ADELAIDE | AUCKLAND | BRISBANE | CANBERRA | MELBOURNE | PERTH | SYDNEY

02 | 2012

How Starlight installed a new

communications system and

saved money

Victoria Teachers Credit Union: the best is getting even better

Social media in contact centres: 9 factors for success

The world’s fastest Ethernet switch

interesting times indeedThere’s a well-known saying, ‘May you live in interesting times’. It’s often, but wrongly, attributed to Confucius. Far from being an ancient Chinese curse however, it seems that its origins lie in the West in the early decades of the 20th century. What is known for sure is that Robert Kennedy included it in a speech he made in 1966 and it’s been widely recognised and quoted ever since.

There’s no doubt that the 1960s were interesting times. And there’s also no doubt that the expectation of a GFC Mark II in 2012 along with those zany predictions that the world will end on December 21, 2012 mean that we’re living in interesting times ourselves.

When the GFC struck in 2008, NSC fielded a significant increase in enquiries for Managed Services. Managed Services make especially good business sense when times are tough: they enable organisations to address both financial and operational challenges while accessing the benefits of state-of-the-art communications technology. Since those early days of the GFC, we’ve taken the concept even further and now include Breeze™ among our options. It’s a Managed Service that enables organisations to avoid capital expenditure and instead pay for communications on a month by month, per-user subscription basis.

If you’re in the throes of reconsidering your communications systems, a Managed Service may well

02/ converge 02/2012

IT / communications trends for 2012

I was asked several weeks ago to comment on what I expected 2012 to bring in the world of IT and communications. The pace of change and the uncertain economic times probably made such a task even more challenging than usual. Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in NSC’s expectations for the year ahead.

1. MobiliTy business can now connect continuously with

customers wherever they are. But in 2012, customers are going to become more demanding: they will raise their expectations of the quality, quantity and relevance of information they can access from a business and the speed with which their enquiries are responded to

2. DEaTh of roaMing new apps for smart phones will make them an

extension of a desk phone; businesses will save millions by eliminating international roaming costs

3. SoCial MEDia more organisations will acknowledge the need to

develop a strategy for utilising social media and, as a result, will be better positioned to use social media effectively to achieve their goals

business will develop better ways of monitoring and measuring their social media activity

4. TElECollaboraTion there will be increasing investment in tools

and apps that enable collaboration – between colleagues, with customers and with suppliers

5. Growth in it as a service (cloud) more organisations will purchase technology

infrastructure, licensing, service management, support, storage and upgrades on an opex, pay-as-you-go, subscription basis

6. rESUrgEnCE of VoiCE there’ll be more widespread use of interactive

voice recognition and ‘Siri’ style services, and fewer typed-text conversations

speech biometrics will gain wider acceptance as an effective identification and security measure, especially in the finance and banking sector

7. iT / bUSinESS alignMEnT there will be a renewed push to make IT more

about ‘information’ and less about ‘technology’ for its own sake

IT departments will need to accept responsibility for more functional areas and technologies, such as contact centres, collaboration, CRM and e-commerce

8. PCi CoMPlianT it’s not ‘sexy’, but being PCI compliant will become

essential this year for many Australian organisations

interesting times indeedbe an excellent fit for your needs, especially in these ‘interesting’ times. Guy Simons’ article on page 6 continues his review of the merits of Managed Services. (You can find his initial article in our previous issue of Converge: click here.) The overview of the decision made by Starlight Children’s Foundation Australia to implement Breeze on page 4 may also be of relevance. NSC is very pleased to be assisting Starlight to achieve their objectives: their new communications systems will increase the functionality available to staff and volunteers, enhance the management of their systems and enable the organisation to support sick children and their families even more effectively.

Challenging and uncertain times can also be a catalyst for reviewing organisational fundamentals. The focus might be on identifying opportunities to achieve more with less, finding ways of extending the life of existing systems or creating innovative responses to meet new and emerging customer needs. Assistance from outside the organisation can be helpful in such reviews: an outsider can offer a fresh perspective on the issues, objective and unbiased expertise and new frameworks and methods for addressing problems.

Through our Consulting unit, NSC is able to offer this kind of support. Our consultants combine extensive business, operational and technology experience, which enables them to help organisations with strategy development, business-process analysis, end-to-end solution architecture and technology governance.

02/2012 converge /03

We have particular expertise in the fields of customer service optimisation and enterprise collaboration.

The recent Consulting assignment that NSC undertook with Victoria Teachers Credit Union (see page 8) is a good case in point. Victoria Teachers have been widely acknowledged as a leader in their field, but they are not resting on their laurels. Having undertaken a review of their contact centre in concert with NSC, they are now implementing a range of initiatives that will result in even better services for their members.

At NSC, we provide customers with practical, innovative and expert support that achieves genuine business benefits. Contact us to find out how we can help you succeed in these interesting times.

regards, Craig neil Managing Director, NSC Group

Communications upgrade is a breeze When not-for-profit

organisation, Starlight

Children’s Foundation

Australia, needed to

consider options for

replacing its ageing

telephone system,

cost was a key issue.

Starlight runs programmes designed to support the wellbeing and resilience of seriously ill children and their families. It’s proud of its track record of keeping administration and operating costs in check at around 10% of revenue.

“We are acutely aware that every dollar spent has been donated, so we are always looking for opportunities to minimise our non-programme costs,” said Louise Baxter, Starlight’s Chief Executive. “Every dollar spent on administration is a dollar not spent on the children and families that we support. However, our telephone system was more than a decade old; it was becoming unreliable and couldn’t offer all the functionality that we now need, so we didn’t have any choice about replacing it. We set ourselves the goal of installing a new system and reducing our total costs.”

Starlight has nearly 200 staff spread across six office locations and the major paediatric hospitals across Australia. They required a cost-effective and scalable communications system and were looking for an IP-telephony based platform with access to all unified communications features and functionality.

The solution needed to cater for call-centre and general office staff in five locations, as well as the expected future requirement of IP handsets in the Darwin office and a number of children’s hospitals. After a thorough review of available options, Starlight determined that a relatively new communications-as-a-service offering from NSC Group, called Breeze™, was the best fit for its current and future needs.

“There were several things about the Breeze model that made an enormous difference to us,” Ms Baxter continued. “Not only did it provide the technology we needed to address our communications requirements, it also allowed us to avoid any capital expenditure. Breeze is a subscription style of arrangement: we don’t have to buy any equipment, just pay the service subscription on a month-by-month basis.

“What’s more, we have outsourced to NSC the responsibility for monitoring, maintaining and keeping the system up-to-date, which will free up our

Since being formed as an Australian children’s charity in 1988, the Starlight Children’s Foundation has brightened the lives of seriously ill and hospitalised children, and their families, throughout Australia. Starlight provides programmes integral to the total care of seriously ill children – while health professionals focus on treating the illness, Starlight is there to lift the spirits of the child, giving them the opportunity to laugh, play and be a child again.

Starlight is probably best known for its ‘Wish’ programme. A Starlight Wish provides meaningful experiences, has life impacting benefits and is an opportunity to share in a dream come true. A Starlight Wish gives the whole family a break from the stress of their child’s illness. Fulfilled wishes provide lasting memories for the child, and it’s rare that a day goes by without the family mentioning their special experience.

To find out more, visit Starlight’s website at www.starlight.org.au

About Starlight Children’s Foundation Australia

04/ converge 02/2012

Communications upgrade is a breeze own people to focus on other projects. We only have a small head office team, so this arrangement will work well for us.

“The subscription model will allow Starlight to readily add new users, and even new sites, during busy periods and scale back down in quieter months,” Ms Baxter continued.

Starlight will also be introducing quantifiable service levels for their communication systems for the first time as part of the Breeze service. “We aim to deliver an exceptional Starlight experience to all our children,

families, volunteers and supporters and communication is a critical component of this,” Ms Baxter commented. “So to be readily able to review the quality of the support that we’re providing to our staff and our callers is an important step forward for us. We’ll know exactly what’s happening and what steps are in train to address any issues and implement improvements.”

NSC will install 165 ShoreTel handsets, Agent Workgroups, Operator services, Unified Communication Desktop clients, and the ShoreTel System Management Application. thirty employees will have ‘soft phone’ capabilities, allowing them to have all the functionality of an office phone on their laptop computers. This will be a boon to staff members who frequently need to work away from Starlight’s offices.

The major components of the network will be located in Starlight’s head office in the Sydney suburb of Naremburn, with interconnections via the WAN to the organisation’s interstate offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. With standards-based products built to operate at ‘five nines’ reliability, Starlight is confident that the operation will trouble-free.

And the cost? “We have been able to achieve our objective,” Ms Baxter said. “The Breeze model isn’t tied to any particular carrier, so we took the opportunity to review our arrangements. The money that we’ve been able to save by switching carriers is going to be more than sufficient

to cover the cost of the new phone system, which is a terrific outcome for Starlight and seriously ill children across Australia.”

02/2012 converge /05

Starlight CEO Louise Baxter

06/ converge 12/2012

nsc provides a full spectrum of Managed services that address both financial and operational challenges. For more information, go to www.nsc.net.au/index.php/services

Capex versus Opex by Guy Simons

Building on the review of Managed Services that I began in the last issue (click here to read that column), I am going to revisit each of the principal business-case drivers that may result in an organisation’s decision to move to a Managed Services model, starting with Capex vs Opex.

According to Gartner, the global IT spend for last year was $3.6 trillion, of which more than one third was in telecommunications. With IT systems being integral in every industry, this spend is expected to increase by 3.7 per cent during 2012. Capital expenditure has always been a fixture in IT budgets for large projects that incorporate hardware, software and licensing. Companies have been happy to write off these assets through depreciation, being cognisant of the lifecycle of upgrades and refreshes. (It is a point of interest that upgrade/refresh timelines have more than halved since the days of the mainframe, much to the consternation of many finance officers.)

Following on from the GFC two years ago, the world is now potentially caught in the grip of another global recession and for many countries, let alone companies, the ability to raise capital has been seriously impinged. Capital budgets are being slashed and all expenditure scrutinised, with increased diligence a necessity for survival. Companies must ensure that the business cases that support proposed capital expenditure deliver the anticipated CSF (Critical Success Factors) and drive the expected ROI.

This has resulted in a proliferation of ‘IT as a Service’ models whereby companies obtain services that incorporate a combination of some or all of the following: infrastructure, licensing, service management, support and future upgrades, that were traditionally delivered under capital expenditure, as a monthly operational charge. NSC’s Breeze™ and On-Demand solutions are examples of these pay-as-you-go-offerings. This move to a subscription model has enabled companies to free up valuable capital to spend on their core business.

Rather than being a current trend as a result of the global financial crisis that will revert back to type when the crisis is over, I believe that the ‘IT as a Service’ model in all its different guises will become the predominant line items in future IT budgets.

The actual IT spend over a three to five year timeline may not differ greatly: it will be the way that this spend is treated from a budgeting perspective that will change. The peaks and troughs of capital expenditure will be replaced by the consistency of operational expenditure.

As the old adage says, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, and although not a tangible invention, the ‘IT as a Service’ model will be one that stands the test of time.

Guy Simons is the Managed Services Executive at NSC Group. With a background in finance and IT, he combines skills as a strategic visionary with a capacity to achieve tangible and pragmatic results.

Safe & sound

11/2011 converge /07

If your organisation takes credit-card payments – online, over the phone or in person – it’s time to get serious about PCI DSS compliance.

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. They are a global set of requirements designed to prevent fraud and theft of credit-card information. The standards were set in 2004, but the focus was on the large North American and European markets at first. Now there’s increasing attention on Australia.

There are a number of reasons why your organisation should become PCI compliant:

it demonstrates to your banks, customers and credit-card companies that you have taken information security seriously

an increasingly large number of organisations will only do business with PCI-compliant suppliers

it protects you from sizeable financial penalties: banks and credit-card companies impose fines for security breaches, and the costs of investigating breaches and recovering from them can be significant

Becoming PCI compliant can be complex, time consuming and expensive – but it doesn’t have to be so. NSC Group and our trusted partners can assist by:

reviewing and documenting your organisation’s processes for capturing, processing, storing and transmitting customer-payment information

clarifying the requirements for compliance based on the volume of credit-card transactions processed by your organisation

identifying the appropriate options for achieving compliance

By utilising NSC’s PCI expertise, you can accelerate progress towards compliance and reduce disruption to your core business and in-house IT initiatives.

To read more about PCI compliance, click here for the white paper written by our in-house experts.

For more information about how NSC can help your organisation achieve and maintain PCI compliance, contact your NSC Account Manager.

The rollout of Australia’s next-generation broadband communication infrastructure to residential consumers has begun in various towns and cities around the country – a significant undertaking.

NBN Co is now turning its focus to the business market, releasing their consultation paper, Proposed Business and Enterprise Fibre Access Service, just before Christmas.

This paper provides a good insight into the services that will reshape how Australian businesses will communicate nationally and internationally in the near future. Broadband fibre access services will significantly change the way organisations access service providers that offer both the private and

public networks that form the backbone for information-demanding economies.

NSC Group is actively involved in providing network solutions that will:

enable the efficient use of the NBN Co business and enterprise fibre-based access services

smooth the transition from existing data and voice networks that currently underpin organisational and inter-company communications.

To find out more, click here to read the NBN Co’s consultation paper.

NBN for business

Victoria Teachers Credit Union has 85,000 members and more than $1.5 billion in assets, and is the only financial institution in Victoria focusing solely on people who work in education. In 2011, it was the Financial Review Smart Investor Credit Union of the Year, Money magazine’s Credit Union of the Year and winner of Mozo’s People’s Choice Award for Australia’s best credit union.

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of its foundation this year, Victoria Teachers recently undertook an evaluation of the current technology and processes within its contact centre to improve service and meet future challenges.

Executive Manager – Sales & Service, Rosemary Boissezon, said that the organisation’s contact centre was a particular focus because of its importance for member interaction. “We field almost 18,000 phone calls per month in our contact centre. In addition, 70,000 calls are handled by the self-service functions of our interactive voice-response system. We expect members will increasingly choose email and text to communicate with us in the future, so we need to ensure that we are effectively managing an array of communication channels.”

Every aspect of the credit union’s contact centre was reviewed, from recruitment, training and remuneration of staff, workforce optimisation, quality management and organisation structure

The credit union voted Australia’s

best in 2011 has just completed a

major review of its contact centre

so that it can serve members

even more effectively.

08/ converge 12/2012

The best takes another step forward

Victoria Teachers Credit Union was established in 1972 by a group of 48 educators, who each contributed $10. The founding members of Victoria Teachers Credit Union wanted to create a better economic life for people working in education, as well as their families. Their goals were to provide outstanding customer service, a fair deal, and a strong, secure organisation that puts its members first.

Since then, the organisation has grown organically and now has over 85,000 members and in excess of $1.5billion in assets. The values, however, remain the same.

Victoria Teachers is one of Australia’s most awarded financial institutions, having won numerous “Credit Union of the Year Awards” in recent times. It provides a range of banking services tailored to people who work in education.

www.victeach.com.au

About Victoria Teachers Credit Union

02/2012 converge /09

to find out more about nsc’s consulting services or how nsc can help your organisation review your contact centre, contact belinda o’Dwyer, head of consulting at belinda_odwyer@nsc.net.au or (02) 9856 4380.

through to how technology is used to implement the organisation’s service strategy.

“We undertook a series of workshops conducted by NSC Group to evaluate our people, processes and technology,” Mrs Boissezon said. “From there, we worked with NSC consultants to identify opportunities for improvement, and then prioritised them in short-, medium- and long-term action plans.”

Mrs Boissezon said the credit union would be implementing a range of initiatives as a result of the project. They include restructuring the contact centre, introducing a new performance-management system and making more effective use of interactive voice-response systems.

“We are also proposing to conduct satisfaction surveys within 24 hours of members interacting with the contact centre. This will provide us with quality feedback that will allow us to continually drive change,” she said.

In the longer term, technology will be a focus. More sophisticated use of data repositories will enhance knowledge management and aid the implementation of e-learning for staff. Upgrading current infrastructure will allow more routine enquiries to be handled by the voice-response system, freeing up the time of contact-centre staff to spend with members on more complex tasks.

“The credit union was founded in 1972 and aims to provide people who work in education with a fair deal and outstanding customer service across a range of channels. The work that we’ve done with NSC significantly accelerated the process of reviewing our contact centre, effectively saving us a year or more. We’re now well positioned to make changes that will enable us to serve our members even better than before.”

Rosemary Boissezon

The best takes another step forward

10/ converge 02/2012

Avaya’s web.alive™ application delivers all of this.

Intuitive and user-friendly, web.alive removes the barriers to effective interaction among groups of people in different locations. No matter where in the world you are, all you need to meet ‘face to face’ is an internet connection.

Find out more and experience web.alive yourself at NSC’s TechTalk this month. It will take place on:

Thursday, February 23 from 2pm (AEST)

from the comfort and convenience of your own location!

Come alive

Imagine an easy-to-use, web-based application that facilitates training, group discussions, seminars and business meetings.

Imagine the benefits: enhanced training opportunities – training

can be provided to employees and customers anytime, anywhere, without the costs of venue hire, travel, catering or accommodation. Roll out new programmes and products, induct new staff, meet OH&S obligations or provide mentoring and coaching at a dramatically lower cost.

increased business effectiveness – achieve higher levels of collaboration with colleagues, customers and suppliers even when they’re in distant and/or multiple locations

reduced costs, as meetings can be conducted effectively online – no travel required and no need to invest in videoconferencing resources

new business opportunities and new markets – the tyranny of distance is no longer

set up virtual retail stores, in-store point-of-sale displays or customer-service locations for demonstrations of products and services and delivery of support

conduct online trade shows and product launches

TechTalk

Watch an introduction to web.alive

HOLD THE DATE! PCI-DSS Compliance DemystifiedBusinesses that take credit-card payments are grappling with PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standards) compliance regulations. Our next NSC User Group in Melbourne will demystify PCI-DSS compliance. We will focus on the regulations, what they mean for business, the challenges, the process of complying and touch on some of the technical solutions that can assist businesses adhere to the regulations.

Friday, March 23 from 12 noon RACV Club, 501 Bourke Street, Melbourne

I want to share with you a realisation that I recently had ... it was at the hands of Dr Billy, the ‘crack quack’ (as I now call him).

Now, I know that all medical practitioners study for many years and have an impressive amount of knowledge and expertise. But you, like me, have no doubt experienced good ones and bad ones. At my appointment with Dr Billy, I believe I worked out the difference ... and it involves listening.

Dr Billy is a chiropractor – a discipline where, no matter what your ailment, the treatment invariably ends up with a spinal manipulation,

All ears by Belinda O’Dwyer

an audibly horrific (though not physically unpleasant) experience.

Having been through a consultation where I described some of my symptoms (don’t worry, I’m in good nick – just a sore shoulder and an old netball injury to my knee), Dr Billy recommended an intensive course of spinal manipulation for a month followed by another assessment.

I was quite disappointed when I left the consultation, as I knew that I hadn’t really been listened to. (And for some reason, the expression “If your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail” sprang to mind!)

I can recall so many times throughout my career when I’ve been approached by companies only too happy to convince me that their

solution is exactly what I need before even asking

me what I want or trying to understand my issues

and requirements.

If an engagement – be it business or medical – is going to achieve results in the right areas,

it has to begin with listening. I’m sure you’re interested in what the NSC Consulting team can deliver, but the truth is that we’re much more interested in who you are and what you want.

To find out more about how NSC Consulting can support your business strategy, contact me at belinda_odwyer@nsc.net.au

Belinda is Head of Consulting at NSC Group. She has 15 years of experience in contact centres around the world and has consulted on productivity

improvements, process re-engineering, and enhancing customer experiences.

02/2012 converge /11

12/ converge 02/2012

When many companies dived into social media in recent years, it seems that the standards that they apply to customer service in traditional channels were thrown out the window. Simple things that we take for granted in contact centres were ignored and as a result, brands and customers suffered.

In my experience, a lot of organisations struggle with how to handle social media on a large scale. Often the conversation is about engaging customers from a marketing perspective, not considering the post-sales service aspects.

The reality is that social media cannot be owned by one group in a company. A strong social-media strategy must take into account all areas of the company that deliver to customers and ensure that customer support has the right contacts within each department to adequately handle customer queries.

I’ve identified nine critically important factors to consider from a customer-service perspective when developing a social-media strategy, whether you’re handling the process internally or engaging NSC to assist.

Customer service using social media: 9 crucial factors for success by Adrian Morgan

02/2012 converge /13

Consider what success looks like for your company.

Is it a financial saving through the use of a lower cost channel? Is it the numbers of requests, mentions or positive referrals you get? Surprisingly, I have found that this question is often overlooked by organisations, despite being arguably the most important.

Choose your channels.

Facebook and Twitter are currently the most prominent. But how about LinkedIn, MySpace, Four Square, or Urban Spoon? Which channels are the right ones for your brand? What is the image you wish to present to your customers? Each channel has a target market and a different engagement strategy.

Staff appropriately.

Not every contact-centre agent who performs well on the phone will make the jump to writing tweets and solving problems in 140 characters. Choose agents based on their writing skills. Writing 140 characters may seem simple, but short, concise writing is challenging.

Choose your times.

Publish the times that you are available on social media. You tell customers who want to phone you what your opening hours are, yet I see so many Facebook pages that don’t advise when customer service will respond to an enquiry.

Understand that not every problem will be solved using social media.

Train your staff to direct customers to a different channel when appropriate. Social media is not the place to have a conversation that your customers may perceive to be negative and uncomfortable – such as one about collections, for example. In order to redirect these types of conversations, staff must be trained in when, how, and where an enquiry should be redirected. Many successful Twitter campaigns, for instance, use web forms and emails as well as social media.

Don’t remain static.

The social-media landscape changes rapidly. Five years ago My Space was on the decline and Twitter was just a small, early adopter start-up. Where will Google+ be

in a year? Review your social-media strategy every six to 12 months. Is it working? Are you in the right space? Are your customers still there? What is on the horizon? You need to commit to an on-going investment of time and effort to keep track of changes within social media.

Don’t expect social media will fix your customer service.

It is simply another channel. However, if you are performing poorly on any aspect of customer service, your customers can, and will, use your social media channel to broadcast their dissatisfaction. Review your current performance and understand what will be different with an additional channel.

Use the information gathered in social media.

Share it with the marketing department. Use it to update knowledge bases and FAQs. Use feedback and questions as input for product development. You will have a rich source of information that can support decision making in your organisation.

Ignore trolls.

Some people want to engage in ‘flame wars’ and trolling on the internet. Train your staff how to deal with this. Whilst your company needs to accept responsibility for decisions and actions, and empathise where appropriate, trolls just want to take up time and resources.

Social media can have a positive effect on your customers and more customers are choosing social media as a preferred method of contact. Be on the front foot for contact centre customer service and continue to build great relationships with your customers.

One final tip: when a customer calls your contact centre, the agents always say their name. Make sure you do the same on social media. The company has an identity, as do the individuals in your company who serve your customers.

Adrian Morgan is a member of NSC’s consulting team, with a special interest in social media and its use in contact centres.

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WAN optimisation is about improving the performance of business applications over WAN connections – by matching the allocation of WAN resources to business needs and deploying the optimisation techniques that deliver measurable business benefits.

NSC Group has recently chosen to partner with Silver Peak for WAN acceleration and optimisation.

NSC partner, Verint, has developed a solution to address these challenges and opportunities. Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics drives operational excellence by providing a capability for capturing and analysing customer feedback, optimising the workforce, enhancing the performance of customer-service staff and increasing customer satisfaction.

Click here to find out more.

Look who’s talking

Most organisations are being challenged to collect, analyse and act on the wealth of information that is available to them from their customers. These days, customers want to interact with you using a wide range of channels: phone, email, online, on Twitter and so on. Some of those interactions will be initiated by you, but many of them will be initiated by the customer themselves. What’s more, these interactions are often directed to different parts of your organisation, making it difficult to get a comprehensive sense of customer needs and views.

14/ converge 09/2011

Silver Peak’s capacity to accelerate networks at the IP level and deal with VoIP/video as well as address packet loss and jitter makes it compelling for business to investigate, given the ever-present need to get more out of the “pipe”.

Industry analysts, Gartner, recently reviewed the WAN optimisation market, and rated Silver Peak as one of the industry leaders. This evaluation was based on completeness of vision and ability to execute, with Silver Peak rated high on both.

Click here to read Gartner’s report

Follow the leader

NSC has moved into new premises in Perth, consolidating all staff in one location.

Our new office address is: nSC group suite 3, 190 stirling street Perth 6000

Phone: (08) 6330 5777

Consultant advisory groupNSC is keen to work closely with industry analysts and consultants around Australia.

We are establishing an advisory group with the objective of maintaining thought leadership and dialogue on the ever-changing shape of the communications sector. Proposed topics for our initial session include PCI compliance, market trends in

Click here to registerand find out how to participate

New WA office

accommodates growthNSC’s Regional Manager for Western Australia, Mark McBride, said, “The move to Stirling Street means that we will have our entire Perth-based team working from the same location for the first time.

“Our business is growing significantly here in the West. And we’ve chosen our new premises so that they will be large enough to accommodate our plans for continuing growth in future years.”

communications-as-a-service and the latest products from some of the major vendors.

If you are interested in being invited to our next event, please click here to register your interest.

02/2012 converge /15

NSC Group is now able to offer customers Extreme Networks’ “remarkable” product of last year: the BlackDiamond X8.

This record-breaking data-centre Ethernet switch has been independently tested and verified by leading industry analysts The Lippis Report.

Cliuck here to read the full story.

“The BlackDiamond X8 shattered all performance records with superior bandwidth, lossless performance and extremely low latency, making it the best-in-class choice for high-performance networks,” said Nick Lippis, principal analyst for The Lippis Report. “I commend Extreme Networks for designing such a remarkable product.”

The X8 offers:

the highest 10GbE and 40GbE port density to seamlessly support up to 768 wire-speed 10gbE connected servers in one-third of a 42 rU rack or 2,304 servers in a rack

the capacity to send the entire contents of the Apple App Store in about two seconds (based on 500,000 active apps x 5.0 megabytes = 2.3 terabytes). The performance and density offered in one-third of a data-centre rack is simply in a league of its own

BlackDiamond X8 test highlights:1. Ultra Low Latency, with lowest average latency of

2.3 microseconds for Layer 2 traffic.

2. Up to half the power consumption of competitors: 8.1 watts per 10GbE port at one-third loading; estimated to be 5 watts per 10GbE port at full loading.

3. 100% throughput with zero packet loss as a percentage of line-rate across all 256-10GbE and 24-40GbE ports.

4. The X8 tested 3–10 times faster than any core Ethernet switch in its form factor, and had the lowest latency and best power efficiency per port.

16/ converge 09/2011

World’s fastest core Ethernet switch – now available in Australia from NSC Group

Breakthrough for cloud and mobile networks

World’s fastest core Ethernet switch – now available in Australia from NSC Group

With demands on data-centre infrastructure forecast to be stronger than ever before as a result of the adoption of cloud services, offsite-storage requirements, disaster recovery and CaaS initiatives, enterprises will be forced to more closely examine the total cost of ownership than in the past. The introduction of the carbon tax and the widely anticipated increased cost of power generation, together with the inevitable demand for 10Gbps and

even 40Gbps in the data centre, will both serve to impact the business case of any enterprise considering large cloud-style computing.

With its extraordinarily small footprint, partnered with port-density and power-reduction figures head and shoulders above the competition, Extreme’s X8 should be at the forefront of enterprise consideration for any data-centre project.

Graph courtesy of Extreme Networks

For more information about the Blackdiamond X8 ethernet switch, contact: Matt sully, nsc network solutions on 0400 237 069.

02/2012 converge /17

Creating an environment for success by Jane Flemming

From elite sport and the eternal quest for ultimate performance we can observe a number of consistent attributes that foster, and improve chances of, success.

In my view, the one that stands out above all others is the willingness to seek, give and receive constructive feedback: in sporting lingo – coaching.

Elite athletes have professional, full-time coaches who provide feedback. As a result, athletes learn from the full gamut of performances, good and bad. It might be that a particular element requires improvement or recognising that it was executed successfully and understanding why that happened, with the aim of repeating it again and again.

Feedback, or coaching, must be honest, given in very objective terms and language and be of a constant nature to achieve the best results. There are no egos involved and no preciousness; a joint or team objective of improved performance drives these coaching behaviours.

In the world of elite sport, daily, if not hourly or even minute-by-minute, feedback and coaching are the norm and absolutely critical to the attainment of success. A stark contrast to the corporate environment!

In post race or match interviews with athletes and coaches, we often see and hear an instant analysis of where a team went wrong, of where they played well and where they played badly. It is not personalised and no one takes offence. Even the wider community perceives this as the norm.

If and when the corporate world adopts this attitude and it becomes ingrained in everyday behaviours, an extraordinary performance will result: individuals will start to truly fulfil their potential, company morale will be boosted and ultimately, the bottom line will be on the rise.

Jane Flemming is one of Australia’s best known sporting personalities. During her sporting career, the dual Olympian won two Commonwealth Games Gold and two Silver medals, 13 national titles and broke literally hundreds of records in elite competition.

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18/ converge 09/2011

Converge is published by NSC Group Pty LtdPublisher: Craig Neil

Editor: Megan Fishermegan_fisher@nsc.net.au

Contributors: Nick Culpitt, Alexandra Dawson, Jane Flemming, Adrian Morgan,

Belinda O’Dwyer, Guy Simons

© 2012 No part of this magazine may be reproduced by any

process without written permission.

All reasonable measures have been taken to ensure the quality, reliability, and accuracy of

the information in this magazine at the time of publication. Statements, opinions and views of contributors may not necessarily reflect those

of the NSC Group or its affiliates.

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