Long contract terms and long turnaround times for connectivity clash with the flexibility that service providers need. That is why we opted for a self-service portal to set up, adapt and provide a real time status of connections. What advantages does this portal offer our customers?
Always available
A major advantage of the portal is that it is always accessible, even outside working hours. Flexible connectivity means that bandwidth can be increased or decreased, or new connections initialized, at any time. In addition, we are transparent about the costs: these too are directly visible in the portal.
Those who provide connectivity via the platform to their own customers have a big advantage because delivery can take place within one day. There is no need to contact account managers, nor is there any delay because contracts have not been properly drawn up yet.
Real-time insight
Another big advantage is control. An important way to maintain control over the network is to understand what is happening. We offer everyone the opportunity to view live connections, including key metrics. Real-time statistics of the network underpin these metrics. Active and passive paths are visible, as well as used MAC addresses, latencies and possible outages. This way, diagnoses can be quickly carried out when connections are under duress. In short, no one has to fill in a ticket at support and wait for remote assistance to be available: our customers are in charge.
Because we understand it is better to prevent incidents than to fix them, we use predictive analytics. In due time, we will also make the insights gained from these analytics available in our portal. But even now, thanks to this data, we ensure that failures are prevented. In this way we can act quickly if deviations occur in the network, preventing them from having any impact.
The convenience of the online DCspine Store
How does this work in practice? We like to compare it to ordering a laptop in a webshop or in a physical store. Of course, the shop assistant will be able to talk about the laptop, but there is a good chance that he will not be able to answer specific questions. In addition, it is unclear whether the price in the shop is the lowest. It is much easier to collect this type of information via the Internet. And it’s also much easier to buy the laptop online as well. When it comes to connectivity, ordering online is far from common, but we think this should be just as easy.
If you need a connection between, for example, connected data centers in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, you can use the portal to see which products are available. The SLA, terms of delivery and prices are available and other questions are also answered. After ordering, documentation will be available to request cross-connects within the data centers. Once these have been delivered, the portal makes it easy to put connections live, without delay. Bandwidths can then be adjusted as required.
We are convinced that the convenience of a portal is the future for providing connectivity. Waiting for the delivery of a connection, patching or a contract should be something of the past.
Would you like to know more about connectivity via a self-service portal or try out our portal? Register now without any further obligation and explore the possibilities of the portal. Are you already using the portal and do you have ideas for additional functionality? We’d love to hear from you.