This week was a whirlwind at Management World 2013, with more than 3,000 attendees squeezed into Nice’s Acropolis. The show floor was packed with vendors, communications service providers (CSPs) and industry press and analysts, all buzzing with the excitement of free Microsoft Surface tablets and surprising industry announcements.

We particularly enjoy attending this event each year because it brings such a wide breadth of companies and people together. Here are a few stats that I found particularly interesting about Management World 2013 attendees:

• 334 CXOs were present, up 100 percent from last year.
• 220 CSPs from 81 different countries made up 40 percent of the show’s attendees.
• North America and Europe, unsurprisingly, accounted for the majority of this year’s attendees, but a growing percentage (8 percent) traveled from emerging regions.

This week was also particularly exciting for InfoVista for a few other reasons. First, Mentum Planet, our wireless network planning and optimization software solution, won a Pipeline Innovation Award. And, coinciding with the start of the Management World conference, we launched our Application Visibility Services (AVS) offering with pre-built integration for Cisco Application Visibility & Control (AVC). This is a particularly important collaboration for us at InfoVista, as we see so many CSPs looking for practical methods to create new revenue streams and drive additional value for their enterprise customers.

Here’s a great example of the value AVS offers, which I shared with some industry peers this week: one CSP repeatedly heard from its customers that the network was down, but actually, based on the AVS capabilities that we’re providing, the CSP was able to demonstrate to the customer that it wasn’t its network—it was a consumer-based application brought in on employees’ smart devices that had consumed the entire office’s bandwidth, preventing any other traffic from getting through!

Not only does AVS improve the overall performance of the network by helping to eliminate these kinds of issues, but it also changes the tone of the conversation from one of frustration to one of positive problem-solving. This is invaluable for our CSP customers today, as they vie to deliver the best quality of service and quality of experience possible.

Check back next week for more takeaways from Management World 2013, including video interviews with myself and Bernard Breton. For all you attendees, safe travels!

As Ben Verwaayen, former CEO and director of Alcatel-Lucent and BT, put it best, communications service providers (CSPs) are companies that people love to hate and hate to love. As the bar rises in terms of the possibilities mobile technologies hold and what users are coming to expect from their CSPs, there will be more opportunities for users to be disappointed.

Verwaayen emphasized that the challenge lies not in the technology, which in most cases is readily available, but in delivering on the promises made to customers, no matter where they might be located. This is something that InfoVista has long been an advocate of, as evidenced by Mentum Planet’s recent recognition in the Pipeline 2013 Innovation Awards. Mentum Planet 5.6 is a next-generation wireless access network planning, management and optimization solution that allows CSPs to address every stage in the lifecycle of their networks. This is the key to delivering the highest quality of service (QoS) to customers, from remote rural environments to heavily trafficked urban areas.

CEO delegate of France Telecom-Orange (which will be known simply as Orange come July 1, 2013) Gervais Pellissier, touched upon many of the same issues in his keynote address. Pellissier explained that paramount to the success of CSPs is knowing where investments are needed most and where they will have the greatest impact. As network capacity increases, so do the challenges associated with optimizing and managing them.

As we have discussed in this blog, end users think in terms of quality of experience rather than infrastructure efficiency. It is up to CSPs and the tools at their disposal to align these elements and deliver the best possible QoS for their customer bases. And it all starts with effective end-to-end network planning, service assurance and optimization across all the network domains, from the core network to the end-users.

Check back throughout this week, as we will discuss more of the featured topics from TM Forum’s Management World 2013.

By Christopher Cullan, Product Marketing Manager, Business Services Solutions,

At InfoVista, we realize that when enterprises encounter IT problems, they typically don’t look at them from an infrastructure point of view. Instead, they see the immediate problem being an application that is sluggish or inefficient, and they want to get directly to the root cause of that issue. Enhanced visibility into application performance is the best way to accomplish this, something more and more are beginning to recognize.

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest blog post for Telesperience as part of its BOSSfest13 blog carnival. In it, I explored how communications service providers (CSPs) can and should make application performance visibility a top priority, and why their enterprise customers will respond favorably when they do. I encourage you to read the post and share your thoughts in the comments section at Telesperience, or here on our blog.

I also recently had the opportunity to chat with Bob Krentler, Cisco’s business development manager who looks after the Cisco Application Visibility and Control (AVC) solution. We sat down to discuss InfoVista’s support for Cisco AVC announced earlier this month, the recent Cisco IVT certification (the first of its kind), and how this extends the power of our Application Visibility Services solution to provide an increase in business services revenues for CSPs.

During our discussion, we touched on a number of important topics, including the importance of enhancing service visibility from an application versus infrastructure perspective, bridging the business IT gap that so many enterprises are struggling with today, where Cisco AVC fits into that discussion, and what both Cisco’s and InfoVista’s customers can expect from our continued collaboration.

Click here for the full interview, and please join us at TM Forum’s Management World 2013 next week in Nice, France. We look forward to meeting you at booth no. 10!

With small cell deployments being used by mobile operators to increase capacity in congested urban environments, 3D visualization helps them to gain a better understanding of coverage, capacity and spectral efficiency at every level. Detailed 3D traffic maps and analyses make it possible to establish an in-depth understanding of the mobile network, which is crucial for the successful deployment of small cells that are positioned well below rooftops. And, with a successful deployment, the traffic load of the macro network is reduced, freeing-up resources that will boost the capacity of the macro layer.  The Metro Network Design package includes the Planet 3D model, which was specifically developed for urban environments and indoor propagation.

On Wednesday, May 15, 2013, we will host a webinar that presents an in-depth view of the Metro Network Design Package, and demonstrates how operators can easily and accurately define network information, predict coverage with models optimized for 3D propagation, and visualize an entire city in 3D, including indoor, outdoor and multi-floor coverage.

Please register here to join us for the webinar on May 15 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. EDT.

By Christopher Cullan, Product Marketing Manager, Business Services Solutions, InfoVista

The increasing complexity of technology environments is placing a constant pressure on enterprises to achieve more results and greater agility with fewer resources. As a result, they are looking to their communications service providers (CSPs) for ways to improve their IT agility in order to manage massive application deployments, cloud services and BYOD programs, while reducing their IT costs.

CSPs are well-positioned to address these issues as enterprises’ reliance on wide area networking continues to grow. By helping enterprises better understand and manage their networking and communications resources from an application perspective, CSPs can empower them to achieve the business agility they require. And in so doing, CSPs stand to improve their enterprise customers’ experience and grow revenues with application performance visibility.

InfoVista today announced that the latest version of 5View™ Service Data Manager (SDM) will be released on May 13, 2013 to support CSPs in accomplishing just that. This is one of several network planning, service assurance and optimization products InfoVista will be demoing at TM Forum’s Management World conference taking place that same week in Nice, France.

The 5View SDM demo will make clear why, in order for enterprises to deliver the highest quality of experience for their end users, they need real-time, in-depth application performance information. Without it, they cannot effectively troubleshoot problems, conduct accurate service and application usage analysis or take full advantage of their high-speed VPNs and cloud computing initiatives.

In addition to the solution’s pre-built integration with Alcatel-Lucent’s 5670 RAM, this latest release offers pre-built integration for Cisco Application Visibility & Control (AVC), as we previously announced. This provides a broader range of options for launching Application Visibility Services, such as application-aware VPNs. Coupled with the support for multiple vendor flow technologies and InfoVista’s own DPI appliances, CSPs have numerous architectural options for delivering compelling Application Visibility Services to support their VPN, Internet and cloud-based offerings, and drive the growth of those services and accompanying revenues.

Should you be attending Management World in Nice, I invite you to visit our booth (# 10) to discuss this solution and the applicable architectures and options, as well give you the chance to see it in action with Cisco AVC at “The Hub” (previously known as Forumville at past TM Forum events). In addition, should you be considering a Cisco AVC-based solution, I’d like to invite you to a joint meeting with both Cisco and InfoVista to go over the details of that integration. To book a session, please email Dina Rodrigues at drodrigues@infovista.com.

By Marc Lippe, Director, Worldwide Field and Corporate Marketing,

In this month’s roundup of industry news, issues and updates, we feature the revenue increase in the mobile backhaul market, LTE’s ability to reduce the downward trend in RAN CAPEX, and the economic challenges within the telco market.

RCR Wireless News – Mobile backhaul market tops $8B in 2012– April 3^rd

The continued growth of mobile broadband deployments led the mobile backhaul market to surpass $8 billion in revenue in 2012 alone. Infonetics stated that the largest contributors to this revenue spike were microwave solutions, which are predicted to account for more than 56 percent of the total mobile backhaul market by 2017. In addition, small cell backhaul equipment revenue is expected to be a significant contributor to this revenue total in the coming years.

FierceBroadbandWireless – LTE reversing downward trend in RAN CAPEX – April 19^th

According to ABI Research, the deployment of LTE in developing countries like Sri Lanka and Rwanda is helping to improve the market for new base stations. As a whole, investments in 3G RAN are falling globally, and although LTE expansion to developing nations will not completely compensate for the loss in 3G capital, it is definitely picking up the slack and slowing the decline. ABI also predicts LTE will further boost operator CAPEX in the years to come.

Total Telecom – Friday Review: Chasing rainbows – April 26^nd

One of the most important topics discussed at Breakfast with Total Telecom this month was the number of telco providers worldwide that are struggling with the economics of delivering profitable enterprise services to corporate clients with tight budgets. To solve this problem, telcos can either lessen their services and offer lower prices, or target a smaller number of companies with larger budgets allocated to communications, security and cloud services. Robert Kelly, EMEA vice president at Oracle explains how convincing companies to spend money on new services is easier said than done. He goes on to explain, “CIOs will say ‘I’ve got no money, so don’t talk to me unless you’ve got something that aligns with my massively constrained and declining budget’.”

If you’re interested in learning more about these topics, I invite you to visit InfoVista’s website to see how we empower communications service providers and IT-intensive enterprises to deliver high-performing and differentiated services, while cost-effectively planning, operating, optimizing and monetizing their networks.

By Juan Prieto, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Solutions, InfoVista

Today’s mobile operators face a great many challenges when it comes to IP and Ethernet backhaul assurance. This is often the result of using multiple, vendor- and technology-specific network management systems that only provide partial visibility of the health and performance of the new network and its services.

In part one of this video blog series, I discussed a number of these challenges and the considerations that mobile operators must take into account when planning the OSS strategy for next generation backhaul infrastructure. This is also a topic I covered in-depth at Mobile Backhaul Asia 2013 last week.

To follow that up, today I will take you on a guided tour of some of the most helpful features included in Vista360, an award-winning OSS dashboarding product that is changing the way mobile operators monitor, manage and troubleshoot network performance in an effort to provide unparalleled quality of service and a high quality of experience for end customers. These features include:

• A graphical interface that combines network, device and service level KPIs from multiple domains
• A powerful analytics engine that can simultaneously access multiple KPIs
• A 3D view of network infrastructure performance
• Customizable dashboards with improved agility and efficiency
• The ability to create hierarchical relationships between dashboards in complex network environments
• An intuitive grouping of alarms to identify the root cause of any problem

For more informational videos on Vista360 and our other products, check out our YouTube channel or contact us here.

By Juan Prieto, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Solutions, 

It’s no secret that the thirst for fast mobile broadband services has completely transformed the technical and business strategies for mobile operators. With the cost of expanding infrastructure to meet demand and the resulting rise in OPEX, mobile operators are now looking to implement more cost-efficient methods to plan and manage additional capacity while simultaneously improving  IP backhaul network performance.

There are many considerations that mobile operators must take into account in order to effectively achieve the reliability and responsiveness they require for their IP and Ethernet transport infrastructures.  The ultimate goal is to ensure a high quality of service and experience for 3G and 4G networks.

Managing a multitude of disconnected operational and engineering backhaul toolsets for planning and assurance is neither an accurate nor efficient practice for today’s dynamic networks. With countless OSS tools, how can mobile operators be sure they are making the right decisions? What happens when something goes wrong, and how can they find the root cause of any network performance problems? You’ll find the answers in the video below. Also, join me on April 25^th when I discuss this topic and more at Mobile Backhaul Asia 2013 at the Conrad Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.

Be sure to subscribe to ProActive Network News for an alert when my next Ethernet backhaul video is posted!

By Chris Waters, Business Analyst, InfoVista

On April 1, 2013, Enterprise Management Associates’ analyst Jim Frey hosted a webinar in support of the recent findings of the 2013 EMA Application Network Performance Management Radar Report.  In preparation for the report, 50+ providers were invited to participate and highlight their solution(s) strengths.  Of this group, only 24 were ultimately featured.  Evaluation was specifically based on 5 main areas:

• Deployment and Administration
• Cost Advantage
• Architecture and Integration
• Functionality
• Vendor Strength

In addition, EMA also highlighted 2 specific market developments which further developed this year’s ranking system:

1)      A shift from evaluating based on Cost Efficiency to Resource Efficiency – with higher scores for quicker deployment, simpler product architectures and shorter learning curves.

2)      A shift from Product Strength to Solution Impact – with higher scores awarded for tighter integration of multi-product solutions (enabling a greater overall impact in the areas of network and application performance).

With this in mind, EMA featured InfoVista as having a “rich set of capabilities” which are “highly flexible” and “very scalable,” with large enterprises and of particular strength with CSPs.  Furthermore, InfoVista was ranked as the only “Strong Value” provider with both “Exceptional Resource Efficiency and Solution Impact.”

By Ari Banerjee
Senior Analyst
Heavy Reading

Markets and services are evolving and growing. Carriers are expanding their portfolios and networks to compete head-on with others across all major sectors, including voice, video, data and mobile, as well as entering new sectors such as interactive services.

Mobile operators today are faced with three key investment challenges: increasing network capacity, increasing network coverage and lowering cost and power per bit. There is a shift in mobile operators’ strategies as they move from traditional connectivity-centric strategies to focus on economically supporting mobile Internet service distribution, by capitalizing on the pervasiveness of IP. With mobile Internet comes the convergence of Internet, communications, media, mobility and machines, which significantly expands the opportunity for service providers but disrupts the status quo of the traditional mobile industry. Smartphones rely on Internet connectivity, so, as smartphone usage grows, more users are experiencing connectivity issues. LTE dramatically increases the bandwidth available but reduces the area covered by a base station. Large cells are easy to manage and provide good coverage within a defined area, but are expensive. Small cells are less expensive and can be used to improve coverage and network bandwidth, but are difficult to manage.

By shifting to a heterogeneous network with a mix of larger and smaller cells (femto-cells and picocells), carriers can address all three challenges. The general belief is that small cells only solve coverage problems and increase performance, but our research shows that strategic deployment of small cells can lower CAPEX and OPEX costs and help solve capacity-related issues. Solving metro-zone coverage and capacity issues are becoming the most sought-after objectives for deploying small cells, along with providing optimum service at locations where high-value users concentrate, such as malls, enterprise campuses, hospitals, etc. Accurate network planning, trending and optimization are becoming areas of critical importance for the following reasons:

• Ephemeral nature of the network. The dynamism and accuracy needed to optimize the existing network infrastructure will require dedicated solutions that will provide a sufficient arsenal to business users as well as IT users to plan, predict and optimize use of their existing resources. Hence, it becomes critical to bridge the gap that exists today between operational systems and planning and capacity management systems. Other major concerns for most communications service providers (CSPs) revolve around freeing up of existing resources when services are deactivated or turned down. Many CSPs do not have robust mechanisms to free up existing resources like ports when services are turned down. As a result, stranded and unused assets often become common place in an operator’s environment.
• Managing RAN congestion. RAN congestion is emerging as a major problem for service providers. Backhaul is also a major problem area that results in congestion issues. Yet another critical issue is smartphones – not just for the amount of bandwidth they consume, but for the signaling traffic they generate. Capacity management with the aid of advanced analytics has the potential to play a pivotal role in this context by being able to receive real-time feeds from network and back office systems to adjust network resources, load balance traffics and also help adjust customers’ services, rate plans, tiers, etc., so as to help CSPs maximize revenue from network assets.
• Dynamic data bandwidth allocation across both services and customers. Next-generation architectures and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) promise to change the dynamics of bandwidth allocation and management. Bundle or individual services such as rich media content, IPTV, video-on-demand (VoD), gaming and other next-generation services will impact IP network resources significantly.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress, held in February in Barcelona, I had the opportunity to discuss with number of wireless operators key issues which keep them awake at night. One thing most wireless operators shared with us was that they find themselves cash-strapped during challenging economic times and when facing an insatiable consumer appetite for bandwidth-heavy applications (video in particular). For them, the central challenge is to find ways to balance network resources with an eye toward customer experience and profitability.

Mobile operators are equipped with a finite asset (network capacity), and the cost of growing that asset through greater equipment spend on base elements like macro-cells can be prohibitive. With customers’ dynamic behaviors, some network infrastructure elements will falter under increased strain at unpredictable times and for unpredictable reasons, making effective capacity planning even more daunting. Analytics-driven network planning and capacity management solutions can play a pivotal role in combating this problem.

Given the fact that adoption of self-optimizing networks (SON) is still in its infancy stage, the load balancing mechanisms operators have today are inefficient, manual and fraught with inaccuracies. Next-generation Network Planning solutions can help CSPs understand the load on cells by correlating traffic and subscriber information to better understand the current situation, and also perform a ”what if” type of sensitive analysis to forecast the growth of traffic in the near future. Through such calculations, the range of unloaded cells can be extended to take traffic load away from a neighboring overloaded cell based on profitability of subscribers, traffic patterns, location, etc.

With data traffic continuing to grow, this load balancing will help CSPs optimize their network resources and ensure that they can deliver the expected quality of experience with a view on subscriber profitability.

For more on this topic, check out one of our recent video posts here.