by replacing low speed SDH access with DSL which can offer up to a 25% saving
As discussed above, businesses are looking to replace high speed SDH circuits with Ethernet as the bandwidth increases; conversely businesses are looking to attack the other end of the bandwidth scale and replaced lower speed SDH circuits with ADSL. Orange has ADSL in 157 countries and SDSL 18 countries. Orange Business can help you choose and manage the balancing act between trade off between performance and cost via the small office solution service.
Orange also has the Proactive Access Optimization (PAO) Service to help its customers manage its access costs. This service provides a quarterly report pointing out savings opportunities and is an iterative process to select and propose and then implement access optimization. There are 26 customers taking advantage of the PAO and has demonstrated in a case study that it can 21% saving via this innovative service.
Rob is the Group Head for Telecoms Sourcing for Western Europe and the Nordics and manages a team providing all aspects of Telecoms sourcing to Orange Business. Rob owns the Commercial relationship with major carriers across Europe on behalf of Orange Business. Cost reduction, re-negotiation, competitiveness and subsequent impact on country P&L are key activities that Rob drives across Western Europe.