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NEW YORK--No one came up with a universal definition for network outsourcing at the recent Yankee Group Global Network Strategies conference. However, telecommunications managers agreed that they would love to turn the grunt work of provisioning, managing and supporting their overseas networks over to someone else: The problem is finding the right carrier, or consortium of carriers, to do it.
"U.S. multinationals are investing in global networks during the '90s the way they invested in domestic networks in the '80s: spending about 20% of their communications budget" on expanding networks overseas, said Berge Ayvazian, vice president of communications research at The Yankee Group.
According to Ayvazian, such companies require the following types of help for their global networks:
* High-quality, reliable circuits that do not deteriorate once they travel beyond major metropolitan areas.
* A single point of billing that take one kind of currency.
* Trouble management and restoration of circuits.
* Coordination among and interoperability between carriers.
In addition, such companies strongly desire--if not require--rapid service delivery, service-level guarantees, value-added customer services and reduced operational costs, Ayvazian said.
However, cost consideration was the least important criterion for choosing a global network provider, according to...