Today’s communication industry is going through a tremendous revolution – we’re witnessing the rapid growth of Cloud which is driving huge change in the way we build networks and we’re seeing new business models emerge as a result. Having seen this change occurring around us, we have been working hard to evolve our business to meet changing market needs and ensure we can enable the success of our existing customers.
These changes are also forcing the marketplace to evolve with a new wholesale layer created as a result of the emergence of cloud service and platform as a service (PaaS) providers in particular.
The changes we’ve seen in our market over recent years represent both an immediate challenge yet exciting long-term opportunity and this has encouraged us to redefine our business and think about how and where we can create new value for our customers going forward.
As a result, we’ve seen our business evolve from an innovative wholesale carrier into a leading intelligent Network as a Service (iNaaS) player, driven by true end-to-end quality of services (QoS) and experience (QoE). Our many years of expertise and experience in connecting city-to-city and building-to-building globally have led us to develop new network service models which offer network visibility, automation and virtualisation. Our business has really gone from being about the strength of our global footprint to offering true network virtualisation and infrastructure as a service with innovation at its core.
For me, I see this time of transition as a massive opportunity. Customers want a seamless platform that can offer them a greater degree of automation, orchestration, and visibility that can accelerate the entire time to market. Networks providers are being challenged to offer instant activation of services, more robust networks with better SLA assurance and much greater levels of flexibility in services.
Our business has been focused on delivering that for a long-time and I believe Epsilon’s business model is more relevant than ever before. I’ve been hands on in this business right from the beginning and I really believe that this is the most exciting time in our more than decade long history.
Epsilon’s DNA
Over the last few months, I have reflected on what Epsilon is at it’s core and what we do best. What I believe makes us special is our innovative approach to the market. We relentlessly pursue new ways of doing business and find the best ways to solve our customers’ challenges. At the same time, we are known for not just delivering solutions but our open, friendly, committed and energetic way we approach our customers.
That’s central to who we are and something I’m dedicating time to maintaining and fostering in our business. No matter who our customers might be, whether it is cloud service providers, Global Tier 1 carriers or innovative over the top (OTT) players, the Epsilon DNA stays the same: simple, innovative solutions delivered by people that care.
I really believe that has been the foundation of our success and is what will drive our progress in the future.
Priorities in 2016
I see a future that is cloud-centric, on-demand, and hungry for new levels of QoS and QoE. Our customers and their customers’, need access to scalable and intelligent network services delivered with an on-demand model that are built to enable the cloud. It is that simple. The cloud has gone mainstream and cloud enablement is the key to our future. Our investment in end-to-end network capabilities supported with the service and network automation that the cloud demands means we are well positioned to be a leading cloud enabler of not just now but the future.
Our business model has evolved over 13 years to be flexible, agile and focused on quality and these are all things that cloud-centric businesses can appreciate. They see our business as mirroring the clouds services they offer and that accelerates their deployments and ultimately their monetisation of enterprise applications and services.
My priorities for 2016:
Grow Our Cloud Enablement Platform – Use our CloudLX platform to deliver on-demand Ethernet and friction-free connectivity to world-leading cloud service providers for our customers
Offer Greater Intelligence In The Network – Deliver guaranteed QoS and QoE end-to-end on IP using intelligent networks. We developed networking technology in-house that uses end-to-end network visibility and network analytics to make IP as a reliable if not more than TDM
Solve Local Access Challenges – Leverage our unique outsourcing model to remove the pain from local access networks. The local access network is more important than ever and we can help our customers to turn a pain point into profitability with our outsourcing model
Build On Our Culture Of Service – Ensure that our people maintain and grow our reputation for service and trust. We believe in accountability but also enjoying our work and spending time with our customers and partners getting to know and understand what it takes to make them successful
Making It Happen
To make our objectives a reality there’s plenty of work to be done.
As with any transitional time in a business, there are challenges that need to be addressed. We have restructured our teams and developed a new management structure that is focused on selling and delivering solutions that go beyond our traditional wholesale offering. We are keen to maintain our core service offering and excel at it but we also see the need to expand our skill sets and speak the language of our growing customer base.
It is also a cultural shift where we need to be flexible and willing to learn and adjust as fast as new applications and services are developed. We have the experience of being an entrepreneurial and innovative business and we need to ensure that stays with us as our business grows.
Our internal process and people must be as dynamic as the customer base we now serve. At the same time, we must stay true to what Epsilon stands for as a business. Like I mentioned before, what differentiates us and makes us special is not changing but we are evolving our business to support the success of customers in today’s market and in the future. The foundation remains the same and we are adding to it while anticipating the needs of our customers.
This Time Next Year
This time next year, I believe we will see even greater recognition of our business as a leader in cloud enablement. This will be reflected in the growth of not just our CloudLX platform but our intelligent network offering and outsourced local access networks. We capped off 2015 with the Best Cloud Innovation Award for CloudLX at the Global Carrier Awards in Paris and I believe this is only the beginning for us in cloud enablement.
Over the last 13 years, we’ve been refining our model and developing the components needed for successfully enabling cloud services globally. We’ve partnered with the leading cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services and Google as well as leading internet exchanges around the world to establish a portfolio of partners driving connectivity services. Our infrastructure reaches more than 170 countries with 500+ network operators on our platform, placing us in a strong position to be successful. We’ve developed advanced session border controller (SBC) technology that gives us superior levels of QoS and QoE with a business model that offers flexibility, agility, and simplicity.
The Epsilon model is more relevant in IT and telecoms than ever before. With that in mind, we will continue to find new ways to deliver the most efficient and high-performance network infrastructure globally while enabling our customers to connect clouds, communications services and applications.
I’m proud to be leading this phase of Epsilon’s development and know that we are on a path that our customers will see long-term benefit from. When they choose Epsilon, they are choosing to work with a business that has a proven track record of listening to their needs, innovating and ultimately doing what we say we are going to do.
That becomes really exciting as our business and our customers adopt new services and look at new models for the future. This is only the beginning for what Epsilon can do in connectivity, cloud and the whole communications ecosystem.
I encourage our existing and potential customers as well as our internal teams to reach out to me to discuss how we can support your growth and how you will directly benefit from these changes at Epsilon.
Success really does starts here.
