Cisco Cisco Prime Home 2.4 Information Guide
© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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PRODUCT LIST
Network Management
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Cisco Prime Home
Results
Automated, faster, more frequent device upgrades
With Cisco Prime Home, Consolidated Communications is able to push out new firmware updates on gateways
automatically and during maintenance windows. Before Prime Home, they used a set of device update scripts that
someone would have to monitor overnight. This task would take approximately four hours for one set of devices,
and it would take one month to upgrade all 100,000 devices. Consequently, the company did not elect to perform
upgrades very frequently; however, now with Cisco Prime Home, the company can perform upgrades faster and
without requiring a technician to monitor the process. As a result, engineers perform more upgrades per year,
requiring less work and lowering operating costs. Formerly, Consolidated would run one upgrade per device type,
per year (on average); and now the company runs two to three upgrades per device type, per year and saves 80-
100 hours per upgrade.
Less developer time required to onboard new device
When Consolidated on-boards a new device type, it incurs developer time using its automation tools. With Cisco
Prime Home, the time to onboard a new device is cut in half. Formerly, it would take about two weeks to enable
most of the functions needed for a device; now the time required is under one week, lowering operating expenses
and freeing up developers for more strategic tasks.
Fast, easy troubleshooting
Occasionally problems arise that affect many subscribers, and individually addressing each customer through
direct support is not possible. Cisco Prime Home helps Consolidated Communications alleviate this problem. In
one instance, a new firmware load created major problems on a specific gateway model; when the technicians
upgraded the firmware, it would reset to factory defaults, losing all subscriber settings. Initially, 30 percent of the
devices were experiencing this issue, resulting in 300 calls the following day. Using Cisco Prime Home, the
developers wrote a script to backup and restore the configuration of each individual home gateway, helping
ensure no service impact to the customer if the problem was encountered.
In a worst-case scenario (without Cisco Prime Home), 30 percent of
the 40,000 devices, or about 12,000 devices, would have been
affected. This degree of impact would have had devastating
consequences for both call center resources and the customer
experience. In addition, the provider never would have wanted to
perform a firmware upgrade again for those specific gateways. Thanks to Prime Home, Consolidated
Communications realized greater customer satisfaction and cost avoidance of approximately $30,000 in customer
service representative time during this single incident.
Improved issue isolation
With Cisco Prime Home, Consolidated Communications is able to identify problems in the network faster. In one
instance, customers with a certain combination of smartphone/tablet operating system and a specific gateway
device type were experiencing issues (the gateways were re-booting frequently). Using Cisco Prime Home,
Consolidated Communications was able to determine if there was an incompatibility issue with the wireless drivers
in the router, and, after investigation, the company was able to turn off this particular wireless setting to stop the
gateways from rebooting. Cisco Prime Home facilitated in-depth, fast troubleshooting and helped the service
provider avoid a potential customer service disaster.