DPI Deployments - Part1: The Anonymous Riddle

There is no doubt that any vendor wishes to publish success stories - happy customers deploying successfully its products and solutions. Beyond showing credibility to the market, prospects, investors and employees it is one of the best ways to get PR - the media will happily endorse such stories - certainly when the deal size is disclosed.

Traffic Management and DPI deployments are of special interest to the press - while DPI deals are basically B2B deals, DPI deployments effect all of us - including reporters and readers. In addition, a number of DPI vendors are public companies and (depending on the deal size) are obliged, by SEC rules, to publish major deals.
 
So - can we get a list of ISPs, fixed and mobile operators implementing DPI ?

The simple answer is No. Almost all press releases, case studies and other marketing material published by the vendors is anonymous. Instead of getting the name of the customer, we get a series of clues, which usually cannot lead us to identify the customer.

Some examples:

• Sandvine Corporation press release - Sandvine Wins Six New Service Provider Customers (March 3, 2010 - here) "Three of the customers are DSL service providers, two are cable network operators and one is a mobile broadband service provider. Five of Sandvine’s new customers come from the rapidly growing Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, and one from the Asia Pacific region. One of the DSL customers is a tier-one service provider, which Sandvine defines as an operator with over one million broadband customers"
   
• Allot Communications press release - Allot Announces Largest Mobile Operator Win to Date (August 6, 2009 - here)  "announced today a framework agreement with a global tier-1 mobile operator group. Initial orders received are worth approximately five million US dollars. ...  . In the current deployment, the Allot solution is being installed with local operators in a number of countries which collectively service more than 60 million voice subscribers."In its Q4 results announcement, Rami Hadar, Allot's CEO said "We successfully undertook the largest deployment in our history with a global Tier 1 mobile operator, with total orders as at the end of the year reaching $17 million".
  
  This led [an anonymous] investor to wonder on the Yahoo!'s message board - "in the recent press release stating "60 million subscribers..." can that be anyone but verizon? i have spent 6 hours today researching and i believe allot won the verizon rfp. .."
   
• Procera Networks press release - Procera Networks Announces Third Quarter 2009 Results (November 5, 2009 - here)  "We also secured a $4.5 million Tier-1 follow-on order for our PacketLogic systems, which validates our technology leadership and establishes Procera's credibility as a viable Tier 1 supplier."

As we can see above, even the term "tier1" which maybe clear to some, has a flexibility in vendors language.

What is the reason for the strict confidentiality? Can we find more concrete information on DPI deployments? 

To be continued ..