AVP, Customer Success, Calix

linkedin.com/in/marthagalley

We’ve heard from customers who have had the following success:

• $310,000 in operating expense savings due primarily to reducing trucks rolls from a monthly average of 459 to 345 using Calix Support Cloud
• $26,000 increase in revenue from a direct mail campaign using data from Calix Marketing Cloud (Oh, and the campaign only cost $441 to run!)
• 51 percent campaign take rate using a targeted list from Calix Marketing Cloud

What additional resources could help you reach your goals (reduce operating expenses, increase revenue, improve subscriber satisfaction) for the rest of the year? Have you looked to see if Calix Customer Success Services would help your team reach business goals faster?

Our primary objective with Customer Success Services is to help our customers reach and measure success on their specific business goals - accelerating your Time to Value. We like to say that your success is how we measure our success.

In 2019 and beyond, we will be introducing new resources you can use to accelerate your Time to Value with Calix solutions:  

• Customer Success Services allow you to partner with our team of experienced Customer Success Managers who will assist your team with:
  • Calix Solution Onboarding which includes custom training and enablement for your teams, including Customer Service Reps, Marketing, and Technicians
  • Goal setting to help create KPIs aligning to your business objectives
  • Best Practice Change Management which include consultations, Success Business Reviews, and benchmarking your progress against industry and peer results

• Success for All: On-demand assets
  • Calix Community: You may be familiar with the Calix Community and use it for troubleshooting with your peers and finding knowledge articles for specific situations. We are working to refresh the Community, based on user feedback, to include a more robust resource for our customers. 
  • Circles of Success: These 45-minute interactive sessions will cover topics such as solution adoption, best practices, and user tips. Find the schedule here.
  • Success at Your Fingertips: Our in-application resources provide real-time, step-by-step guidance whenever you need it, without leaving Calix Cloud. Simply log in to Calix Cloud to see “Success at Your Fingertips” in action.

If you would like to read more about Customer Success Services, check out our webpage or reach out to us at calixcustomersuccess@calix.com with questions. Let us help you accelerate your time to value!          

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Senior Director, Services Marketing, Calix

linkedin.com/in/thomasschroer

Do you want to make sure your next transformation project is deployed correctly? Team skill levels, unclear objectives, and execution issues are the biggest reasons why technology implementation projects can go wrong. Calix Professional Services has launched a collection of foundational service offerings to help Communication Service Providers (CSPs) address these issues and deploy network infrastructure more consistently, with better quality, and less rework. Calix Deployment Enablement Services leverage expertise, tools, and best practices gained from performing thousands of deployment projects consisting of:

• Calix Project Playbooks
• Calix MobilePRO App
• Calix Quality Assessment Services

A Closer Look at Calix Deployment Enablement Services

Varying implementation standards can make expanding and overbuilding existing sites challenging. They also pose a challenge for field technicians as they try to maintain and troubleshoot network infrastructure with differing deployment approaches.

• Calix Project Playbooks equip your field personnel, installers, and contractors with documented best practices, guidelines, and training that drive consistent, repeatable, and high-quality execution of inside plant, outside plant, and premise deployment projects.
• Calix MobilePRO app is an online tool for your field personnel and contractors to electronically manage and document installation and construction projects, inventory, and quality. The Calix MobilePRO app enables you to capture real-time deployment data, testing results, photos, GPS, and inventory information in an easy-to-use mobile application. It can be customized to meet your project needs and is well suited for applications like:
  • Site surveys
  • Site acceptance and conformance test benchmarking
  • Inventory tracking of deployed equipment
  • Site quality assessment and validation
  • Customer premise ONT deployments

• Calix Quality Assessment Services provide the expertise to immediately identify quality issues and inform your deployment teams of the appropriate corrective actions to keep projects on track.and eliminate rework.  With this approach, project wait time is reduced, downtime fees are avoided, and follow-up visits are reduced by 70 percent since quality issues are solved up front and in a timely manner.

Deployment Enablement Services are recommended for CSP field personnel and contractors on greenfield and network expansion projects where consistent standards, automated data collection, and immediate assessment of deployment quality is needed. You can find out more by going to our Professional Services web page and requesting a demo or watch our webinar replay.

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AVP, Product Marketing Subscriber Experience,

Calix

linkedin.com/in/fergusonpam

@IoTPamF

Just in the last few months, we have talked to more than 50 service providers of all sizes, in different phases of their smart home journey. We compiled our key takeaways from those workshops and shared them during a live webinar last month. Watch the webinar replay here.

Here’s a brief look at some key observations.

Understanding the role of Wi-Fi 6 in a smart home
When we say smart home, it’s easy to see gadgets around the home from door bells to cameras, plugs and voice assistants. However, most of these devices connect via Wi-Fi today. And imagine more and more gadgets connected in the home, all the time.

Wi-Fi 6, the next-generation Wi-Fi standard, is all about faster speeds and better performance. It’s set to perform faster in congested areas, which makes it ideal for gadget-packed homes with multiple devices running simultaneously. It also uses less power than older standards, meaning it extends battery life for connected devices and helps new low-power IoT devices that connect via Wi-Fi.

With Wi-Fi 6, you won’t have to worry about how many devices and sensors are connected to the network or if they’ll compromise performance and result in unnecessary support calls and bad subscriber experience.

Not just for tech fans and smart home enthusiasts anymore
Most service providers realize the revenue opportunity of getting into the smart home business, and the time to enter is now. While they may have been initially hazy on how and where exactly to start, the “aha” moments come from looking back at their journey.

Every successful turn in their business came from addressing their subscriber needs—quickly. For example, when subscribers wanted connectivity but did not want to be tethered to their desks, home Wi-Fi was the answer. When they demanded excellent worry-free Wi-Fi, it was time for managed Wi-Fi.

Similarly, taking regular pulse on subscriber experience and behavior not only ensures that the smart home offers meet their subscriber needs, but also helps in the roll out of new services while keeping out the competition.

What is it going to take to succeed?

Based on all our conversations, Calix recommends four building blocks for a well-rounded smart home strategy:

• Owning the antenna with visibility into subscriber experience
• Targeting the right subscribers to maximize revenue
• Enabling the Customer Care organization with the intelligence to address smart home troubles
• Empowering subscribers with a smart home app to take control over their experience

For a closer look at other early smart home learnings, including addressing non-traditional competition and how to invest in subscriber experience, watch the webinar replay.       

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Product Marketing Director

New Markets/Premises, Calix 

linkedin.com/in/bridget-watkins-8564343a/

Subscribers interact with their technology in two primary ways, through a voice assistant (such as Alexa, included in the EXOS-powered GigaSpire) and/or through a user-friendly app for their smart phones and tablets. Service providers with EXOS licenses and a GigaSpire can start using the app today. It’s easy to get started!

1. Visit your Android Play Store or iOS App Store and search for: Calix Smart Home App to download and install.
2. Follow the simple 5-step process to get up and running.

The Main Dashboard will show any notifications in the top right-hand corner and your latest speed test results in the center section, right above the honeycomb that demonstrates your connected devices.    

The “hamburger” menu in the top left provides quick links to

• Set up profiles for parental device control
• Set up a guest network for visitors (or your teenager’s friends)
• See your connected devices, usage, and create rules for these devices
• Run a bandwidth test
• Interact with Alexa (with the GigaSpire MAX)

One you have Alexa set-up you can even test out our five initial skills:

• Alexa, ask my router to check my speed
• Alexa, ask my router which device is using the most bandwidth
• Alexa, ask my router which device is having the worst performance on the network
• Alexa, ask my router how many devices are on the network
• Alexa, ask my router to tell me the last device that connected to my network

In order for your Calix Smart Home App and features to work you must have entered your (Service Provider ID) SPID into the Smart Home Admin Dashboard. You may find the article titled Applying a SPID to the GigaSpire in the Calix Community, which walks you through those steps.

What if I have GigaCenters?

The Calix Smart Home App is designed to also work with GigaCenters running the 12.2.9 software load, if you have EXOS licenses. Once 12.2.9 becomes available for download, the specific features available for subscribers using the app with GigaCenters will be demonstrated in the Calix Community portal.

Look for new app features and functionality with each quarterly release!    

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Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Calix

linkedin.com/in/teresamcgaughey

@t_mcgoo

As part of our mission to connect everyone and everything, we have built the AXOS platform to empower communications service providers (CSPs) of all sizes to rapidly deploy new services, simplify operations and their businesses.

AXOS helps to simplify the most complex parts of your network through hardware independence, services abstraction, and stateful operation. Whether you are deploying GPON, Active Ethernet, or Fiber, CSPs of all types are unleashing the power of a unified access network and keeping pace with the technological innovations shaping the industry. Today, over 280 service providers are actively running AXOS. Here are just a few examples: 

• BrightRidge, a public utility, is using AXOS to electrify their businesses and simplify the deployment and operations of their new fiber broadband service.
• Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative leveraged AXOS to reduce its operating expenses and time-to-market by 86 percent.
• Melita, a cable operator, is using AXOS to deliver both residential and business services on GPON.
• CityFibre, an open access provider, deployed AXOS to deliver a truly open-access Software Defined Networking (SDN) ecosystem, offering them unprecedented levels of programmability, network intelligence, and automation.
• Verizon is delivering cutting edge NG-PON2 and 5G services with AXOS by unifying their mobile, residential, and business access networks and dramatically reducing integration time from 2 years to 3 months.

We will continue to innovate on AXOS, but our value extends far beyond this platform. We take pride in being a true partner that can open new opportunities for you and accelerating your path to success. To keep up-to-date with latest AXOS innovations, please register here for our popular AXOS Tech Talk Webinar Series as well as the new Market Talk Webinar series.

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Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing, Calix

www.linkedin.com/in/alan-dicicco

At first inspection, mobile, cable, telco, and Wi-Fi networks all look wildly different. Coax networks are moving forward with generational shifts from CMTS to CCAP and on to Remote PHY Devices (RPD) with no diminishing interest in the use of coax cable for the subscriber connection. PON networks are evolving from GPON to 10G PON, with much talk last week at the OFC conference about 25G and 50G PON. Wi-Fi 6 and 5G networks share similarities like MIMO and beamforming, but we’re not expecting a unified wireless standard any time soon.

The disparate networks are starting to look the same from a hardware and software architecture perspective. If you stop looking at the trees and focus on the complete forest, you’ll see some big common trends taking hold.

1. Consolidation of real-time user plane functions into merchant silicon: Functions that once resided in multiple custom ASICs are now available as merchant silicon chipsets. In Wi-Fi, all-in-one System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions integrate the residential gateway and Wi-Fi access point, while in 5G, Qualcomm has introduced the Snapdragon suite of SoC products that consolidate 5G real-time functions. Thanks to Broadcom, it is possible to consolidate the OLT and BNG router user planes into a single device.
2. Separation of control and user plane functions: This trend has been underway for some time but has accelerated with the rise of software platforms that can be transferred to any hardware. Concepts like white box network elements – routers, OLTs, 5G radios, Wi-Fi access points, smartphones – are all made possible by the decoupling of control and user plane functions.
3. Centralization of control and management functions: One centralized software element can more efficiently control a network of systems than stand-alone, uncoordinated software. Wi-Fi went this way some time ago, starting with enterprise Wi-Fi networks. In 5G, we see the emergence of virtualized control unit (CU) functions managing remote radios, and in cable, virtualized CCAP (vCCAP) controllers complement the RPD hardware. In the telco space, vOLT and vBNG software are pragmatic implementations of centralized control and policy. Stitch the pieces together and it isn’t too hard to imagine being able to apply embedded software platforms and centralized control and software systems to any physical layer with complete fidelity of service definitions and operations procedures. The physical network may never converge, but the software and operations layers are indeed starting to look the same.

What’s your perspective?

And of course, there’s plenty more to read and share on the Calix Perspectives pages. I look forward to hearing your perspective.

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--Izzy Gomez, Network Administrator at CL Tel​

Iowa’s CL Tel has a mission to be the premier communications service provider in the north central part of the state, serving the Clear Lake and Ventura areas. As the cooperative has expanded in recent years, fiber has become a key focus for ensuring its subscribers receive the best possible subscriber experience.

Supported by the Calix E-Series systems, CL Tel’s fiber network is growing, and the cooperative is working towards an all-fiber backbone for its Internet subscribers. However, in certain MDU locations, fiber proved to be a challenge. With this in mind, CL Tel looked to alternatives.

The Calix AXOS Gfast solutions allowed CL Tel to use the existing copper infrastructure in these MDU locations to deliver near gigabit service. While overall speed was increased, Gfast also enabled significant upgrades to the symmetrical broadband speeds CL Tel could offer.

With AXOS, CL Tel’s Gfast systems worked just like its other AXOS systems. Its Gfast subscribers could be provisioned in same way as any other subscriber, agnostic to the various back office systems in place. And with a lean operations team, this flexibility paid big dividends for CL Tel.

Hear from CL Tel’s Izzy Gomez as he shares the story of their Gfast rollout and how AXOS “did the heavy lifting.” 

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