Optimum Lightpath Aims to Make ‘Focus on the Customer’ More Than a Catchphrase

B. Washburn

Summary Bullets:       

• ‘Focus on the customer/ is a catchphrase, but it’s exactly what Optimum Lightpath is doing in an effort to bump up sales and support.
• Optimum Lightpath has been listening to customers all along, which inspired several of its more recent service launches.

Optimum Lightpath, the business services arm of Cablevision, has been through several major shifts in how the company does business.  The company first became prominent as a competitive access provider; then, it broke out into its next level of growth by betting early on Ethernet services.  In 2011-2012, Optimum Lightpath is again changing as a company – this time not on a product level but in terms of perspective, as it re-focuses sales and support efforts to get closer to its customers by helping clients address their challenges.  At an analyst breakfast held at this May’s Cable Show 2012 in Boston, MA, Optimum Lightpath executives discussed the state of the company, the success to date of its products, and its direction.

The Anti-Consumerization of IT

B. Washburn

Summary Bullets:

• Business IT support of consumer-side computing and communications long predates talk of ‘consumerization.’
• Consumerization’ drives complexity;IT departments will spend more to manage it all.

When people talk about the ‘consumerization of IT,’ the concept that technology starts in the consumer market and then spreads into the business, often what they really mean is: “Why doesn’t my company support my iDevice?”  Consumerization is an effective shorthand term, but it does not reflect reality; the trend was around long before the term was coined, and technology-wise, there is not much new.