DI.GI. Improves Customer Satisfaction with World-Class Services

With global digital transformation taking hold throughout enterprises around the world, new technologies — such as cloud computing, big data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) — are maturing. As this trend progresses, traditional ICT enterprises face ever-greater technical challenges, as their customers demand more.

Cooperating with Huawei to Fulfill Requirements of Customers

An integrator for more than 40 years in the Italian ICT market, with headquarters in Milan and Rome, DI.GI. serves enterprises of all sizes from every market sector. In recent years, it has faced many technical challenges, and has had to adapt its multi-brand and multi-level products and solutions to fulfill the increasingly high requirements of its customers.

Seeking support to address these ramped up requirements, DI.GI. began cooperating with Huawei in 2013. The decision to work with Huawei followed an in-depth technical evaluation by DI.GI.’s infrastructure solution team that took into consideration the extensive portfolio of Huawei products and their quality, the innovative nature of its solutions, related roadmaps, and its service support capabilities.

In the early stages of cooperation, however, DI.GI. lacked a comprehensive understanding of Huawei’s products and solutions. It also encountered several further difficulties and challenges on its path of development.

For example, DI.GI. didn’t have sufficient technical service capabilities in the Internet Protocol (IP) and Information Technology (IT) domains for Huawei’s product service. Meanwhile, its customer service quality management needed to be improved because it lacked guidelines to guarantee successful project implementation.

Soon after beginning its cooperation with Huawei, DI.GI. set out to address these challenges. For example, in 2015, it assigned dedicated engineers to take Huawei’s IT Career Certification courses. Later that year, DI.GI. obtained Huawei’s 4-Star Certified Service Partner (CSP) certification in the IT product domain, helping the company further strengthen the partnership with Huawei and gain more trust from its customers.

From 2015 to 2018, during the implementation of several significant IT projects, DI.GI. engineers received service development requirements for network solution design and configuration from customers — requirements that were beyond the company’s existing capabilities.

To align with these new service development requirements, DI.GI. began focusing on obtaining IP product domain certification, as its single IT domain certification could no longer fulfill customer needs. As a result, DI.GI. decided to expand its cooperation with Huawei. And, with the support of Huawei’s Channel Service Manager, DI.GI.’s engineers received the necessary training to acquire IP product domain certification. Then, in the second half of 2018, having been certified as a 3-Star CSP in the IP domain, DI.GI. began delivering various network product projects.

In 2019, seeking to gain more understanding of Huawei’s channel policy and ensure service quality levels, DI.GI. encouraged its engineers to participate in Huawei’s career certification training and exams.

DI.GI. engineers passed a total of 15 training programs and exams as Huawei Certified ICT Associate (HCIA), Huawei Certified ICT Professional (HCIP), or Huawei Certified ICT Expert (HCIE), improving the company’s overall service support capabilities, while also becoming a benchmark partner for the regional service delivery business.

In May 2019, Huawei launched the Service Quality Alignment program for partners to improve their delivery quality and enhance customer satisfaction by providing standardization and specifications for installation, implementation, and maintenance services. It also provided standardized cyber security requirements to service partners.

From June to September 2019, DI.GI. sent six dedicated engineers to attend service quality alignment training, with all of them passing the related service quality exam.

DI.GI. has 17 HCIA engineers, six HCIP engineers, and two HCIE engineers, covering IP and IT product domains, and has obtained Huawei’s Gold Business Partner, 5-Star CSP-IT domain, and 4-Star CSP-IP domain qualifications.

Employing Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado Solution for CDLAN

Relying on its strong service team, DI.GI achieved great service delivery results in 2019. Many projects were successfully delivered, including several for renowned Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Over The Top (OTT) companies in Italy, covering both IT and IP product domains.

For example, CDLAN, a telco operator and ISP that promotes its ecosystem of digital services through a range of ICT solutions developed over 20 years, recently expanded with the creation of Caldera21 — a new high performance data center at its Caldera Park location in Milan. To improve its Storage as a Service (STaaS) offerings for its cloud customers, CDLAN requested new equipment to be installed in its Caldera21 data center, as well as its data center in Rome.

DI.GI. arranged for its HCIE experts to interface with CDLAN, to discuss the solution’s architecture and planning. After several rounds of consultation, and demonstrating its product and solution expertise, DI.GI.’s HCIE experts finally gained CDLAN’s trust, and the project moved forward.

CDLAN and DI.GI. chose to employ Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado 5800 V3 and 5500 V5 as the project’s main storage systems to provide services for both the Milan and Rome data centers. These products guaranteed the required levels of performance, as well as the flexibility and scalability identified during the project definition phase. Two storage system features in particular were highlighted as key for future project delivery.

The SmartMulti-Tenancy feature divides physical storage space into multiple logical resources; it also addresses data security and privacy challenges while reducing Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs incurred in public and private cloud environments where multiple enterprises employ a single storage system.

The second standout feature — HyperReplication — enables storage systems in two different data centers to process services simultaneously. This establishes a mutual backup relationship, in which the storage system in one data center can take over services if the other’s storage system has a failure — eliminating data loss and reducing service interruption.

Before project delivery began, Huawei organized training sessions based on the established ‘three stages and nine steps’ on-site service process for CSPs. This provides specifications for installation implementation as well as maintenance services and service request processes.

During the delivery phase, DI.GI. handled the project’s physical installation, wiring, configuration, and on-the-job training for CDLAN staff. After delivery, DI.GI. visited the customer regularly to identify project delivery improvement points and optimize the project. DI.GI’s project delivery confidence soared as the CDLAN project was implemented successfully.

Meanwhile, Huawei’s storage solutions exceeded CDLAN’s expectations in terms of performance and reliability, and allowed them to provide services to their customers with efficiency and scalability while remaining compliant with all applicable quality standards.

Future Prospects: Continuing to Build and Service Competitiveness

To improve its project delivery capabilities, DI.GI. also prioritized improving its Co-Care maintenance capabilities (Huawei Co-Care service is a collaborative solution for certified partners that helps maintain a more efficient and stable network environment and improve network productivity). By the end of 2019, DI.GI. had been responsible for the delivery of 51 Co-Care maintenance contracts, and handled 69 Co-Care tickets with support from Huawei’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC).

By providing remote and on-site technical support, Huawei ensures valuable delivery of products and solutions to customer interfaces, safeguarding IT construction, O&M, and customer operations.

In the future, DI.GI. will continue to invest, to further improve its engineers’ technical skills, as well as improve its efficiency when providing Huawei solutions to the market. It will also continue to provide high-quality technical support for end-customers, and continue to build and service its competitiveness, with the aim to become a 5-star CSP in both IP and IT domains.