Case Study: Comcast Corporation
Streamlined, reliable access drives field-service initiative. With 23.9 million cable customers, Comcast Corporation is one of the nation's leading providers of entertainment, information and communication products and services. In order to fulfill promises to customers for timely service, the company embarked on an ambitious initiative as part of its “Dream Big” campaign. Reliable application access for field technicians was central to the effort – which is why NetMotion Mobility XE was the centerpiece of the mobile deployment.
About the Deployment
Comcast needed to extend direct access to applications to its field technicians, to improve customer service. “Our credo continues to evolve and is focused on customer satisfaction,” declares Greg Otto, senior director of infrastructure and operations. “As an example, the Comcast Dream Big initiative includes a customer guarantee that we're going to keep the appointment, be on time and be there when convenient for our customers. Absolutely, the critical element is clean and consistent access to our applications. That’s the bedrock for the change.”
Comcast has deployed approximately 18,000 wireless handhelds, the majority of them MC70 devices from Motorola, to support its technicians nationwide. Connecting via a cellular data network, the handhelds access one of two application suites that Comcast uses across its various markets. For authentication, data encryption and to maintain the reliable application access that is a fundamental requirement, Comcast installed the NetMotion Mobility XE mobile VPN.
Access to Every Application, from Anywhere
Comcast serves markets all across the U.S. To further complicate matters, it uses two separate application providers who each furnish a suite of dispatch, provisioning, customer-service and billing applications. But their architectures are quite different.
Otto explains, “Some of our divisions use both providers. It’s important for the field technicians to have the same kind of access method for each of them. We also wanted to simplify and streamline the ingress and egress into our environment — we didn’t want to have connection points throughout the entire network.”
Efficient Management and Updates
For a deployment the size of Comcast, efficient device management is a must, “We have 18,000 handhelds deployed, and we’re going to grow that to 25,000,” says Otto. “From an access-management standpoint, Mobility XE is a pretty light touch. Once we get the devices activated and deployed in the field, the integration is pretty seamless.” For operating system and application updates, Mobility XE co-exists with Afaria from Sybase iAnywhere, which allows the IT staff to push out updates and stage them so they don’t disrupt the technicians.
Measurable Results, Delivered
“This is definitely a strategic initiative for Comcast,” declares Otto. “The key to getting there was connecting technicians to our applications through a secure, reliable method. That’s the big piece of the problem that Mobility XE solves for us.”