Affirmed Networks, the virtualised mobile networks provider, today announced the industry's first native, virtualised probe and analytics solution for mobile networks. The solution combines Affirmed Networks Active Intelligent Virtualized Probe (vProbe) and monitoring capabilities with EMC's Real Time Analytics, to provide mobile operators with greater overall visibility into and across their virtualised networks, improving service levels and the overall customer experience.
Access to real-time, granular information related to the overall security and performance of a network is critical for mobile operators. According to many operators, however, traditional hardware-based architectures are cost-prohibitive and lack the necessary intelligence for effectively scaling their network analytics and monitoring infrastructure to support the increased demands of the growing number of services, applications and devices on today's networks.
As the evolution toward network function virtualisation (NFV)-based architectures continues, the ability to probe geographically distributed virtualised network functions has become a challenge. By combining the once-separate Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and probe/packet brokering functions together "natively" in one location, Affirmed Networks and EMC have made it possible for operators to achieve significant cost savings and improvements related to the overall performance and utilisation of their virtualised networks.
"This new approach allows communication service providers (CSPs) to monitor both control plane and data plane sessions in a virtualised EPC network at substantially reduced monitoring cost," said Patrick Kelly, Founder and Principal Analyst at Appledore Research Group. "Additionally, this approach also solves the problem of dynamic instances of virtualised network functions (VNFs) which require monitoring for end-to-end service assurance where existing probe solutions have a blind spot."
The native location of the vProbe with the Affirmed vEPC is estimated to produce TCO savings of as much as 50% over traditional hardware-based approaches. Operators will achieve these savings through the co-location of the probe natively with Affirmed Networks' Mobile Content Cloud virtualised Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and Wi-Fi solutions. By collapsing the once-separate functions, the new offering eliminates the need for separate appliances for probe and packet brokering functions which are required with traditional architectures.
Co-location also eliminates the need for duplicating functions such as correlation of control plane and user plane packets and deep packet inspection. These functions are native to the Affirmed Mobile Content Cloud so they only take place once. This differs from traditional approaches that require all the traffic to be mirrored to separate appliances where these functions must occur multiple times. As a result, operators virtualising this function will also experience additional benefits in the areas of overall network performance and utilisation.
Affirmed Networks' Active Intelligent vProbe and Analytics solution is characterised by the "intelligence first" approach, which provides service providers with per-flow and per-transaction data sets that deliver a real-time overview of the entire network. The approach requires a much smaller percentage of traffic to be mirrored, providing significant savings in infrastructure costs. Traditional approaches, on the other hand, mirror all traffic first before doing a granular analysis which is more costly.
Most existing network probing and analytics solutions also restrict access to signalling and data plane sessions. Together, the EMC Real-Time Intelligence (RTI) and the Affirmed vProbe capability provides open access via APIs for rapid development of intelligence reporting tools. EMC RTI is designed to enable organisations to break down silos between data sources and applications, continuously stream data from multiple event data sources, and make decisions more easily.
"Operators are realising that the same factors related to traffic growth that drove them to virtualise network functions are now justifying the need for applying a virtualised, software-centric approach to their network monitoring and analytics infrastructure," said Angela Whiteford, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at Affirmed Networks. "Our collaboration with EMC to deliver a new, integrated and intelligent approach to network monitoring and analytics offers operators a wealth of powerful savings, new capabilities and is squarely in line with the needs of our customers in this area."
"A new digital era is being driven by mobile devices and new user behaviours, which together give rise to new business opportunities affecting every market and industry, said David Hudson, Senior Director, Technology, Office of the CTO, EMC. "For CSPs this means that real-time analytics is essential to manage their network infrastructure, improve the customer experience - and rapidly discover and implement new ways to generate revenue. The new Affirmed Networks Active Intelligent vProbe and Analytics solution, enabled by EMC Real-Time Intelligence, provides customers with a powerful solution as they evolve to NFV-based architectures and position themselves for growth."
With more than 28 customers, plus 40 trials underway, Affirmed Networks is a major player in virtualised mobile networks. Affirmed Network's Mobile Content Cloud solution is currently deployed in some of the world's largest mobile service provider networks including LG Uplus in Korea, Saudi Telecom, as well as Elephant Talk and Transaction Network Services (TNS), both of which have a presence in Asia Pacific. Elephant Talk's network also extends to Bahrain.
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