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Empowered Branch Services

Cisco Empowered Branch Services

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Solution Overview

Q. What is the revenue opportunity for service providers offering the Cisco® Empowered Branch Services solution?
A. The worldwide managed services market is projected to be US$66 billion by 2012, according to Ovum LTD. A significant portion of this opportunity relates to managed services for branch offices and small businesses, with the sub-100 market segment growing at 20 percent from 2007 to 2012. Service providers can boost profitability and expand their market share with an integrated, managed services offering based on a single, cost-effective platform provided by the Cisco Empowered Branch Services solution. Providers can create flexible, integrated service offerings that accommodate growing businesses. This flexibility enables service providers to choose the most appropriate service to offer when assessing the best approach with specific customers. Service providers can create service bundling strategies to align with customer requirements over the service lifecycle-remotely enabling enhanced and premium service features as part of an upsell strategy.
Q. What types of managed services can be provided with the Cisco Empowered Branch Services solution?
A. Cisco has a continuum of services that can be part of a bundled service offering, including:

• Managed router and LAN services, with a range of access options

• Managed security services for external threat protection including firewall and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation, and enhanced security bundles for internal threat protection covering intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDSs and IPSs), Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC), and endpoint protection

• Managed secure VPN services such as IP Security (IPsec) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN, and "tunnel-less" VPN based on group-encrypted transport

• Managed IP Communications services with voice and video call control enabled by Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (formerly Cisco Unified CallManager Express), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, and advanced rich-media voice and video applications

• Managed wide-area application services to improve application performance over the WAN and provide more effective access to centralized application servers

• Web conferencing and other media-rich collaboration services

• Managed wireless WAN with the integrated third-generation wireless WAN interface card (3G WIC) from Cisco for a variety of new applications

See your Cisco account manager for a complete listing of service offerings.
Q. What is the target market for Cisco Empowered Branch Services?
A. Service providers can use the Cisco solution to deliver profitable managed services that empower their branch office customers. The solution is based on the Cisco Integrated Services Router, which provides a single platform for the secure deployment of data, voice, IP telephony, and collaboration applications. This platform enables a converged application environment and connectivity delivered over an intelligent network. With the Cisco integrated services router, service providers can extend compelling managed services to enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with multiple branch locations. Examples include finance, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and professional services.

The new Cisco 880G and 880SRST Integrated Services Routers integrate data, toll-quality analog and digital voice services, and 3G wireless connectivity, delivering a best-in-class solution to the very small business, enterprise teleworkers, and remote call-center agents.

Support

Q. How does Cisco support service providers in delivering Cisco Empowered Branch Services?
A. The overarching Cisco strategy is to help service providers achieve success based on four primary strengths:

• Build networks: Cisco provides the extensible and efficient infrastructure that progressively increases return on investment and reduces operating expenses.

• Deploy services: Cisco delivers a comprehensive and highly flexible service-creation portfolio that helps service providers capture new revenue and expand their market share.

• Accelerate demand: Cisco provides special expertise, routes to market, and relationships with businesses that enable service providers to accelerate demand.

• Optimize business: Cisco helps service providers transform their business by providing domain expertise and efficiencies.

Q. Is the Cisco Empowered Branch Services solution linked to the Cisco Powered Program?
A. Yes, service providers that meet the general program requirements have access to Cisco Powered Program resources. Resources include marketing and technical tools designed to help providers envision, build, certify, and market managed services based on Cisco integrated services routers.

Security Services

Q. How do managed security services benefit the service provider?
A. Service providers must look at security as both a feature and a service. Infrastructure security offers a hardened platform on which IP services (VPN, unified communications, wide area application services) can be offered in a reliable manner. However, new revenue generation generally comes from security services such as firewall, DDoS mitigation, IDS/IPS, secure messaging, content filtering, and endpoint protection.

Businesses face threats from the Internet, and encrypted VPN, firewall service, and DDoS mitigation allow them to combat these threats from outside the business. However, weak links in security also include the endpoint and the user sitting behind it. Technologies such as IDS/IPS, URL filtering, content filtering, and endpoint protection with NAC provide protection from threats from the internal network. Combining external and internal threat mitigation measures, service providers can provide defense-in-depth.
Q. How do integrated managed security solutions benefit service providers?
A. Managing security services at the customer premises is one of the critical "layers of defense" in network security solutions. As a managed service offering, threat detection and response can be scaled to meet the basic needs of business subscribers, while maintaining an affordable total cost of ownership. The advantages of delivering these services in an integrated fashion include:

• Full-featured, high-performance threat protection in the branch or SMB network

• Modular, scalable architecture with the flexibility to tailor services to meet customer requirements

• Compatibility with data, security, and voice services to provide additional value-added solutions while simplifying configuration and support

• Cost-effective network and service management platform for managed security offers

• An efficient way to offer in-line security services with network routing and transport services

Application-Acceleration Services

Q. What specific opportunities do application-optimization and application-acceleration features offer service providers?
A. Service providers can capitalize on numerous opportunities with these features provided by the Cisco integrated services routers, such as:

• Increase customer productivity and perceived value to customers consolidating branch resources

• Enhance profitability by extending management into the LAN and bundling WAN optimization and acceleration capabilities with existing managed network, voice, and security services

• Generate incremental revenue streams through:

– Managed wide-area file services

– Managed application-acceleration services

– Value-add services such as managed security, storage, and business continuity

Q. How do managed application-optimization and application-acceleration services benefit service providers?
A. Service providers realize many benefits from these services, such as:

• Increased customer loyalty: With an optimized WAN access solution, customers perceive a faster network and thus higher value.

• Competitive differentiation: Managed services support consolidation efforts.

• Incremental revenue: Expanded bandwidth offers the opportunity for additional revenue from additional services including managed security, collocation, and storage services.

Additional Service Opportunities

Q. How can a managed SIP trunk service in support of managed IP Communications in the Empowered Branch benefit service providers?
A. For most service providers, initial deployment of managed SIP trunks will be primarily for basic managed voice services, namely a replacement for TDM voice services. The degree of management can of course vary depending on customer needs, service provider capabilities, and market-penetration strategies. However, the opportunity exists for service providers to provide more sophisticated layers of management, especially when offered along with managed Ethernet, managed firewall, and other managed services.

When combined with Cisco CPE such as the Integrated Services Router, a managed SIP trunk service provides:

• Clear demarcation point: Allows service providers to offer SLAs with Cisco integrated access devices or Cisco Multiservice IP-to-IP Gateway (Session Border Controller)

• Improved time to market: Eliminates need to develop operations down to the desktop; provides easy-to-configure templates for both sides, and normalization of all traffic at the edge.

• Security: Protects from rogue customer attacks and prevents possible customer-to customer attacks.

• Leading-edge technology: Cisco CPE uses the same voice gateway features developed for Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Manager Express deployments, allowing consistent and simple integration with a service provider's network.

• New market and revenue opportunities: Providers can easily reach all Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Manager Express installed base, whether service provider or VAR/partner-managed.

• Media normalization: CPE provides normalization at the network edge; specifically transcoding, fax/DTMF interoperability issues, Call Admission Control (CAC), and QoS schemes.

Q. How can service providers offer 3G wireless WAN services?
A. The Cisco Integrated Services Router is the first solution to provide true enterprise-class, wireless data services to the branch office with the integration of wireless and wireline services on one platform. This enables 3G wireless WAN services that bring new opportunities for managed service differentiation and customer loyalty:

• For backup: 3G wireless WAN service does not depend on the local loop for connectivity, providing a true alternative to wireline WAN services at a lower cost than traditional backup services.

• For primary access: Provides an alternative enterprise-class data path to corporate networks and includes management capabilities that reduce costs and complexity for IT teams.

• For portable or temporary access: Enhances business resiliency and continuity by not requiring extensive re-provisioning cycles and physical installation each time the office is moved.

Q. Where can I find more information?
A. For more information, please visit: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns676/networking_solutions_solution.html or contact your Cisco account representative.