Technology Leads at Global Crossing

Global Crossing continues to evolve from a carrier’s carrier into a provider of IP and Ethernet services to multiple sets of customers.

Yesterday Global Crossing announced the introduction of Ethernet-based multi-point to multi-point, point-to-multipoint and point-to-point services to enterprise and wholesale customers in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia and Latin America.

Offered originally as a metropolitan wide area network (WAN) Ethernet service in the UK, Global Crossing’s EtherSphere family of services leverages the company’s worldwide multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network to offer customers virtual private local area network (LAN) services.

“Ethernet is rapidly becoming the primary communications technology for global IT organizations,” said Dave Carey, Global Crossing’s chief marketing officer in a statement. “Data services over legacy technologies simply do not get the job done.”

According to the company, enterprises will be able to connect to Ethernet transport services from 150 locations, including 80 Cisco 7600 series provider edge routers, supporting 26 countries.

CTO/CIO, business units

In moves reflecting the company’s shift into enterprise services and the rising importance of software and applications, this summer Global Crossing restructured its company and combined the roles of chief technology officer and chief information officer.

The new CTO/CIO position has been filled by Anthony Christie, who previously served as managing director in Europe.

The company also created regional customer-facing units (CFUs), including a Latin America CFU, a Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) CFU, and a third CFU for the rest of the world, which includes North America. There’s also a fourth CFU for Global Crossing’s original wholesale business.

What’s innovative with the Global Crossing restructure is that Christie intends to focus much of his efforts on the customer experience—not usually considered the purview of the CTO or CIO at a telecommunications services company.

“One of the key pillars of our strategy at the global level is that enhanced customer experience,” said Christie, who clarified that customer experience is not the same as customer service.

“Customer activities trigger our business,” said Christie. The company has expanded from a wholesale voice provider to a provider of hosting, data centers and VoIP for enterprises to meet the evolving needs of its customers.

Christie, who became CTO/CIO in July, intends “to take some strong engineering work around some innovative things” to improve the customer experience. He’ll be looking at the entire life cycle of experience from the salesperson’s first contact to the point when a contract is renewed or terminated. “Then we re-engineer around,” he said.

The creation of regional CFUs did not involve setting up any new offices. The company still operates out of its three offices in London, Buenos Aires and Florham Park, NJ. Among its offerings are content distribution networks (CDNs). For more, click here).

-Linda Hardesty