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IPAM for Service Providers

IPAM for Service Providers

Reduce operational costs by automating labor-intensive tasks

Improve service consistency and reliability

Speed new service delivery by replacing silos with integrated workflows

Service Providers have a challenge

They interact with RIRs, then assign space to customers and update WHOIS data. Once the space is assigned, the downstream customers manage their space using their own systems and tools (for better or worse). If they want to integrate these provisioning workflows with DNS or DHCP services – bring your scripting skills. If the Service Provider has other services consuming these IPAM outputs (likely!), then that would fall into a multi-step provisioning workflow that requires either additional inputs and teams to get involved before the service can be provisioned and the customer invoiced.

Here is what Service Providers deal with today:

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Overlapping/duplicate IP space

ProVision’s natively multi-tenant architecture solves this problem for reals, stop adding rows/columns/worksheets to your spreadsheet – do it right, make it scale. With ProVision built-in Resource Manager approach – you not only have an elegant way to define and validate IP aggregates, but also assign permissions for those blocks across internal groups, business partners and even customers. Want more good news? We actually understand the realities of VRFs and VLANs – it’s more than a random text field attribute and we understand this.

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Customer tracking and interactions

The ProVision Resource Manager brings together a completely customizable object system that is commonly leveraged for customer data. Tracking multiple orders, circuits, allocations (and more) are so much simpler in ProVision – we play nice with existing unique identifiers and legacy systems, while extending a robust carrier-grade REST API for your next generation solutions to tie into.
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Real-time provisioning (learn to love your DNS/DHCP platforms)

So with the basics down, what else? ProVision supports extending functionality to other infrastructure elements using our Connectors. Want to automate DNS record creation across different DNS stacks/services? ProVision can do that. Since we aren’t “DNS or DHCP” servers, we are able to focus on letting those platforms do what they do best, we just make it simpler to integrate those systems into your other orchestration tools and legacy infrastructure. With 6connect’s new ACP platform, we also allow you to add new levels of automation with your existing infrastructure, even if they don’t support APIs. ACP leverages the ProVision Connector Library, but also allows you to add in any API for ACP to build into a JSON workflow that can be used.
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IaaS offerings for internal teams and/or downstream customers

With your infrastructure working and scaling as intended, why not share the love? ProVision’s native multi-tenancy brings together features like Delegated Administration and Approvals. Assign permissions to internal groups or even external customers/partners so that they can submit or request changes to their infrastructure with minimal hassles to your internal provisioning teams.
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Getting provisioning data into OSS/BSS software with minimal overhead

Do not be confused – while ProVision is powerful, we realize that just adding another interface isn’t always the best solution. ProVision features can be embedded into the platform(s) of your choice using our own REST API of course, but 6connect also provides a robust library of Portable Gadgets and Workflows. These gadgets are Javascript code that consumes the ProVision API, but can be embedded in a variety of web applications, while our workflows are simple JSON elements that are easy to share, edit and implement. For environments where integration is key, this provides another helpful option to reduce your time coding and more time solving problems. With the new 6connect ACP product, you can also do more complex workflows, without having to rely on your scripting capabilities to catch edge cases – ACP does the heavy lifting and also makes it easy to share and collaborate on workflows with other users.
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Updating RIR/Geolocation data sets as part of the provisioning process

Do you love email templates? We are not a fan. As RIRs are shifting to APIs and encouraging more direct interactions, Service Providers have a chance to automate provisioning from “allocation to assignment” using the RIR’s own interfaces. We are at the forefront of integrating this functionality into the core of ProVision and actively working with the community on API creation and adoption to move these efforts forward. Our automatic geofeed service is another timesaver for your operational team – stop submitting CSVs manually via email, ProVision automatically generates a feed that GeoIP data providers can easily parse and import into their workflows.

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Finally, Excising the last “IP Spreadsheet” (typically Excel, CSV, or papyrus)

We have import tools, we have Connectors and of course – we have lots of experience. Data normalization can be challenging, we do offer professional services to assist with this. If fear of the data mountain time commitment is an issue – let us help!

Looking toward the future

And that’s just what you deal with today – what about the future? How does your IPAM solution/approach address new technologies and integrate? Have you stitched together your own solution using APIs, different tools and homegrown scripts?

6connect brings a different mindset – we created ProVision to leverage functionality modules depending on the level of integration that the Service Provider prefers. No matter what tier you operate in, you get top-notch support, natively multi-tenant features, and a RESTful API.

And yes – pricing is competitive too – it’s not one size fits all and we have a variety of service providers using ProVision all around the world..

*Don’t send in an Enterprise Tool to do a Service Provider level job.

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