Oncept Consulting Group: Delivering Worldwide Cost-Effective Network Solutions

The operating environments for enterprises have changed drastically in recent years. Their modern applications are distributed across on-premises data centers, multiple cloud infrastructure (IaaS & SaaS), and edge locations. This is creating more complexity and higher dependency on the network to ensure optimal application performance. To that end, SD-WAN addresses these current IT challenges by providing enhanced visibility, performance, and security required in a cloud-first era. And, as the bandwidth requirement for different applications varies, SD-WAN technology provides enterprises with enough flexibility to collaborate with the best mix of service providers to meet their unique requirements. However, depending on the network requirements and constraints, choosing the appropriate service providers and mix of technologies remains a substantial obstacle for many enterprises, especially those with a footprint across multiple countries and continents. Many enterprises lack in-house carrier landscape capability knowledge in terms of price, performance, technologies, service delivery, and other aspects. This is where California-based Oncept Consulting Group makes a difference with consulting services that help enterprises effectively design, benchmark, source, and manage their portfolio of service providers and contractors.

With almost two decades of experience, Oncept has acquired an end-to-end knowledge of global telecom market trends for network services. The company is well versed with the coverage, performance abilities, and pricing models of network operators worldwide, which helps them offer a comprehensive view of cost-efficient options for their clients when planning a network expansion or transformation. Leveraging their extensive pricing knowledge, Oncept guides its clients through an effective network optimization process taking cost, service availability, contractual constraints, latency, and vendor diversity into account, as client’s look to source or renew their services contracts. From the start of an engagement, Oncept’s consulting services are based on Oncept’s benchmarking methodology and help with network planning and costing, through sourcing and contract negotiations. Consulting services also extend throughout the telecom lifecycle, including inventory builds and tracking through implementation to ensure that service providers deliver and meet their contractual, SLA, and deployment timelines. JP Crametz, the Principal Consultant at Oncept Consulting Group, says, "We are benchmarkers at heart and give our clients visibility into cost-performance trade-offs before committing to a particular vendor, technology, or solution."

A typical onboarding for Oncept starts with identifying the clients' requirements and mapping that with their savings and performance objectives. One of the initial steps is building an inventory of the client’s portfolio of services. Crametz informs, "Only one in four of our clients has a clean inventory of their circuits and rates." ." Oncept interacts with the clients' technology and finance teams to help them define the trade-off between performance, flexible options, and cost. Once Oncept understands the clients' risk appetite of finance and IT operations, the optimization process begins, including choosing vendors, technology, and others to help them achieve their business goals.