India, New Delhi, 5th February, 2015: In a meeting with the press event held today Delhi, Avaya’s Jean Turgeon, Vice President and Chief Technologist, Networking & SDN, WW Sales, delivered conclusive evidence confirming the power of Avaya’s Fabric Connect network technology and its benefits of
customers.1 Customers were interviewed to understand the impact Fabric Connect deployment had on
their business. The survey focused on two categories of network performance, namely, agility and
performance. The results soundly supported the performance value of Fabric Connect and revealed that
Avaya Fabric Connect brings a significant competitive advantage to Avaya customers. A combination of
customer’s performance metrics (performance, agility) and verbatim comments derived from the
research are an impressive confirmation of the power of the Fabric Connect technology.
Summary of results the Fabric Connect Customer Experience Research 2015 (all in average and before
and after Fabric Connect deployment)
Avaya’s network is 11 times faster to implement
Configuring a Fabric Connect network is 7 times faster
Troubleshooting time is 6.5 times quicker.
Failover time lowered from 13.6 minutes has been lowered to an astounding 320 milliseconds,
100% improvement on outage due to human error – outages dropped from an average of 3 per
What is Fabric-enabled Networking?
Fabric-enabled networking technology uses an innovative approach to network design, operation and
management to avoid the bottlenecks that slow the deployment of applications and services. This
approach involves deploying Avaya’s Fabric Connect solutions leveraging the only standardized IEEE
Ethernet Fabric solution known as Shortest Path Bridging(SPB, IEEE 802.1aq). It is an evolutionary leap
forward because it lets organisations completely virtualise their networking technology. It allows seamless
interworking with existing/legacy or cloud-based infrastructures making the physical layout of the
network irrelevant as you can build any logical network on top. In short, it does to the network, what
virtual machines did to the server. At Avaya, we believe our Fabric Connect technology offers a future-
1Dynamic Markets Limited conducted in the survey in November – December 2014. Survey covered 22% of Avaya’s Fabric Connect customers
from different regions. Respondents were promised anonymity to encourage unbiased and open responses
proof foundation for today’s megatrends – network virtualisation, cloud and mobile engagement – while
simplifying the network and reducing operational costs.
Jean Turgeon, Vice President and Chief Technologist, Networking & SDN, WW Sales
““Our new approach to networking is the foundation for transforming India’s cities into truly smart urban
centers poised to support economic and social development and value-creation. Our networking
technology is the backbone for rebuilding the country’s manufacturing and services sectors and unlocking
their potential in building locally and internationally competitive businesses.”
Dynamic Markets provided the following key points from their research.
Implementation time: 68% of Avaya FC customers say it takes less time to implement the FC network
compared to other networks (of equal size). The average figure for implementing a new network has
changed from 14 days to 1.3 days. This means that an Avaya FC network is 11 times faster to
implement. Customers provided quotes on an anonymous basis (blind survey): “It has really simplified
the way we plan and configure the network; it has reduced risks and errors because the protocol is
simplified. It is quick now we have to configure fewer devices than before; because there are fewer
86% of respondents say it now takes less time to configure a network. The average time has come down
from 110 hours to 17, making it nearly 7 times faster, which represents an improvement of 85%.
Qualitative comments below show that some of these customers have not had any network problems
for some considerable time now, with implementations going back as far as October 2013. It also shows
that customers who implemented only a few months prior to the research are already realizing this
benefit. Despite this, the research shows that the average troubleshooting times changed from 39 hours
down to just 6 hours, which represents an 85% improvement and times that are 6.5 times quicker.
“We haven’t had to. Once the base architecture for Fabric Connect is set up, the configurations ride on
top of that architecture, so there is very little extra configuration to be done.” [Implemented August
70% of Avaya customers have seen improvements to failover time since implementing their Fabric
Connect network. However, once again, some customers report an absence of network problems since
implementation, making it hard for them to answer this question. Nevertheless, the average failover
time of 13.6 minutes has been lowered to an astounding 320 milliseconds, which is 2,553 times faster.
“We’ve not had a failure yet.” [Implemented July 2013]
“It has increased reliance tenfold. We perform upgrades on the core network without any impact on
Before implementing Fabric Connect, 85% of respondents had problems with network outages caused
by human error in the core of the network. However, since implementation of the Fabric Connect
network, 74% have seen improvements and such outages dropped from an average of 3 per annum to
zero (i.e. 100% improvement). Indeed, the majority have seen dramatic improvements to this area of
their business. This line of questioning reinforces again that many customers simply have not had these
sorts of traditional network problems since their FC implementation.
“We have a very good system that is well built and well maintained. We have had small outages in the
past implementing different architectures, but with SPB [shortest path bridging] we haven’t.”
“This has been brilliant for us. We have not had any outages due to human error.” [Implemented July
Smart Cities / industries case studies built on Fabric Connect:
SOCHI Olympics – Russia: Avaya deployed Fabric Connect at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics where the
company supported up to 120,000 devices on its network at any given time, with in excess of 40,000 of
those being BYOD, making it the largest BYOD network in the world at the time, with huge peaks and
troughs of traffic that could not be predicted from a multitude of consumer devices. Fabric Connect
delivered the agility and flexibility that was demanded whilst eliminating business risk for one of the most
high-profile events in the world. The company was able to add and remove services, not networks,
virtually instantaneously and saw no network downtime at all during the Games.
Barwa City – Qatar: Barwa City Doha is a 6000-apartment Qatari modern city by Barwa Group. Barwa City
features modern homes in a contemporary setting, and 128 buildings spread across 1.35 million square
meters, with international schools, nurseries, retail outlets, mosques, restaurants, a health club, a bank,
and a variety of recreation. From its architecture to its infrastructure it is an embodiment of flexible,
comfortable living. Avaya is underpinning this modern oasis with Avaya Fabric Connect network
technology to run CCTV cameras, building management systems, digital meters, internal infrastructure,
and technological architecture required. The Avaya Fabric Connect network will enable the city
management to stream high definition video from 8000 cameras; support thousands of technology
endpoints simultaneously on an easy-to-alter and provision network. Any requirements of the
government to enhance the safety and comfort of the residents of Barwa City will be flexibly provided
without network downtime. The network will also enable the city to become the most mobile-driven city
in the country, supporting the motion of bring-your-own-device, across the city’s hotels, sports locations,
retail outlets, residential buildings, amongst others. Just a handful of network engineers can fully refit and
provision the network for the Barwa Group, matching their specifications through software-defined
Bangalore International Airport (BIAL)
Kempegowda International Airport is India’s largest airport in terms of passenger numbers, handling
12.86 million passengers in 2013-2014 and expected to handle 20m passengers by 2017. In 2014, the
airport choose Avaya Fabric Connect to enable its network to scale in a robust manner, improve
productivity and offer services with faster turnaround times to concessionaires. The network is today
handling the simultaneous running of airport applications such as the Universal Flight information
System ACDM-compliant airport operations software which captures 16 operational milestones on the
airside, SAP ERP system, passenger services, delivered through such systems as check-in and boarding,
self checking Common User Self Service (CUSS) for checking and passenger flight information, baggage
reconciliation, critical voice service and other such systems.
Firat Plastik, one of the 3 largest plastic production complexes in Europe and a leading exporter in Turkey,
based in Turkey, deployed Avaya Fabric Network technology in 2014 to ensure highest production quality,
diversity of products, elimination of redundancy in the core network, around the clock security, and
management of production systems.
