Thank you for being loyal readers and followers to our Global Crossing Blog for all these years.  As of October 4, 2011, Global Crossing has officially become part of Level 3 Communications.  Our bloggers will continue sharing their expertise with you at the Level 3 company blog  “Beyond Bandwidth”. 

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Earlier this week I wrote about the challenges and excitement in working on closing international event opportunities, today I’d like to explore the challenges and excitement in taking a won opportunity operational.   As I said earlier,  “events… share a few things in common: (1) They all begin and end at a predetermined dates; (2) They are global; (3) They are VERY high profile and generate a lot of revenue for the producers, broadcasters and distributors.  No matter what, for these events:  “The Show Must Go On!” and there is absolutely NO room for error.”

The planning and diligence that are vital in winning a deal are even more important in making it happen.  Teams across the globe work on every conceivable aspect prior to the event such as: local access, PoP preparations, equipment configuration and staging, (a lot of) communications with customers, host broadcasters and event representatives.  A lot of work occurs before the event starts and it comes together as our event managers land at the venue and work to bring everything together.  And boy do they bring things together,  they assemble a field operations center, build an event Point of Presence (PoP) and cross the ‘T’s and dot the ‘I’s to make sure the show experience is positive for everyone. Read more and comment...

I had the pleasure of joining the Genesis team in November 2010 following the close of Global Crossing’s acquisition of Genesis Networks.  Although the majority of our business is serving the full time needs of international video producers, broadcasters and distributors, some of the most exciting parts of the business is winning and delivering an international event. 

By way of definition, events are generally anything that is scheduled in advance:  live sporting events, political conventions, televised awards shows, etc.

Planning and Execution

Similar to planning a wedding - You’ve got one shot to capture that special moment so using proven, experienced vendors is a must.   It’s the same thing in the broadcast video space. Because we’re talking about some of the world’s most prestigious events (think Formula One races; Grand Slam tennis and The Majors), only proven managed video service  providers are given the opportunity to develop proposals that will be considered. 

The events noted above share a few things in common: (1) They all begin and end at a predetermined dates ; (2) They are global ; (3) They are VERY high profile and generate a lot of revenue for the producers, broadcasters and distributors.  No matter what, for these events:  “The Show Must Go On!” and there is absolutely NO room for error.

Customer Needs and Requirements Read more and comment...

Read a very interesting article today (Pssst! Rare IPv4 Addresses for sale! Get them while you can!) which is the result of IANA’s (http://www.iana.org) February 2011 annoucement that it had allocated the final remaining IPv4 address blocks.

Do you think we could have seen this coming?  Hmmm, yes.  On April 16^th 2008, I presented Global Crossing IPv6 State of the Union at FutureNet in Boston.  The discussion was all about IPv6, which at that time had not been adopted even though US government’s OMB had mandated that all US Federal agencies have a plan and strategy in place to support IPv6 adoption. 

The underlying discussion was about IPv4 address space exhaustion, which has consistently been predicted year over year.  However the adoption and application of private addressing (RFC 1918), the realities that IPv4 blocks were cycling in/out of internet allocation agencies  and the potential of IPv6 adoption was just right around the corner, put off the IPv4 exhaustion dooms day off.

At FutureNet Boston 2008, we even discussed the doomsday scenario that without IPv6 adoption,  IPv4 address space could be worth its weight in gold.  Looks like that prediction is coming to fruition. Read more and comment...

Global Crossing Genesis Solutions (GCGS) hosted a booth and events at IBC 2011 (http://www.ibc.org) in Amsterdam’s RAI convention center from September 8th thru September 13th. 

Activities on the show floor began on September 9th highlighted by Mike Antonovich’s ucommand/IRIS presentation in Hall 13’s Connected World.  Mike’s  discussion demonstrated Global Crossing’s network provisioning portal providing the attendees an opportunity to learn what it feels like to have the power of a NOC -- in their hands.

Numerous International Video Producers, Broadcasters and Distributors had pre-scheduled appointments within the meeting room at GCGS booth.  At times we needed to overflow to additional meeting areas at RAI, which was great to see.  The discussions varied from developing full time fiber and hybrid satellite solutions to finalizing plans for upcoming international sporting events such as the PanAm Games in Guadalajara to the 2012 Olympics in London.  

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International demand for bandwidth grew sevenfold between 2006 and 2010. This growth has been met through infrastructure investments in undersea network cables, long distance networks, and data centers, globally carried out by companies like Global Crossing.

Driven by a positive macroeconomic environment, the Latin American region presents in general a very favorable scenario for growth and expansion of multi-Latin and multi-national companies; even for domestic companies in search of new horizons.

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 We hear more and more frequently that a given company has received a telephone bill which cost is up in the clouds. And despite that not all those phone calls were effectively made, the company must pay the full bill to continue enjoying of the service. Are these isolated facts? Is this a trend? Is technology unsafe?... Like any issue we face in our professional activity, multiple reasons may be found as giving rise to this event. Analysis is not always simple, impact may be significant, and even worse we may find out that the solution could have been at hand and very simple.

We know of the daily efforts of an IT team in their attempt to keep expenses under control. An event of this nature, occurred only during a weekend could throw overboard months of work.

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