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Carrier Services
Safe and Sound
Verizon Business Unveils Government Super NOC
by Sean Buckley
Complete with biometric scanning for building access, diverse fiber
routes, temperature control, and other features to ensure the security
of government network services, Verizon Business opened up its new
GNOSC (Government Network Operations Security Center) this week in
Ashburn, Va.
Once the former home of pioneering ISP UUNET, later WorldCom, the
Verizon Business GNOSC will support managed network services the
for its large federal government customer base —- a customer base that includes the Department of Defense, the GSA, and the U.S. Treasury, to name a few.
Staffed by technicians that have on average eight years of tenure
working for Verizon Business’ Federal Division, the GNOSC conducts real-
time network monitoring of federal government customers’ global network
traffic along with a single point of contact for products and services
to ensure network operations and related security issues.
As one of the first network facility builds taken on by the newly
combined MCI and Verizon, the GNOSC includes a network monitoring and
security center in addition to an emergency command center, briefing
center, and a program management office and support office space.
What’s more, the GNOSC was designed for government agency growth.
To ensure uptime, the Ashburn-based GNOSC sports diverse cable
network routes and network redundancy to ensure uninterrupted service.
If the Ashburn facility were to shut down due to a catastrophic event,
operations can be replicated in another Verizon Business NOC location.
And while Verizon Business has been providing managed services to the
government for a number of years, the establishment of the GNOSC is
the first time the service provider is putting both network operations and
security under one roof.
“Establishing the GNOSC is a cornerstone of our strategy for meeting
the federal government’s demands for next-generation networking
services,” said Jerry Edgerton, group president for Verizon Federal (the
sales arm of Verizon Business that serves federal customers) in a
prepared statement. “With this center, we are putting the customer’s
physical and systems security first.”
An IP Evolution
As a thirty-plus-year veteran of the government sector, Edgerton can
remember the days when the only application in the government sector
was voice. However, it’s clear that the government is also in the midst
of its own IP network evolution.
A key part of that evolution will be in meeting the OMB (Office of
Management and Budget) mandate that requires that all government
agencies to adopt IPv6 by 2008.
Through the combination of it’s the GNOSC and its vBNS+ (Very High
Speed Broadband Network Service), Verizon Business will be able to give
agencies a helping hand as they grapple with their respective IPv6
migration.
‘We run Ipv6 in our major government networks via VBNs+, so we’re
prepared to work with anyone that’s ready to go on a full-scale
implementation,” said Edgerton.
Networx Readiness
Verizon Business’s mission with the GNOSC is to be prepared to hit the
ground running if it wins the GSA’s Networx telecommunications
contract -— a 10-year, $20 billion telecommunications contract for
government agencies -- which will be awarded in 2007. GNOSC is equipped
to handle all of the complex management and billing processes needed to
support the GSA (General Service Administration) Networx contract.
GSA Networx is the follow-on contract to the existing FTS (Federal
Telecommunications Service)-2001 contract, which expires in 2007 and
consists of two parts: Networx Universal and Networx Enterprise.
Whereas FTS-2001 consisted of only 27 core services, Networx consists
of over 50 services.
Under Networx Universal, service providers will have to provide not only
all of the existing FTS-2001
services, but also nine IP-based services such as IP VPN and IP
telephony, not to mention optical, professional services, and wireless
services. As the slightly less rigorous program of the two, Networx
Enterprise requires that a service provider provide a narrower set of IP-
based services (VoIP transport, etc), while other services such as
Premise-based IP/VPN are optional.
While nothing is for certain, Verizon Business has a lot going for it to get
a seat at the GSA’s Networx table. Verizon Business, via the former MCI
along with Sprint, struck a large coup in 1999 when they both beat out
the former AT&T Federal Systems for a spot on the GSA General Service
Administration’s FTS-2001 contract. Through this contract, Verizon
Business currently serves over 75 federal government agencies -—
experience that’s pretty hard to match.
In July, Verizon Business signed a new two-year agreement with the U.S.
General Services Administration to provide services under the FTS-2001 contract. Designed to bridge
the current FTS-2001 agreement, and the Networx contract, Verizon
Business will continue to provide existing FTS-2001 contract services as
well as new services such as secure remote communications services for
teleworkers and enhanced hosting services.
Even though the GSA won’t announce the winners (and losers) of Networx until
next year, the competition for the 10-year, $20 billion contract is quite
fierce. Verizon Business will face off with an even stronger AT&T, Sprint
and Qwest, which brought on former MCI Government solutions all star
Diana Gowen to lead its Government division.
Along with AT&T, Qwest and Sprint, Verizon Business has made an
aggressive bid on both portions of the GSA’s Networx
telecommunications contract—Universal and Enterprise. Meanwhile,
competitive carriers such as Level 3 have made their own bid on Networx
Enterprise.
No matter who wins, Edgerton says the key role of the contractor is to
make the transition from FTS-2001 to Networx a painless one.
“We enjoy a significant place in the market as the result of FTS-2001,”
explains Edgerton “Our intent is to make the transition to Networx as
seamless as possible, and hopefully the only people that will see
anything will be the contract administrators at GSA. Certainly, there will
not be service impacts or disruptions. Our plan is to start to look at
Networx-like services today and make sure that there’s a simple way of
getting from FTS-2001 to Networx.”
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