TABLE OF CONTENTS The world of telecommunications, with its rapidly changing technology and ever-greater influence on our lives, is sometimes difficult to predict in terms of the trends that determine what products and services are going to find success. Being new isn t always easy, and MPLS is far from immune to marketing challenges. In this chapter, we will examine different customer bases, exploring methods by which to both assess clients needs and maximize the benefits of MPLS VPNs for clients.
A business lesson that I learned the hard way is that there are two ways two go broke: 1) making something that you cannot sell; and 2) selling something you cannot make. Let s not let MPLS fall into either one of these categories, shown in Figure 9.1.
A great many vendors are making MPLS switches and routers - the issue now has become one of how to sell them.
All of us engineers may think that if you build it, they will come ; however, the dot-com dilemma has proved that a better mousetrap will not sell itself.
The questions in marketing remain (see Figure 9.2): To whom are we selling? What do they want? What do they need? And how do we sell our product?
There are three distinct groups in the who category (see Figure 9.3): the end user, the service provider, and the equipment/hardware vendor.
