NOC, NOC, Who's There?

Global Crossing. That's who and how. This week I had a rare chance to visit a working carrier NOC. In this case it was Global Crossing's and it happened to be 2 miles from my house in Phoenix. I had seen it many times, but to be honest, I thought it was a telemarketing center. I have since learned that GC's call centers are in Billings, Mont., and Montreal.

Having the NOC around the corner,  was quite convenient for me, but not so much for my host, Jeff Callahan. You all know Jeff, he's the new VP of indirect channels at Global Crossing. He ltraveled to Phoenix all the way from Florsham Park, N.J., where the company has its headquarters. He was in Phoenix for partner meetings and uses the NOC as his home base.

Jeff's been with the company forever -- since it was a startup. He was one of the first 30 employees. He had the rough gig in Bermuda for the first five or six years before the accountants decided to close that office. Jeff's girlfriend (now wife) likes to remind him of how he took her away from island life to NJ. Living in a rural area 30 miles from HQ where she can indulge her passion for horses has seen them through. But I digress ...

Jeff's reason for meeting with me was to start a dialogue. Our first meeting over the phone was in response to layoffs and reorganization in the GC partner program. His goal is to regroup, and put GC back on track with the channel, which he says the company has not managed as well as it could. Now, he says, it's a top priority. Jeff was the right hand to to CEO John Legere prior to this role, so he has his ear and the ability to make things happen. And, he has plans for 2008, which include an advisory board, an increase in headcount and a president's club.

In Phoenix, Jeff introduced me to Paul Benjes. Paul is my neighbor, it turns out. Well, not really, but in far-flung Phoenix if you live within 10 miles of each other, you're practically family. So, Paul lives not far from the GC NOC, which is a good thing since he works there. He's been the director of IP/ATM engineering for the past few years. He recently was named director of converged IP services, but the key takeaway for you is that he is the chief engineer for the channel. 

Paul Benjes and Jeff Callahan at the GC NOC in Phoenix.

Paul was my tour guide for the GC NOC. And you definitely need one; it's a large maze-like building full of workstations and monitors, engineers and labs. It's a government-approved facility, so the security is very tight. I was greated by the facility manager, who was expecting me, and given a visitor's badge and told to ask permission before snapping any photos. I also had to sign in and out on logs the company keeps for the government.

The Phoenix NOC is one of several run by GC, but a major facility nonetheless. The company runs a SONET NOC in Detrioit and regional NOCs internationally, such at the Global NOC in London, and specialty NOCs for conferencing, for example. The Phoenix NOC is concerned with the company's data products -- layer 2 and above. It also houses core engineering and four test labs.

Are you wondering, as I was, why Phoenix? Let me tell you: Apparently, one of GC's early acquisitions, GlobalCenter, a hosting company, had a facility in town.  (The company later sold GlobalCenter to Exodus.) Before 2000, the location was in downtown Phoenix; now it's in the suburbs of South Mountain in a neighborhood called Ahwatukee, where I live.

I got to see the command center -- you know the room that looks like a NASA control center. I was behind glass (the reason the photo below is blurry), but it was still cool.

I also got to see the labs -- o.k., three of the four labs. One lab was off limits because there was unreleased vendor gear being tested there. The labs include:

* a core burn-in and concept lab, which is used for testing of vendor gear (the one I was barred from)

* an edge gear and CPE lab (below) for GC's design engineering teams to test internal provisioning tools and configuration solutions, including managed solutions.

* a VoIP interoperability lab (below) for customers to test VoIP feature sets against GC's VoIP offering.

*a customer experience lab for testing GC products and feature sets right on the production network. The photo below shows the part of the lab used for testing IPTV and telepresence applications.

The NOC facility houses 360 employees, but Paul says it's half to two-thirds full. A number of employees telecommute (of course). About 100 employees run the operations center.

The NOC also includes training rooms. Engineers were in class this week learning about some Cisco OS upgrades. Paul says GC's partners also are brought in for training at the facility.

Paul also showed us the room that houses the gear that "lit up" the NOC. A couple of interesting points:
*The facility has dual fiber entrances; it has OC3s, including one wireless OC3 using an antenna on nearby South Moutain.
*The NOC is Cisco-powered and more than 99 percent of the employees' outbound calling is VoIP.

So, I guess you could say GC eats its own cooking. Good to know if you are (or going to be) a partner.