BigBand Networks

BigBand Networks Brings High-Definition to Customer Service

- A NextNine Case Study

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Challenges and Goals

Who doesn’t enjoy watching their favorite programs in high-definition? But for cable operators, the bandwidth required to stream high definition to subscribers’ homes introduces a new set of challenges. 

BigBand Networks is a leader in Digital Video Networking and the #1 provider of Switched Digital Video (SDV) solutions which allow cable operators to efficiently deliver SD and HD channels to their subscribers. BigBand serves over 200 service providers worldwide including 7 of the top 10 service providers in North America, which in turn deliver content to tens of millions (28 MM HHP) of homes.

“Customer service has always been one of our competitive differentiators” said Keith Sommers. Senior Director of Customer Support at BigBand, “As our solutions were becoming more complex, we had to make sure we are able to maintain our edge.”

BigBand came to the conclusion that a proactive remote service platform that can automate and enhance its support processes will help it maintain that “edge”. It set out to find a solution that would meet the current business challenges.

CHALLENGES

“We selected NextNine for a number reasons,” said Sommers, “First and foremost, we liked the flexibility and ease of use of the platform, which allowed us to quickly develop rules and use cases that make sense for our products and customers. Second, we knew that the security of the platform would play a key role in customer adoption. NextNine’s built in security mechanisms around communications, auditing and policy management went a long way in putting our customers at ease.

Rollout

After making their vendor selection, BigBand set out to define and implement “RMS”, the Remote Monitoring Services Suite, powered by NextNine. Leveraging NextNine’s experience in deploying remote service, BigBand’s “test and roll-out” strategy , allowed the company to better calibrate thresholds as well as the volume of data that it needed to collect prior to market roll-out.

“In one event, we rolled out a new version of our product to a customer”, recalled Sommers, “RMS immediately let us know of imminent problems that would eventually impact the customer. We were able to identify and correct the problem before rolling out the product to other customers.”

BigBand’s customers are tech-savvy cable operators with technical staff who locally monitor the network and often get involved when technical issues arise. To more effectively engage these engineers, BigBand leveraged NextNine’s built-in “NMS Connector”. In addition to triggering alarms which are sent to BigBand’s support organization, RMS packages selected alarms as SNMP traps and forwards them to the customer’s local network monitoring system. This allows the technical staff at the customer site to discover and resolve relevant issues.

“NextNine enables BigBand to put our product know-how to work at our customer sites” commented Sommers, “Our customers now realize that our RMS solution can help them better understand our equipment, without becoming experts in switched video.”

The Next Phase: Service Revenue Generation

“Services represent an important revenue stream for our company,” said Keith, “The flexibility of NextNine’s software empowers us to develop use cases we did not originally conceive at the time of the project’s initiation.”

The additional information RMS provides about system configurations and status in the customer’s network allows BigBand to create new types of services that both save its customers time and money and generate new service opportunities for BigBand.

RESULTS