Infonetics Research: SDM Market Size - $400M in 2010, $1.5B in 2014

 

In a new report from Infronetics Research,  Shira Levine, directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research, says that "The worldwide subscriber data management (SDM) market, including SDM software and services for both wireline and wireless networks, is forecast to grow rapidly over the next few years, hitting $1.5B in 2014"

Based on the chart below, the market size in 2010 is expected to be around $400M.

See "Subscriber data management market to hit $1.5 billion by 2014" - here. This repeats a previous forecast see - "Infonetics Research: SDM will integrate with Policy Servers; Reaching $1.5B Revenue by 2014" - here. "The report tracks SDM software and/or services offered by Accenture, Alcatel-Lucent, Blueslice, Bridgewater, Ericsson, Huawei, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia Siemens, Oracle, Redknee, Tata, TechMahindra, and Xeround"

Infonetics Research: Policy Management is not only Bandwidth Control; Names Top3 Vendors

  

A month ago Infonetics Research published a report on the policy management market (here), concluding that "Managing bandwidth consumption remains one of the greatest drivers for policy server".

Based on a new survey, Shira Levine, directing analyst for next gen OSS and policy at Infonetics Research, reconfirms the previous report but provides also a wider angle view: "We have long said that policy is moving beyond basic bandwidth management to enable differentiated services and value-added subscriber capabilities, and this survey confirms that belief. While traffic management remains a key driver behind policy management deployments, operators tell us that they are increasingly implementing policy solutions to better monetize their networks, including tiered services and subscriber control capabilities, such as parental control”.

See "Operators turning to policy management for much more than bandwidth control" - here.

Infonetics found that "Tekelec (who recently acquired Camiant), Openet, and Bridgewater Systems came out on top when operators were asked to list who they consider to be the “top three policy management vendors”.

Compare to - "Yankee Group - Who are the Policy Management Leaders?" - here - Yankee names all 3, together with few others.

Openet was quick to use the marketing opportunity - a day before Infonetics - and issued a press release: "Infonetics Survey on Policy Management Names Openet Among Top Players"- here. 

"Although Openet has been in the policy market a relatively short time compared to our competitors, we are not surprised by Openet's ranking in this survey," said Michael Manzo, CMO of Openet. "Our relationship with Cisco [here and here], tireless innovation and unique approach to combining policy with charging have led to win after win for policy management deployments. This survey confirms what we already know -- that Openet has quickly moved into a leadership position, and with some additional time, will dominate this market."

DPI/VAS Deployments (35): Telefónica O2 [Czech Republic] Cleans the Internet with NSN

 

Nokia Siemens Networks announced that "Companies that use Telefónica O2 in the Czech Republic for broadband Internet access now have more control and greater security over the service ..Nokia Siemens Networks has integrated its security-as-a-service into Telefónica’s operational support system/business support system (OSS/BSS) platforms. The security service is delivered to Telefónica O2’s enterprise customers from the operator’s secure, centralized, and continuously updated platforms in O2 data centers to protect fixed Internet access. A fixed monthly fee is charged to enterprises for the service."

See "Telefónica O2 gives Czech companies control of Internet access" - here.

O2 calls this service "O2 Clean Internet" (here), and presents the following benefits:

• protect company computers from all internet threats
• increase employee efficiency by blocking distracting, non-work-related web addresses – settings are controlled through a self-care portal (see screenshot)
• no need to buy expensive devices and software
• maintain control over your security expenses for a fixed monthly fee

    

“ .. there are concerns about security threats such as malware, and the implications of access to the web that a company provides and is responsible for, but cannot exercise control over,” said Oscar Gómez, director of Product and Services at Telefónica O2 Czech Republic. “.. Nokia Siemens Networks was chosen to create a bespoke Internet service that we can offer to enterprises that addresses both security threats and responsible use.”

Related posts:

• Virgin Media [UK] Helps Customers to Fight Malware - here
• TalkTalk Uses uawei to Detect Malware (or Parental Control?) - here
• Australia: ISPs Should Detect Virus Infected Computers (DPI Becomes a Must for ISPs) - here
• Sandvine - Who is the Global DSL/Mobile Cusotmer with 20 Properties ? - here
  

 

 

PCRF Deployments (34): South African MNO Uses Openet for Personalized Mobile Services

    

Openet announced that an unnamed, "one of South Africa’s leading fixed-line and fixed-broadband telecom providers has selected Openet to deploy an integrated policy management and convergent charging solution, with its comprehensive Policy and Charging Control (PCC), architecture. This architecture enables the operator’s mobile division to create and monetize new personalized services and maximize the value of the operator’s new 3G network ..  The solution will be deployed on both voice and data networks, and offers a variety of charging options to maximize revenue from every subscriber. Additionally, the operator can now dynamically allocate bandwidth and quality of service for existing and future networks".

See "Top South African Telecom Provider Chooses Openet to Support New Network Architecture" - here.

Recently, Telkom South Africa, announced the launch of its mobile operation, being the 4th operator in the country, branded as 8ta. See "SA Mobile Landscape Changes" - here.

The press release explains that "The network architecture deployed is fully IP-based, from base station to core. It allows maximum efficiency of the backhaul while providing the relevant prioritisation of mobile service flows, translating into a better quality of service and overall experience for the customer"

Traffic Management Deployments (33): Bouygues [France] Uses Openwave to Manage Smartphone Traffic

    

Openwave announced that "Bouygues Telecom [3rd largest mobile carrier in France, 10.5M mobile subscribers] .. has expanded its existing Openwave Traffic Management solution .. Bouygues is expected to manage their rapidly growing mobile data traffic with more dynamic control of a diverse range of IP data flows for both operational improvement as well as the delivery of new service offering ..With Openwave’s traffic management solution, Bouygues Telecom is applying IP data policies for Smartphone subscribers; including service, content, volume, and time based policies."

See "Bouygues Telecom Expands 3G Data Traffic Management Capabilities with Openwave" - here.

“Openwave’s solution serves as a central control point for Smartphone traffic mediation directly in the data path,” said Jean-Christophe Reversat, Director of Core Network and Services Engineering, Bouygues Telecom. “With Openwave, we are able to apply dynamic application level policy rules through a rich set of data sources, including existing policy and traffic management systems, while effectively managing the overall cost of service delivery. Collaborating with Openwave ensures we are continuously improving the user experience and managing traffic growth for the long-term.”

A bit cryptic quote, isn't it? Actually most of the press release uses terms such as "expected", "will enable", "will potentially allow", "also allows" - from which I can't understand what is the actual or planned use of the Openwave system (which is not fully identified), and whether the "existing policy and traffic management systems" are Openwave's or not.

Boradband Traffic Management: The Event

  

Next month, Informa is having its 2nd annual Broadband Traffic Management Event, to be held at the Grand Connaught Rooms, London, on November 16-18.

More details - here.

This is certainly the largest event dedicated to traffic management, DPI and policy control - with special focus days on policy control and mobile offload. The organizers promise a very impressive list of speakers - 70 in total of which over 30 are operators (there is nothing better than real life experience). 

Hot discussion subjects are: 

• Will metered pricing plans change the "scissors effect" (see "Ofcom: Mobile Data Volume +2234%, Revenues +90% (in 2 Years)" - here)
• Understand the cost of mobile data (see an example - "AT&T will invest $19B this Year to Upgrade the Network" - here)
• Regulation and Net Neutrality (related posts - here)
• Monetizing traffic management using tiered services (related posts - here)
• Communicate and educate cusotmers on the benefits of network intelligence

Caching Market: PeerApp OEMs to ALU, Allot and BTI Systems

 

More indications to the growing [video] caching market maybe seen in a recent momentum release by PeerApp, one of the earlier players (background - here).

PeerApp indicates that Alcatel Lucent (note that ALU announced a similar partnership with Bluecoat - here), BTI Systems (here), Allot Communications and Sandvine (here) are among the vendors/integrators that they have signed OEM/reselling agreements with.
See "PeerApp Expands Partnerships and Adds 17 New Customers" - here.

"PeerApp’s customer growth represents a continued worldwide expansion with new customers coming from Argentina, Armenia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Kuwait, Paraguay, and Thailand among others."

This list shows that caching is still used primarily as a bandwidth saving tool (rather than a QoE enhancer, with potential monetization opportunities to carriers),and is attractive in locations where the share of international bandwidth in total consumption is high and expensive.

Heavy Reading - "[performance boosted] policy management can play a vital role a telco’s overall product and service strategy"

   

Yet another white paper from Heavy Reading on the popular trend of policy management - this time sponsored by BroadHop (see also the Bridgewater and Tekelec sponsored reports).

The theme is "There are advanced, next-gen policy management solutions that are now capable of personalizing the way third party services are created, deployed and used. These newer platforms can give end users themselves control of their Web and roadband activities, adding further value to the telco package. In this new, two-way control environment between users and applications developers, telcos can play the key intermediary role. With this approach in place, telcos can begin to build real incremental revenues on top of the basic broadband connection. But to do so they need the right kinds of policy tools.

"The New Policy Paradigm: Apps, Not Pipes", by Graham Finnie, Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading may be downloaded here (registration required).

See also "Cisco Recommends: Partner, Enhance QoE and Monetize OTT Video" - here and "Deutsche Telekom CEO: OTT providers should pay for High Quality" - here.

Nevertheless, the paper says that "The new policy paradigm set out in the last section implies a very different policy environment from the one we see today, and this has important technology implications for the design of policy equipment itself .. Specifically, it implies a policy platform that is in many respects one or more orders of magnitude better in performance on a range of metrics [see table below]"

Compare with "Bridgewater: "Independent testing demonstrates [our] performance" -- BUT ..! '- here.

Cisco VNI: Online Video Overpasses P2P; 1% of Users Consume 20% of Traffic

        
More signs for the decrease in the relative share of P2P vs. online video in broadband traffic are reported in Cisco's latest Visual Networking Index (VNI) report - "Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is now 25% of global broadband traffic, down from 38% last year, a decrease of 34%. While still growing in absolute terms, P2P is growing more slowly than visual networking and other advanced applications.. flash, and Internet TV represents 26%" (see table 1 below).

See "Cisco Visual Networking Index: Usage" - here. See previous posts - here.

An interesting chart (below) reinforces the traditional "20-80" assumption on volume consumption. Top 1% of connection consume 20% (!) of traffic, 10% consume 60%.

How to Build DPI Products? (Part IV - Performance Testing)

After we have seen some recommendations regarding the architecture of modern DPI systems (CPU, System, 100G support), we need also to verify (and benchmark) the performance of DPI devices in a modern network environment, taking into account the DPI aspects.

Benchmarking Methodology for Content-Aware Network Devices (here), is a new draft for an IETF document with the following purpose:

"define a set of test scenarios which may be used to create a series of statistics that will help to better understand the performance of network devices.  More specifically, these scenarios are designed to most accurately predict performance of these devices when subjected to modern traffic patterns .. Content-aware devices take many forms, shapes and architectures. These devices are advanced network interconnect devices that inspect deep into the application payload of network data packets to do classification.  While a list of devices that fall under this category will quickly become obsolete, an initial list of devices that would be well served by utilizing this type of methodology should prove useful.  Devices such as firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention devices, application delivery controllers, deep packet inspection devices, and unified threat management systems generally fall into the content-aware category."

[Update 25 - BroadHop - Procera] PCRF - DPI Compatibility Matrix

       
The table shows now the interoperability announced today by BroadHop and Procera.

See "Procera and BroadHop Deliver Integrated Policy Management and Control for LTE Networks" - here.

PCRF Vendor	PCRF Product	Allot	Arbor	Cisco	Procera	Sandvine
Alcatel-Lucent	5780 Dynamic Services Controller (DSC)
Alepo	3GPP Policy and Charging Rules Function
Aptilo Networks	4G service management platform
Aradial Technologies	Aradial Mobile/APC	●		●
BandWD	BwDRC - Dynamic Resource Control	●		●		●
Bridgewater Systems	Policy Controller/PCRF	●	●	●		●
Broadhop	Quantum Policy Server	●	●	●	●
Comability	ComAbility neXus			●
Comptel	Comptel Policy Control™			●	●
Cisco (Starent)	Policy and Charging Control
Digital Route	MediationZone Policy Control
EliteCore – NetVertex	Netvertex (PCRF)
Ericsson	Service-Aware Policy Controller (SAPC)
Flash Networks	POLICY MANAGER
FTS	Leap™ Policy Control	●		●		●
HP	HP Subscriber, Network and Application Policy	●
Huawei	Open Control & Charging Gateway	●
Kabira (Tibco software)	Policy Server			●
Mobixell (724)	X-treme Framework Platform (XF)	●		●
Nokia Siemens Networks	PCS 5000	●		●		●
Openet	FusionWorks™ Policy Manager			●		●
Orga Systems	Next Generation Control Point
Redknee	Policy Manager (PCRF)			●		●
Roox	Smart Traffic Management
Tekelec (Camiant)	Multimedia Policy Engine	●	●	●	●	●
Telcordia	Telcordia Bandwidth Manager
Volubill	CONTROL-IT Policy Manager
ZTE	ZXUN RCP	●