Comcast Business - IT Service Management Solution

Company: Comcast Business, Philadelphia, PA
Entry Submitted By: Finn Partners
Company Description: Comcast Business helps businesses perform better with technology solutions that take them Beyond Fast. From the carrier that built the nation's largest #gigspeed network, we bring you insights, updates, and the latest offers on #BeyondFast business data, video, voice, connectivity (Internet, Ethernet, SDN/ SD-WAN), and other technology solutions.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Business Technology
Nomination Sub Category: IT Service Management Solution

Nomination Title: Comcast Business ActiveCore

Today, more information and workloads are moving to the cloud, and enterprises with multiple sites need to have the same IT experience and capabilities at each location. Large organizations also are looking to embrace the consumerization of IT and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to help run their operations. However, many existing networks are not built to handle the demands of this new digital, “connected” economy.

Enterprises need a robust, future-proof alternative to legacy multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) networks, and need a way to easily add more network capacity to branch offices and unlock the potential of virtualized networks. Today, a new way of delivering network services is emerging. Software-defined networking (SDN) is the future of business networking services, and brings higher levels of performance, control and simplification to the way IT departments run data networks.

The Comcast Business ActiveCore SDN platform has already received recognition as the first cable-delivered, gigabit-ready platform in the U.S. ActiveCore enables enterprise network management through a revolutionary digital experience and mobile app. Designed as a networking platform for the digital age, ActiveCore is a path forward to replace legacy networking technologies that pre-date today’s more sophisticated technology landscape. The platform delivers better application performance, shorter deployment cycles, and greater business agility at lower costs. It provides actionable performance data in a single view for smarter, faster decision making, helping customers quickly identify, troubleshoot and resolve issues across their entire enterprise.

Since launch, ActiveCore has continued to redefine digital innovation in the SDN and virtualization space. From its Insights Engine, which can proactively notify IT of deviations from learned or set baselines, such as normal traffic patterns and thresholds, and also keep IT informed of inclement weather and other relevant news, to its game changing integrations. This past year, Comcast Business unveiled a first-of-its-kind voice command capability with its Amazon Alexa integration for its ActiveCore platform, enabling IT to seamlessly and securely take mobile management to a new level and conveniently access important network status and health information.

Currently supported voice commands include:
-"Open Active Core"
-"Alexa, ask Active Core what is the status of my network"
-"Alexa, ask Active Core tell me the details for 1234 Main Street (ie – specific site details)"

Comcast Business SD-WAN combines networking fundamentals such as secure IP-VPN, application-aware routing and a stateful network firewall, all capable of being delivered over the public internet via a carrier-class IP-backbone that leverages Comcast’s broadband solutions. SD-WAN customers can augment or replace their legacy networks with alternatives to improve bandwidth, reliability and flexibility. Most notably, SD-WAN offers enterprises a powerful, scalable and cost-effective alternative to MPLS over T1 lines. With firewall-secured, branch-level connectivity to a public cloud, local internet break-out accelerates performance and can reduce the cost of backhauling data traffic through corporate data centers.

Comcast Business has already attracted several multi-site SD-WAN customers, such as Philadelphia Credit Union (PFCU), which operates 11 locations serving more than 116,000 members. PFCU deployed Comcast Business’ SD-WAN solution on the ActiveCore platform to improve network visibility, security and troubleshooting. It provisioned SD-WAN across all sites, replacing MPLS entirely. The new network provided immediate bandwidth relief and new management capabilities. The time required to push updates was significantly reduced and the PFCU team has access to make configuration changes in minutes versus the historical challenge of needing to contact the MPLS provider and waiting hours for the changes to be executed. According to Patrick Williams, PFCU’s chief information officer, “More bandwidth, better pricing and network flexibility have become critical success factors for organizations like ours. New technology like SD-WAN, addresses these challenges and also offers to consolidate equipment and build in additional redundancies.”

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief features and benefits of the nominated product or service (up to 150 words):

-Ability for customers to receive real-time network analytics using voice commands via the Alexa integration
-Easily manage networks, systems and costs across multiple locations
-Accelerate network performance with gigabit speeds
-Provision multiple network and security functions at once, saving time
-Embedded orchestration that delivers multiple virtualized network functions
-Greater control and flexibility to users without the need for more hardware and costly equipment maintenance and labor
-Dynamic scalability to quickly expand the network to add more locations
-Better application performance, shorter deployment cycles, and greater business agility at lower costs
-Reduces the reliance on legacy technologies
-Provides actionable performance data in a single view for smarter, faster decision making