The Beacon
June 2018
Welcome to the June 2018 edition of the Calix Beacon!
I am excited to highlight several changes that we have made to the format of the Beacon in response to your feedback. First, we have reduced the length of our email edition by providing a brief summary of the featured articles. Second, we are providing a link to the full content of each story highlighted in the email edition. Each link will bring you directly to the related article that is now available on our new home page for the Beacon. We hope that these changes enable you to quickly and easily locate the content and updates that are most relevant to you and your teams.
Like what you see? Have ideas on how we can continue to improve? Please share your thoughts in our survey below. Thank you for you continued support and partnership.
- Matt Collins, Chief Marketing Officer
With the introduction of Calix Cloud, we set out to address some serious challenges communications service providers (CSPs) had been facing in delivering a differentiated subscriber experience.
Today Calix Cloud is providing CSP line-of-business professionals easy access to data and analytics like never before. However, it is a good time to pause and acknowledge not only the huge strides we have made in evolving the platform but also the benefits Calix Marketing Cloud (CMC) and Calix Support Cloud (CSC) customers are enjoying as a result.
Network Data Transformation
With CMC, we launched a new self-service tool that allowed sales and marketing organizations to start discovering upgrade opportunities by tapping into subscriber network usage data correlated with their billing systems. It was the first time marketing professionals were able to leverage existing network data for growing their business, without having to rely on IT or data scientists.
Today, CMC provides complete insight into subscriber experience including the ability to not only upsell but also proactively identify churn risk with added intelligence from the Wi-Fi devices. Of course, the more data, the easier it has become to micro-segment the entire subscriber base to deliver relevant and personalized messages to individual target markets.
Autonomous Networks
With the launch of CSC, support organizations started leveraging network data not only for remote visibility into subscriber Wi-Fi experience and the recommendations engine to resolve subscribers' issues quickly but also for proactively finding and fixing Wi-Fi problems with SmartCheck before they impact users.
However, the first step towards autonomous networks came with Self Heal. It is designed to help reduce the need for manual intervention to address Wi-Fi issues. It scans the subscriber's Wi-Fi network daily, identifies any issues, and intelligently takes the right action at the right time to optimize performance.
Amazing results
While we take great pride in how far we have come with Calix Cloud, it is the business results that customers are seeing by investing in subscriber experience that validates that we are on the right path.
It’s extremely gratifying to watch customers realize these incredible results with Calix Cloud, and we look forward to continuing to follow their exciting journey over the coming years.
To hear directly from your peers how they are benefiting from Calix Cloud, please join the community
Calix ConneXions is where pioneers and thought leaders come to debate, collaborate and learn about the latest innovations that winning service providers are using to evolve their business models. At ConneXions we celebrate our customers’ successes, announce new products and services, and build community. But more than that, with new and ongoing partnerships and ecosystems, this shared experience will enable you to take your business to the next level.
I recently spent a couple of days at the FiberConnect 2018 show. It’s always fun to have many conversations with our customers as well as prospects, I learn so much. During this event there was one theme that seemed to stand out, we’re different. Not only different from our past, but from the rest. I think there is no better way to explain the difference than to quote one of the many I talked to at the event.
Calix has been working with a large cable company for a bit; they are testing our solutions in their lab, specifically the AXOS E3-2. In a conversation with one of their representatives, it came up that typically while working with a vendor they would see a release schedule meant they’d have to wait 18 months for new capabilities. But Calix had come back with a much different schedule, one that, quite frankly, no one believed. To this company’s surprise, not only did Calix deliver, they delivered on time. What seemed to impress them the most, was that this was not a one-time occurrence.
So, what makes this possible? It’s DevOps. Per Wikipedia, DevOps is a “software engineering culture and practice that aims at unifying software development (Dev) and software operations (Ops)… DevOps aims at shorter development cycles, increased deployment frequency, and more dependable releases, in close alignment with business objectives.” In reality, DevOps is not a tool or a process change; it is a complete culture shift within an organization that requires all parts of a company to embrace the change. Carl Russo talked about the culture shift that has occurred at Calix in his keynote at the Calix Connexions 2017 Conference.
You may be asking, my company isn’t a large cable company or a Verizon, so how does this impact me? No better way to explain it, than to provide an example. Have you noticed that on the AXOS E7-2 for instance, we’re releasing new software capabilities at least once per quarter and during this quarter we're doing it twice? Coming later this month, we're picking up the AXOS modules for VCA (video challenge analyzer) and Remote diagnostics capabilities. These capabilities began in the B6 and were first incorporated into AXOS modules in the Gfast systems. This shows not only the power of DevOps but also the power of the AXOS modular architecture that rides on the entire E-Series portfolio. We demonstrated these unique software tools to help you reduce truck rolls and improve subscriber experience in our recent AXOS Tech Talk #2 Webinar.
Join Calix on the third Wednesday of every month for our AXOS Tech Talk Series. Each Tech Talk webinar will go into topics to help you further understand AXOS and how it can benefit your business. The sessions will enable you to ask questions about capabilities within AXOS of Calix experts as well as service providers deploying AXOS. You can register here to be notified of the topics as they are announced.
Wi-Fi. People can’t be without it! A recent iQor study indicated that 64 percent of U.S. adults wouldn’t want to part from their Wi-Fi for more than one day. So, it’s important for service providers to support their subscribers’ ever-increasing dependency on Wi-Fi connectivity by taking a holistic approach when it comes to deploying, managing, and troubleshooting Wi-Fi. I asked a couple of our experts on some key things to look out for in maintaining an exceptional whole home Wi-Fi experience for subscribers.
Jana Jones, Calix Customer Success Manager with our Calix Support Cloud offering, strongly suggests making it easy for customer service representatives (CSRs) to troubleshoot problems, which ultimately helps improve overall First Call Resolution or FCR, an important KPI used to assess subscriber satisfaction.
Jana’s role as Customer Success Manager gives her extensive insight from helping customers apply Wi-Fi troubleshooting and customer care best practices through the Calix Support Cloud Success Program. Jana points out that enabling CSRs to easily identify the root cause of common problems can also lead to upsell opportunities. For example, a subscriber calling in complaining of slow Internet may be hitting the limit on their current broadband service as opposed to experiencing a network problem. Low-cost or legacy Wi-Fi devices in the subscriber’s home can also be the culprit. Some connected devices can slow down the Wi-Fi network, and as the number of these devices multiply in the home, the impact to the in-home experience will increase. With Calix Support Cloud, a CSR can readily identify and solve the issues a subscriber is having and either upsell them to a higher bandwidth package or coach them on how to resolve the problem without having to resort to a technician truck roll.
Andrew Peterson, Technical Consultant for Calix Professional Services, stresses the importance of employing best practices when it comes to helping service providers deliver an exceptional user experience with a whole home managed Wi-Fi service. One of his roles is helping service providers get ready to deliver and manage Wi-Fi to their subscribers. Andrew not only works with operations teams to get the network ready to support managed Wi-Fi but also meets with service providers’ field technicians to show them best practices in proper device placement in the home to ensure good coverage and prevent trouble reports in the future.
The Whole Home Wi-Fi Enablement Services package eliminates the complexity in delivering and managing a whole home Wi-Fi service. It consists of a collection of service offerings that can help an operator accelerate deployment and get operationally ready with less risk, actionable deliverables, and guaranteed outcomes. You can find out more by visiting our Professional Services web page.
As my colleague Tom pointed out above, Wi-Fi is very important to today's consumers. And at Calix, we believe a Managed Wi-Fi service is key for service providers to deliver an unmatched subscriber experience.
The good news is that we are seeing more and more service providers offering Managed Wi-Fi services today. Even better news is that these service providers all report numerous benefits associated with having established a strategic foothold in the home of their subscribers, including improved differentiation, loyalty, and profitability, as well as reduced churn and lower support costs.
We want to help with your go-to-market strategy.
To date, more than 100 service providers have engaged in marketing consults with Calix executives and product experts. If you are interested in hearing about real-world best practices from service providers that are offering Managed Wi-Fi services, schedule your free consultation now.
We’ve also created marketing samples and educational content that can be found on the Marketing and Education Resources site; all designed for use in your marketing campaigns. If you haven’t visited the site recently, check out a new section called “Customer Product Guides”. Here you will find links to two short (2-page) documents – one for the Calix GigaCenter and one for the Calix 804Mesh satellites.
Both are written using very simple language and are intended to assure your subscribers that the premises systems that you provide are way better than any consumer-grade device. These documents would also serve as excellent post-sales pieces, to be given to subscribers as field technicians install their new device(s).
The ultimate in-home Wi-Fi performance
The second of the three steps in the journey toward the ultimate goal – the smart home — is to offer a Mesh-enhanced Carrier class Wi-Fi solution. To provide more information we have updated our white paper “Who will own the connected home of the future” with additional information on the pros and cons of placing multiple wireless access points (WAPs) in the homes of your subscribers.
The Calix 804Mesh satellite unit provides the ultimate Whole Home Wi-Fi experience. We’ve previously mentioned our 3-minute ‘out-of-the-box’ video, but we’ve also recently created a 4-page 804Mesh Setup Guide. (Calix customers who are not currently My Calix users will need to register for a My Calix account to access this document.) You can also visit the 804Mesh web page, which includes links to recent press releases, webinar replays, and customer testimonial videos.
Each month, we highlight the top 5 recent Calix Blog posts to make sure you don't miss out on the latest news and insights from Calix experts and industry guests.
And don't forget to follow us and check out other insightful articles.
How to Configure AXOS Remote Management
Did you know that you can get Active Ethernet ONTs to appear under the E7 OLT’s GE ports in the CMS or EWI network Navigation Tree?
Are you a central office technician responsible for installation and turn-up of AXOS-based E7-2?
Do you maintain and troubleshoot E7-2 network configurations?
Starting with the purpose and function of the primary hardware components of the E7-2, the E7-2 (AXOS) Turn-Up and Transport instructor-led course shows you how to perform initial configuration and basic system settings. Managing the E7-2 with the AXOS Services Management Connector (SMx) is also covered.
To register for a virtual classroom instructor-led course, go to Calix Academy, click the Events Calendar and go to July 2018.
Upcoming Classes:
E7-2 (AXOS) Turn-Up and Transport
July 23, 2018, 1:00 PM PST
Calix Academy offers a broad catalog of self-paced eLearning courses with convenient 24x7 access, so you can start, stop, and continue each course on your own schedule. Several new eLearning courses have recently been released, including:
Introduction to Layer 3 in the Access Network
This course provides an overview of Layer 3 functionality in the access network (available with AXOS) and covers high-level functions of the Routing Protocol Module (RPm) and the Subscriber Management Module (SMm).
Introduction to NG-PON2
This course examines the network needs driving the continuing evolution of PON technologies, and why this latest iteration, NG-PON2 is so innovative.
Introduction to E9-2
This course provides a basic overview of the Calix E9-2 Intelligent Edge System, including the product essentials and supported applications.
Introduction to SMx for E9-2
This course provides an overview of the AXOS Services Management Connector (SMx), the next generation service and network management platform for managing Calix AXOS-based systems.
Register today! Go to Calix Academy, and click Browse for Training.
Located 20 miles outside of Boston, Massachusetts, the town of Concord was founded in 1635 and played a role in several major moments in American history, including the Revolutionary War. In 1898, the town began offering municipal electrical services and today is one of 41 municipal electric utilities in the state.
Over the years, Concord Municipal Light Plant (CMLP) started leveraging their fiber network for a smart grid implementation, which connects to smart meters, community street lights, controlled hot water heaters, and other in-home storage devices. With this network in place, demand grew from the community for CMLP to enter the broadband services market due to a lack of high-speed options in the area.
After a feasibility study in 2012, CMLP announced general availability of broadband services in 2014. Through its partnership with Calix, including the Calix Professional Service team, CMLP was well prepared for its initial launch, with 180 residents signing up for service on the first day. The subscriber base has grown to over 1000 now and CMLP is looking ahead to new ways to expand leverage its fiber investment.
As much of the CMLP smart grid network utilizes Zigbee communications, CMLP is excited for Calix EXOS. CMLP sees possibilities for performance improvements and collapsing of multiple network elements by using an open platform that supports a wide variety of protocols.
Learn more about CMLP’s path to becoming a broadband service provider and how it is preparing for the delivery of next generation services in the future.
Calix strives to connect our users to the most salient and innovative content, to help you deliver superior services and amazing experiences to your customers. Keeping your contact information current is the best way to ensure we get the most appropriate content to you.
We encourage you to take a moment to review the contact information on your My Calix account settings. As added incentive, every member who updates their profile between now and July 1 will automatically be entered into a drawing for a free iPad Pro.
Thank you for being part of our global community that is connecting the world!
CAB-18-018: Calix Security Advisory for 'VPNFilter' Malware
Premises SB-18-007: GigaFamily EWI Upgrade Issue
Premises SB-18-008: GigaFamily R12.2.8 Issues
SMx R3.3 System Administrator Guide
SMx R3.3 Services Management Guide
Getting Started with the AXOS SMx APIdoc
