Business Chief US+CAN Magazine June 2021 | Page 395

LUMEN

SHAWN DRAPER VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING , LUMEN

That ' s what gives Lumen the ability to tell a customer , within seconds , where they should be spending their dollars to optimize that investment . “ When you have a data set giving you this level of visibility , you have the ability to drive the delivery of network at the pace of compute .” For customers , this means that provisioning and activation of network capabilities are taken out of the critical path . For logical changes , same or next day delivery is a reality . New service installation opportunities can be measured in days rather than the weeks to months that used to be the industry norm . Automating standardized configurations is at the heart of this transformation , enabled by leveraging partnerships with leading innovators such as the OTDR network automation specialists Itential , and EXFO , which provided a centralized test orchestration system and strategically deployed verifiers across the network .

The benefit to Lumen customers goes beyond the speed of access — it goes straight to EBITDA . Customers today experience a level of flexibility in the network offering , thanks to technology , never before available . They used to be limited by the network reach of the carriers ; however , with the growth of carrier partnerships this has changed , says Draper : “ Now we ' re able to move into a more dynamic service level that allows customers the flexibility to be able to utilize different network capabilities at different sites and pair it all together as an overall solution .” Lumen ’ s combination of its expansive fiber network , 180K + lit buildings , and its Adaptive Network offerings of Dedicated Internet Access , traditional Virtual Private Networking and its SD-WAN based offerings , Lumen can provide a solution that meets the needs of its customer base .

SHAWN DRAPER TITLE : VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING LOCATION : KANSAS

Shawn Draper is VP of Enterprise Platform

Engineering at Lumen . He has held senior roles at Lumen and CenturyLink for eleven years . Prior to this he worked at Sprint , and at Embarq . He studied business administration at Kansas State University , graduating in 1999 .