A network can grow only so big before the old ways of managing it and tracking it grow obsolete. SDN Communications knows that now and is implementing a MetaSolv inventory management and provisioning solution to keep its processes in sync with its growth.

When independent telephone companies across South Dakota got together in 1989 to build a network that would allow them to pool their long-distance traffic and hand it off collectively to major carriers — thanks to divestiture in 1984 — you could count the circuits with a spreadsheet. In fact, that's what they have been doing ever since.

Seventeen years later, after its 27 members companies — all independent rural telcos and owners of SDN — gave SDN what it needed to go from its TDM origins to a 14,000-mile fiber ring with dense wave division multiplexing and multiple mini-OC-48s, the company is finally hitting the delete button on those Excel spreadsheet and Access database files.

When Mark Shaw, manager of pricing and network provisioning for SDN, came out to Sioux Falls from Ohio just before the telecom bubble burst, he wondered if he had made the right decision.

“But in hindsight, we served a niche market that remained insulated during the telecom debacle,” Shaw said. “Also, we are controlled by the ILECs, and they're pretty conservative. They want good business reasons behind everything we do, unlike some of our competitors, who just put fiber in the ground to get the next press release.”

SDN's transition to fiber was sparked by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which in turn sparked not only the CLEC boom — which SDN is quick to note that it is not — but also the data boom.

“We had a lot of unused capacity, so when the data boom hit, we were able to capitalize on it and provide data services across the state,” Shaw said.

SDN wasn't alone. Its neighbors to the southeast began building Iowa Network Services in 1988. Today, the 150 independent telcos there share a 2000-mile network that supports 330 communities.

With seven times the miles of fiber to manage, SDN needed a robust solution for inventory, especially after having just gone through a re-grooming process, moving T-1 traffic onto a higher-density platform where almost 70% of the time spent on the project was tied up in record keeping and research and verifying the accuracy of new records.

“With MetaSolv, the record keeping is an automatic by-product of their software,” Shaw said. “With it you could concentrate on doing the work itself and not all the paperwork related to it.”

So SDN invited members of its network management committee to view the onsite demonstrations by software companies they were evaluating. SDN's committee is comprised of operations managers from various member companies, who provide input to the engineers and provisioning people within SDN to determine its vendor of choice.

“I don't know that the same company would have worked back in Ohio,” Shaw said. “The people here are more willing to help each other and work together. I am surprised how well these committees work.”

What SDN needed most from a technology standpoint was a system that could handle equipment and circuit inventory as well as new provisioning and workflow components.

“We have had some rapid growth the last five years, and the sheer number of circuits makes record keeping in the old format very time intensive,” Shaw said. “And new services like Metro Ethernet and MPLS made it even [more so.] That's what drove our decision.”

The company also had no interest in custom software written to meet its needs. “We wanted something that was broad enough to facilitate our current products, but if two months down the road our product development comes out with something else, we need the software to be configurable enough to integrate that also,” Shaw said.

What SDN needed from a business standpoint, Shaw said, was a company that it knew would be around tomorrow to support the product. “Longevity was a key factor in our evaluation,” he said.

What SDN got — what tipped the balance in MetaSolv's favor, besides meeting the business and technical requirements with its recently launched M6 platform — was responsiveness.

“We'd practically have to chase down some vendors to get a call back or get answers,” Shaw said. “I have to assume that if that is happening during the sales process, that it's going to happen from then on. It may not be that way, but that's all I have to go on.”

On the other hand, MetaSolv was great, he said. “And not just their account rep, but all the way up to their legal department, their contract people, their integration team. It seemed like no matter whom I needed to get an answer from, I got a pretty quick response, which set them apart.”

Of course, business deals always come down to price in the end, and Shaw said that despite not being a major carrier, SDN got basically the same product at a price that fit its budget. “Some of the other vendors would be flexible on price, but would do so by cutting this or that module,” he said.

That SDN was enamored with M6, MetaSolv's next-generation operations support system platform, bolsters MetaSolv CEO Curtis Holmes' contention that without his company's large investment in M6, it wouldn't have won the 11 new contracts it has since the product was launched.

While MetaSolv has been concentrating on growth elsewhere, such as in Europe and Asia, the SDN deal has helped open its eyes to more opportunity here at home. So has its recent financial performance.

“We are on what we consider solid ground and have the opportunity to grow,” Holmes said. “We now are in a position where we can focus not only on Tier 1 carriers but alternative carriers and Tier 2 carriers. We are investing in sales and channels to identify new markets and new customers.”

Going after the independent market might be a coming home of sorts for MetaSolv, which in the late '90s and earlier this decade was beginning to dominate the CLEC market before it collapsed.

Holmes said he has a shortlist of potential customers in this area but isn't seeing that many requests for proposal. Still, he said, “We are excited about the SDN deal because it was a very competitive win.”