The real secret to successful managed services isn't just having the full portfolio of potential solutions to customer problems — it's being able to identify and meet specific and highly variable customer needs, and do so cost-effectively.

At AT&T, that challenge falls to the network integration organization, which functions similarly to systems integrators in tying together the appropriate AT&T network pieces with those of the customer in a way that meets the customer's business and financial needs.

“AT&T has the full continuum of managed services, including complete outsourcing,” said Will Harvey, director of the AT&T Network Integration (NI) organization. “A lot of our managed services are very customized — they operate in a way that is identical to the very unique way businesses have of operating themselves.”

That customization uses “building blocks of capabilities and services that can be integrated, not only between themselves but also with parts of the enterprise network and consulting and professional services from AT&T and others,” he added. “The integration piece that I do is pulling all of those together, including the building blocks that are off-the-shelf components with no customization and then the outsourcing that is very custom by nature.”

At one end of the managed services spectrum are fully outsourced services, which “tend to be around the old stuff and old technologies because people are looking to do things at a lower cost,” Harvey said. At the other end are customers who want to do everything themselves, and in the middle are customers who want to “pick and choose from the turnkey services they want to buy from us.”

“If it's right in the middle, that's straightforward,” he said. “But a little bit to either side, that's where the complexity comes in. The customer that really wants to retain control but is looking to augment their services — a lot of what I do fits within that. The customer may want to remove assets, remove operational costs, looking to lower and change financials or balance sheets.”

Even some of the most turnkey offerings — IP virtual private networks, for instance — require preparation work on the customer end that not everyone wants to do.

“There's transitioning work, other activity they have to do to get ready or change their processes — that is where the complexity comes in,” Harvey said. “It's the integration of those standard building blocks into what customers do, which often isn't standard. Our integration business is the melding of the two; it is a means to an end for a customer since most of them don't want to do that prep work.”

AT&T-NI has a standard methodology it uses in the integration process “that doesn't look very different from any other systems integrator,” Harvey said. “We may work in consulting mode, or do some design work for custom around a specific question or problem, or we may do ROI models, or they may ask us to implement a network solution. We may take a design they have already done and implement it.”

Because of its own network expertise, AT&T is also prepared to service customer networks after they are established, right up to building and running a network operations center and staffing it with a combination of AT&T and customer employees.

“In that situation, the leadership, the management is from AT&T and then we augment our current staff with additional staff, in some cases, ex-AT&T people or others,” he said.

New technologies represent new integration possibilities and new points of entry for organizations such as Harvey's. “We're doing a lot of business now with VoIP and wireless for RFID requirements,” he said.

And as networks get increasingly complex, business is good.

“It's why we've had another year of triple-digit growth,” Harvey said.