MetTel, a fast-growing communications solution provider for businesses, today unveiled MetTel Customer Innovation Labs, a new research and development organization chartered with engaging customers, technology and carrier partners to develop unique and useful customer solutions.  

MetTel Customer Innovation Labs are based in New York City, the former Bell Labs building in Holmdel, New Jersey and in Salt Lake City, Utah.

As part of the launch, the labs are announcing a solution designed to enable businesses to quickly recover from extended network disruptions or catastrophic events and rapidly deploy connectivity for local branches or pop-up businesses in need of high speed, quality and reliable service to support business continuity.

The new R&D organization has evolved from groups of researchers and developers working to help solve specific customer problems and extend MetTel capabilities at a client's request.  MetTel's responsiveness to customer needs is well documented, having won the Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year for three consecutive years. MetTel Customer Innovation Labs is yet another manifestation of MetTel's overall corporate commitment to its customer-first mission.

Ed Fox, Vice President of Network Services at MetTel, has been named to lead the division. James Salame, Vice President of Software Development, will drive technology platform development. Sean Sullivan, Vice President of Product Management & Regulatory Affairs, and Gary Gluzman, Executive Director of Product Management, will collaborate with customers and the labs team to commercialize the most promising technologies and methods to accelerate product and service development.

"Everything we do is focused on practical innovation for customers," said Fox. "MetTel develops digital transformation solutions to real problems by collaborating with customers and ecosystem partners. Our R&D has to address a current or near-term challenge our customers face for us to spend time and resources on it."

A new solution coming out of the MetTel Customer Innovation Labs is an Emergency Communications Kit.  Born out of continuous dialogue with MetTel clients and business partners, the Emergency Communications Kit is designed to address any number of issues that can arise from natural disasters, sales spikes, mergers and acquisitions as well as other unforeseen incidents that can disrupt the communications network and affect a branch location or even an entire business.  The Emergency Communications Kit offers an out-of-the-box disaster recovery solution that quickly replaces network functions in much the same way a back-up generator kicks in when a home or building loses power.

Another key use case for the kit is to support so-called "pop up" stores or businesses. Retailers, entertainers, restaurants and other businesses have increasingly used this technique as part of sales or marketing campaigns to generate interest among targeted demographics and capture higher sales during peak demand periods. The MetTel Emergency Communications Kit can create instant, on-site network connectivity wherever a business location is established.  

The Emergency Communications Kit solution provides fast data transfer speeds, increased bandwidth, secure and private connectivity, network usage monitoring, streamlined provisioning, automated policy management and most importantly, a reliable connection businesses can count on.  It was designed for branch or local office deployment, making it ideal for banks, healthcare chains and retailers.  Consisting of voice services, wireless adapters, mobile service, custom configuration and installation, the kit is the first instant branch recovery solution powered by SD-WAN that aggregates the broadband of the two largest US mobile carriers.

Another example of MetTel's Customer Innovation Labs successes already in the market is its multi-faceted SD-WAN business that has grown at record pace. MetTel has seen a dramatic spike in demand for SD-WAN with customer engagements tripling in 2016. The company has also seen 70 percent further growth in the first two months of 2017 compared to the same time period last year.  A key reason for this success and associated differentiation in the marketplace is the way in which the labs team internet worked the new software and features into MetTel's trusted and reliable backbone network. 

"We enable a best-of- both-worlds approach for customers who want to look before they leap headlong into the emerging software-defined environment on day one," said Fox. "Clients want greater, more cost-efficient bandwidth and MetTel delivered two market-leading solutions working with its SD-WAN partner, VeloCloud."  

In fact, Gartner gave MetTel's SD-WAN solutions the highest possible score in 2017 published research in its Market Guide for US Alternative WAN Branch Solution Providers.*

Customers that have benefitted from these SD-WAN innovations include, waste management leader Republic Services, and Wunderlich Securities, among others.  MetTel also works closely with its partner ecosystem that includes key players such as VeloCloud, Purple WiFi, Broadsoft, Tableau, Telestax and Gravy, among others.

Each of MetTel's labs l includes teams of software developers, network architects and digital transformation specialists dedicated to key business growth market segments including analytics, API integration, programmable telecom, cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobility, network function virtualization, cyber security, software-defined networking and unique client solution development. 

MetTel's labs are also keenly focused on vertical industry solutions and services. While the labs cover all vertical markets, priority industries experiencing the fastest growth and greatest threats from disruption include banking, retail, healthcare, energy and government.  For example, the labs teams are working on new technologies for telehealth and remote healthcare, network management platforms for the public sector, retail analytics for wireless and third party public databases, and leveraging Watson Analytics™ for unified communications, to name a few. Plans are also in place to delve into other advanced fields such as the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare as well as virtual and augmented reality for digital business transformation.

Source; MetTel media announcement