From Ian’s desk

At this time of year, it’s hard to avoid sport. It’s on TV, in newspapers and even stops traffic for parades and horse races!

It makes some sense then to leverage this sporting activity and the familiarity we have with the mechanics of sport to explain business strategy and motivate teams.

Business is filled with sports analogies. Sales and marketing people are like the wings and forwards of a football team - they push to score the points.

Commercial, finance and legal play defensive positions - their job is to minimize mistakes made by the forwards, and also to stop aggressive plays made by competitors.

Support staff massage the players, get them drinks, cart their gear around, and otherwise enable the players to focus on their main job - which is winning the game.

Uecomm’s half time position is strong, as we continue to sign up new Ethernet customers and get great feedback about our flexibility and approach to customer service. A couple of our customers are profiled in this edition of Wavelength, Availability Services specialist Interactive and supplier of share market and wealth management systems in Australia, IRESS.

On the sporting theme we also provide some insight into how we further develop our high performing teams here at Uecomm with a focus on the Victorian Sales Team.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Wavelength!

Regards

Ian Noble
Acting CEO and Director of Technology

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Interactive increases network performance with new Uecomm Ethernet WAN

Australia’s premier Availability Services specialist, Interactive has chosen Uecomm to replace its existing Managed Frame Relay network with a metro Ethernet WAN delivered on Uecomm’s VPLS platform.

The four-year contract involves high-speed diverse fibre links to Interactive’s data centres and offices located in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and a national corporate WAN for its state offices in Western Australia, South Australia and ACT.

Uecomm’s VPLS platform provides a resilient Ethernet solution, and was key for Interactive who wanted to control its own routing and requirements for fully meshed connectivity to multiple sites.  It provides full redundancy in the core and seamless failover to an alternative site in the event a primary location fails – the security required for a systems availability business.  

With the upgrade to Uecomm’s network, Interactive has been able to increase total bandwidth for its primary network by more than 370 per cent, while achieving cost savings of 46 per cent.

According to Interactive’s director of infrastructure, Don McKenzie, the driver to upgrade to an Ethernet WAN was the business benefits that could be achieved with a reliable, scalable, high-bandwidth service that would also deliver significant cost savings to the business.

“We had outgrown our Managed Frame Relay network.  We needed a networking solution that would provide cost benefits and greater flexibility, but more importantly ensure our continued excellent service delivery to our 1,300 plus customers nation-wide,” Mr McKenzie explained.

“Our existing Managed Frame Relay network simply didn’t offer these benefits, nor did it allow us to control our own network, which was an important driver for our business,” he said.

According to Ian Noble, Uecomm’s director of technology and acting CEO, businesses operating in mission-critical environments are increasingly choosing to upgrade their legacy networks to an Ethernet solution.

“The inherent resiliency of Ethernet is key for many businesses.  The VPLS platform can provide seamless failover to an alternative site in the event that the primary location is no longer operational, providing added security to mission-critical businesses.

“For Interactive and many of our other customers, such resiliency, and the ability to achieve additional business benefits with significant cost savings is proving popular,” he said.

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IRESS has total back up with Uecomm fibre network

When it comes to share trading, timing is everything. That’s why in 2007, IRESS Market Technology decided to replace its outdated ISDN network with a primary Optus fibre WAN with full redundancy provided by Uecomm’s Ethernet network.

As a principal supplier of share market and wealth management systems in Australia, and with 30 per cent of all Australian orders placed on the ASX completed via its systems, it was imperative that IRESS was able to ensure maximum resiliency in its network.

“It is critical to IRESS’ business that we have a network that offers our customers extremely low latency and high resiliency,” explains Dale Monger, Head of Global Networks for IRESS.

“Particularly when a delay of just milliseconds has been quoted to equate to potential revenue losses in the hundreds and thousands of dollars,” he said.  “For IRESS, our competitiveness in the market is driven by the service delivery we provide for our customers.  We simply cannot settle for anything less than what our new network offers.”

Prior to switching to a fibre WAN and the Uecomm redundant Ethernet network, IRESS operated on an ISDN network with speeds of 128/256 Kbps.  This low bandwidth meant that all data required compression which increased the potential for delays in the ordering process. 

The move to fibre has allowed a massive increase in bandwidth with Uecomm providing a 30Mbps service between IRESS’ Sydney and Melbourne locations and a 6Mbps service from Perth and Brisbane back to the Sydney and Melbourne sites.

Uecomm services also connect IRESS’ clients to its network with capacity ranging between 2 and 10Mbps.

Despite the obvious business benefits achieved from greater resiliency and capacity, a key driver for IRESS to utilise Uecomm as its network service provider for its redundant network is its ability to provision new client sites quickly and with minimal disruption to service.

“Uecomm works with us to ensure each new site provisioning has no impact on network resiliency or service delivery, designing parallel builds and service cut over.  I’ve worked with fibre service providers all over the world, and can safely say that Uecomm’s service delivery is world class.”

For IRESS, the assurance provided by Uecomm’s 24/7 Network Operations Centre (NOC) staffed by qualified engineers, was of critical importance.

“As a customer we have access to technically competent people who take ownership of a problem.  We’re able to deal with engineers who know how to remedy the issue, rather than customer service representatives who simply troubleshoot from scripted questions,” said Monger.

Ian Noble, Director of Technology and acting CEO for Uecomm says: “Businesses in the financial services sector have strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to meet.  Ethernet has proven its ability to deliver to these strict guidelines with superior resiliency and capacity.”

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Vic Sales team embraces high performance culture

With a new structure and a number of new members, the Victorian sales team needed to develop a performance culture that would establish a high-performing sales team to support the Uecomm business.

Charles Sutherland, State Manager – Victoria, initiated a team development project with Leading Teams to kick start this process.

Leading Teams, led by Garie Dooley, an ex-professional soccer player, utilises the same philosophy used to build high-performing sporting teams for businesses across Australia.

Specialising in the delivery of teamwork and leadership programs for corporate and elite sporting organisations, Leading Teams aligns teams by creating a shared vision and set of behaviours that empowers all members of the team.

The two-session program saw the 28 members of the Victorian sales team put through their paces; focusing on the best way to optimise resources and establish the team’s ‘trademark’ and developing a culture of giving and receiving feedback.

The result? A trademark was established for the team built on unity, commitment and focus – the assets also required for an elite sporting team.  Not unlike football, rugby or soccer, the success of the Victorian sales team is dependent upon highly-functioning team dynamics.

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