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Retention Trumps Satisfaction

For about a decade, JD Power and Associates has been asking consumers to rate their satisfaction with insurance companies on a simple scale of 1-5. This summer, a study of the auto insurance industry found satisfaction, as measured by this simple survey, to be at an all-time high (2012 U.S. Auto Insurance Study).

Logic might suggest that high customer satisfaction should yield high retention and less price sensitivity, but as is often the case, reality is more complex. It turns out that satisfaction is mere table stakes, and retention is a much more difficult job. Other factors, such as choice of channel and bundling or cross-selling, contribute much more directly to loyalty than this simple score from 1-5 indicates.

In general, today’s consumer wants to use convenient channels such as Web and mobile for simple, low value transactions such as making a payment or updating an address. Those channel preferences shift however, as complexity increases and a more high value interaction with a knowledgeable professional is required. There is very often a point at which a personal, face to face interaction is by far the most efficient way to complete a transaction.

Preferred Channel Service

Source: JD Power & Associates, 2012 U.S. Auto Insurance Study

Today’s insurance buyers must choose between a direct channel insurer where the customer experience is based on Web and phone interactions, and the traditional agency channel based on relationship and face to face (or at least one to one via phone) interaction. The gap between these two models is wide. Neither model currently spans the array of channel choice and interaction model necessary to provide both convenience and intimacy. Continue reading “Satisfied Customers Aren’t Necessarily Loyal Customers”



Authors

Michael Cantwell

Vertical Solutions Architect, Financial Services

Americas Business Transformation

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[WARNING: This blog post contains specifics on actual product features. Stop reading now if you prefer PowerPoint to Excel.]

“Enterprise class.” Sounds awesome. But does it have any meaning to your business?

It turns out that it does, but we need to dig into a real product example to make it clear. One shining example from Cisco is our leadership in Enterprise class (there’s that phrase again!) 3G/4G. Let’s use this example to highlight how our engineers create “Enterprise class” products by focusing on: Continue reading “What Does “Enterprise Class” Mean, Anyway? A Case Study with 3G/4G”



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A story came out today showcasing the platform built to power Xerox Managed Print Services (MPS), and it’s hard to describe better example of how Cisco’s data center technology comes together to help unlock the full potential of cloud computing.  In the lead-up to this release and the webcast that we’re airing this Thursday, I had the pleasure of working with Tom Force who leads up the architecture team at Xerox that built the MPS cloud.  What I heard him describe illustrates some of the fundamental differences in UCS that come into play for cloud builders:

  1. Fabric-centric design.   MPS is a cloud based service and hosts over a hundred applications.  Many of these are multi-tier apps and they benefit directly from the fact that every server in a UCS environment is connected to a single high performance, deterministic, low latency fabric.  This eliminates hops between servers and opens up the platform to support intense E/W traffic within the servers that collaborate to deliver services.   Contrast this to traditional architectures that put layers of switching between servers with in-chassis blade switching modules.  The performance gains were noticed and communicated by Xerox customers to Tom, and that is the end result that really matters
  2. Form factor agnostic design.  In UCS a server is a server is a server regardless of the shape of the box.  The Xerox MPS cloud leverages blade and rack servers as and where they make sense and the architects and administrators can manage them all in one abstracted pool of resources.  No other platform so fully eliminates the concerns of what shape the sheet metal is.
  3. A unified control plane exposed via XML API.  The MPS cloud is orchestrated with vCloud director.  The deep integration between UCS Manager and cloud platform SW enables automated discovery and configuration of new compute resources as they’re added to the system.  This creates the true elasticity and automation that a cloud of the magnitude of Xerox MPS demands.   Programmable pools of abstracted computing and network elements is what separates a robust cloud from one built on a brittle, manual infrastructure foundation.
  4. UCS Manager Service profiles:  Simplification of server image types and elimination of configuration drift as applications move from development through test, staging and deployment was a big win for the Xerox IT team.  Having a infrastructure that can be reliably and accurately provisioned and maintained, both in the primary and remote DR sites is another area Tom cited in our conversations.
  5. UCS Central:  this is recently released technology that allows customers like Xerox to manage multiple UCS domains across the data center and across geographies.
  6. I’m sure i’m forgetting something but I’ll go with 5 unique attributes for now.

You have to love it when a plan comes together. **

 

**Fictional rendering of Tom Force

This Thursday, the Xerox team is joining us for a dynamite webcast we’ve pulled together to talk about UCS and laying the right foundations for cloud.  James Staten of Forrester, who is THE MAN on cloud, helps us kick it off and we also have architects from FICO joining to talk about their private cloud design.   If you’re in the business of looking at infrastructure strategy for cloud computing this is one you don’t want to miss.

Check also Xerox case study 

 



Authors

Todd Brannon

Senior Director, Cloud Infrastructure Marketing

Cisco Cloud Infrastructure and Software Group

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At the Gartner DC conference in Las Vegas, Cisco SVP and General Manager Data Center Group  David Yen delivered a key note speech yesterday highlighting the importance of a convergence infrastructure (starting with UCS)  for the deployment of cloud. (I will have very soon the opportunity to share more about David Yen’s presentation – Stay tuned)

As Cisco Jim McHugh, VP Unified Computing Systems Marketing,  stated recently  “Without doubt, one of the great appeals of cloud computing is its near limitless potential. The industry has painted a world of clouds that are elastic and adaptable, ready to respond to just about any business need in the future. Although each organization’s path to building clouds is (and should be) unique, not all paths will deliver on the full potential of the cloud.”

And Forrester James Staten, Vice-President , Principal Analyst, Forrester research , Inc.,  one of our webcast panelists on December 6, wrote :
“Since cloud became a household word, vendors and enterprises alike have jumped to declare victory on cloud with services and infrastructure implementations that really don’t deliver cloud value but have the same foundation: something we call “cloudwashing.” This is a dangerous gambit as you claim legitimacy but don’t activate the same economics, deliver the autonomy that cloud services offer to your internal users, and aren’t standardized or automated enough to deliver
transformative agility. In other words, you claim cloud but are achieving only incrementally better value

So here are 5 questions that you may want to address on your journey to the cloud

What is the role of open infrastructure programmability in achieving the full potential of the cloud ?
How the right foundation can help your cloud for true elasticity and scalability ?
What are the architectural decisions that can affect future speed of service delivery ?
Why clouds require extensive automation down to the physical layer?
What are the infrastructure capabilities that support resource distribution with complete transparency and simplicity?

On December 6 at 9:00 am PST , Cisco Jim Mchugh  and Forrester James Staten as well as
Jeff  Hanson, IT Engineering Lead, Fico Corporation
Rick Schlander , IT Engineering Lead, Fico Corporation
Tom Force, MPS technology Delivery Officer, Xerox Corporation
and Satinder Sethi, VP Data Center Solutions, Cisco
will debate  these questions during an unique webcast . (registration here)

Continue reading “Cisco, Forrester, Xerox, Fico, address 5 foundational questions to build a successful cloud infrastructure”



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As I mentioned in a previous post, I was in London last week at a conference.  I picked up the badge shown  in the photo below, and it made me laugh, and I thought it would be a good image to pass on.  VCE’s Vblock was the only example of converged infrastructure on show there.

My Other Computer is a Vblock!

 

Continue reading “My Other Computer is a Vblock!”



Authors

Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

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There has been major market traction this past year in the deployment of cloud services, but the discussion still too often focuses on cloud in the singular. Our experience has shown that companies are not typically adopting a single approach to cloud, but rather are embracing a rich set of approaches that provides them with flexibility and control. While many are building  private clouds; others are building public clouds, many differentiated on industry specific characteristics. Increasingly, we see organizations using a mix of these options, consuming services from multiple cloud providers as well as building their own private cloud capacity.   But, all expect a secure and assured cloud experience.  Regular readers of this blog will recognize this as what we at Cisco we refer to as a world of many clouds. IT leaders must be prepared to build or acquire a portfolio of business application services in the world of many clouds. Continue reading “An Infrastructure Foundation to Deliver A World Of Many Clouds”



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BayThreat 2012, the third annual information security conference in the South Bay of San Francisco, will be held December 7–8 at The Firehouse Brewery in downtown Sunnyvale, Calif. This technical conference is well attended by security professionals from the top technology companies in the South Bay.  Randy Ivener and Joe Karpenko, security specialists from Cisco Systems, will present “Network Threat Defense”at 10 a.m. Saturday at the conference.

Botnets, worms, and denial of service (DoS) attacks increasingly threaten the availability of every network, yet few network engineers realize the security benefits of leveraging network infrastructure to handle these attacks. “Network Threat Defense” will address how to build a more secure infrastructure and how to leverage inherent network features, such as NetFlow, to provide a full range of attack handling mechanisms. During the presentation, Ivener and Karpenko will briefly cover the following fundamental network security topics:

  • State of network security
  • Threat models for IP networks
  • Incident response
  • Secure network design
  • Device hardening
  • Introduction to NetFlow

Continue reading “Cisco Presenting at BayThreat 2012 in Sunnyvale, CA”



Authors

Randy Ivener

Incident Manager, Applied Intelligence Team

Security Intelligence Operations

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Today, everyone at Cisco is excited about the release of a new book — “The Human Face of Big Data” by Rick Smolan, a former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer best known as the creator of the “Day in the Life” book series.

Cisco is a sponsor of the Human Face of Big Data Project, which also inlcudes a “Data Detectives” youth program and a smart phone application that allows users to compare their answers to questions about health, family, dating, dreams and more to 3 million other people around the world.

The book captures in photographs, essays, and infographics how the real-time collection, analysis, and visualization of vast amounts of information is enabling people to address some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Continue reading “Putting a Human Face on Big Data at the Social Innovation Summit”



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Manager

Cisco Corporate Affairs

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In my previous blog, we looked at how Catalyst switches can be used to assess video application readiness in the network before rolling out a video based collaboration application. In this blog, let us take a look at available tools on the Catalyst switches to monitor and troubleshoot video problems in the network.

As we know, fundamentally, video traffic is different from data traffic.  Video traffic is more dynamic and bandwidth intensive and even small changes in delay or loss can cause visible disruptions to user experience. Routinely, IT trouble tickets are opened by users that are faced with degraded video experience.  To add to that, interactive video is real time. Any delay in troubleshooting will make IT miss the window to rectify the problem. For a firm with many locations and buildings, finding the problem can be complex and time consuming without the right tools. 

Continue reading “Demystifying the Catalyst: Video Application Monitoring and Troubleshooting”



Authors

Shankar Chandrasekaran

Marketing Manager

GMCC Products and Solutions