Alex Connors

In April, I wrote a blog for Ciena Insights all about our customers’ growing bandwidth needs, and what we were doing to stay ahead of the game. Specifically, I was writing about our plan to launch Carrier Ethernet services around the world alongside our existing WAN portfolio (IP-VPN, internet services and cloud connect).

Over the past 18 months, we’ve been working intensively to define the architectural requirements for delivering Carrier Ethernet and we’ve upgraded switches and network cards across our networks in order to deliver services.

When I was invited to speak at the Ciena EMEA Partner Summit, I took it as an opportunity to talk about our plans for global Carrier Ethernet and Ciena’s role in the process, particularly in terms of sales enablement.

White Paper
Ethernet Services in an IP World

Partnering to deliver commercial success

Once we were able to deliver Carrier Ethernet services globally we looked at how we could convert these new network capabilities into revenues as quickly as possible. To help us do that, we engaged with Ciena to support our sales enablement process.

So how did that work?

First, Ciena provided guidance and material to help us educate our sales teams about Carrier Ethernet and the benefits for end-customers. This included hands-on support for face-to-face training sessions for 500 salespeople in 10 countries, with real customer stories to explain the many and varied applications for Carrier Ethernet which really brought the benefits to life.

Once we were able to deliver Carrier Ethernet services globally we looked at how we could convert these new network capabilities into revenues as quickly as possible. To help us do that, we engaged with Ciena to support our sales enablement process.

We then extended the training, collaborating with Ciena to educate 1,000 sales people, mostly during scheduled webinar sessions. These also included some sessions specifically aimed at technical sales people who are responsible for designing customer solutions, and others for people with less in-depth technical knowledge.

Achieving great commercial outcomes

Thanks to our partnership and collaboration on sales enablement we’ve started to see some good results. This is great news for our business. Based on what we’ve achieved so far, we’re now planning to expand our Carrier Ethernet strategy.