Recently, Sprint asked an outside research and consulting firm to take a close look at Compass, Sprint's online portal for IP/MPLS VPN service. The idea was to get a "second opinion," and we now have it.

The outside firm happens to be named Compass Intelligence (no relation to Compass the Portal), and the paper they generated after looking at the portal can be found here. It's worth taking a close look at, but we'll hit a few highlights for you.

First, if you're not familiar with Sprint Compass, it lets you view, understand, and manage your network configuration and performance. We enhanced it in mid-2012 (see the summary we wrote at the time) with a number of self-service features that support both Sprint Managed Solutions customers and network-only customers.More...

There’s change, and then there’s progress. One just means that something is new and different, but the other means that something has gotten better. It’s in that second category that Compass, our online portal for IP/MPLS VPN service, fits in the wake of a number of enhancements that will help you monitor your network. More...