[TechNavio]: Transparent Cache Market to Grow at 31% CAGR

A new report by TechNavio finds that ".. Transparent caching is a solution that enables the service provider to offload a significant amount of content traffic by storing a cached copy of the popular content close to the edge of the network, which is delivered to the user directly from the edge of the network rather than from the source. It is invisible to both the content originator and the end user, hence the name. 

TechNavio's analysts forecast the Global Transparent Caching market to grow at a CAGR of 31.3 percent over the period 2013-2018".

TechNavio identifies Blue Coat Systems (here), Juniper Networks, PeerApp (here) and Qwilt (here) as key vendors and Akamai, Alcatel-Lucent (here), Allot Communications (here), ARA Networks, Brocade, BTI Systems (here), Cisco Systems (see "Cisco Partners with PeerApp" - here), Fortinet, Google (here), Huawei (here), Level 3 (here), SuperLumin Networks, Swiftserve (here), VidScale as prominent vendors

See "Global Transparent Caching Market 2014-2018" - here.

News [Part-2]: Aptilo, Stoke, Ixia, Ulticom, BTI Systems, Broadcom

MWC news report continues..

• Aptilo Networks and Stoke have "partnered to deliver an end-to-end solution allowing cellular operators to provide a carrier-class Wi-Fi interworking service for subscribers .. The Aptilo Service Management Platform (SMP), through Web portal or automatic SIM- based authentication, can identify a subscriber and assign traffic policies according to highly specific customer or network attributes. The Aptilo SMP can also mediate charging functions for these subscribers so that the user experience and billing are similar to that of the cellular network .. The Stoke Wi-Fi eXchange can link tens of thousands of Wi-Fi access points from different manufacturers to the operator core network, and can identify traffic at a high level of granularity to allow selective routing of user session traffic. This level of control enables operators to deliver different service classes, provide mobile network services to Wi-Fi users, and balance core network element and Internet backhaul resources".
  
  See "Aptilo and Stoke Collaborate in Seamless Wi-Fi Access for Mobile Broadband Carriers" - here. 


• Ixia promotes the "IxLoad solution, to provide greater insight and visibility into the performance of rapidly growing LTE networks .. The growth of smartphone use and the support of differentiated services, such as high-quality video, also mean a growth of difficult-to-predict signaling traffic. Signaling traffic involves the underlying communications that enable user authentication, mobility, monetization, billing, policy management and Quality of Service mechanisms .. Going beyond product data sheets to understand the true capabilities of any mobile infrastructure device including Home Subscriber Systems, Policy Servers, Billing Systems, Diameter Routing Agents, and Mobility Management Entities.".
   
See "Ixia Enables Mobile Application and Service Monetization Growth" - here.


• Ulticom announced "Release 3.3 of the Ulticom DSC – a software product that optimizes Diameter Signaling in 4G and IMS networks .. Release 3.3 extends the DSC product with additional advanced routing capabilities. It provides enhanced network routing resilience and even greater flexibility for multi-AVP-based routing. Release 3.3 also provides advanced White Labeling support. This feature empowers OEM customers to rebrand the DSC product and supporting documentation, tailoring it to their own product portfolio".
  
  See "Ulticom DSC Release 3.3 – Diameter Signaling. Solved." - here.
    
• BTI Systems announced an ".. industry-first cloud networking solution designed to significantly improve inter-data center connectivity. Intelligent Cloud Connect is an open software-rich platform that combines network intelligence and application awareness with significantly expanded capacity and scale. By doing so, it increases cloud connectivity performance - quadrupling capacity and scale, reducing latency by half, and increasing network applications performance by as much as 10 times - while significantly improving operational efficiencies, network control and service innovation compared to legacy solutions".
  
  See "BTI Systems Announces Intelligent Cloud Connect to Unblock the Performance Bottleneck of Inter-Data Center Connectivity" - here.
   
• Broadcom announced a "scalable small cell development platform for multiple radio access technology (RAT). The platform integrates all the hardware and software components required to accelerate the development and deployment time of small cell base stations .. The platform is the first to combine the state-of-the-art XLP-208 multicore processor, which was engineered by NetLogic, acquired by Broadcom in February 2012 .. The advanced software included in the platform enables important new features such as content caching, interference monitoring, self-organizing networks (SON), DPI-based services and security to be quickly deployed while maintaining line speed performance as operators and content service providers add new network services. Other solutions available on the development platform include Broadcom's complete portfolio of backhaul devices for optimized traffic management, including x-DSL, x-PON and wireless.
     
  See "Broadcom Announces Advanced Development Platform for Small Cell Base Stations" - here.

Optimization Deployments [137]: Frontier [US] Saves 24% with BTI Systems

 
BTI Systems announced that "Frontier Communications is using its comprehensive application-aware service delivery product suite to accommodate rapid growth in high-demand services such as over-the-top (OTT) video, while substantially reducing network operation and management costs".

  

"Frontier Communications, the nation's largest provider of communications services focused on rural America, is deploying the complete suite of BTI products, including WideCast, for application-aware networking. Video represents half of Frontier's traffic and the BTI product suite enables Frontier to overcome network congestion, deliver up to 24% in bandwidth savings and generate a solid return on investment of less than a year".

".. For example, by intelligently and transparently caching popular video content closer to subscribers, Frontier is improving content delivery speeds by more than 10% and providing customers with a better viewing experience, while reducing Frontier's network bandwidth requirements".

BTI uses transparent caching technology from PeerApp (see "BTI and PeerApp Partner to Optimize Streaming at the Network Edge" - here).

  

See "BTI Redefines Metro Networks with the Industry's First Integrated Services Delivery Platform" - here.

What a Wonderful Year was 2011: Everybody [says it] is Growing!

 
A wave of momentum press releases from private companies in our space has been published lately - each trying to show how good was 2011 for them (as non-public companies, they do not have to show all aspects of their business .. see at the end an example of a public company announcement). 

But be aware - according to Ovum principal analyst Matt Walker (pictured) "Slow growth ahead for telecom service provider revenues and capex" (here):

"service provider (SP) capex and revenues grew an estimated 12 per cent and seven per cent respectively in 2011, with capex reaching US$314bn and revenues US$1,962bn. However, the report forecasts that SP revenues will advance at a CAGR of 2.9 per cent over the 2010-2017 period, which is markedly down from the historic CAGR of 6.3 per cent achieved in 2004-2010. There is a similar slowdown with capex: capex expanded at a CAGR of 6.5 per cent in 2004-2010, but this will likely slow to 3.1 per cent in 2010-2017"

Back to the happy vendor announcements: 

• DigitalRoute - "DigitalRoute added more than 40 service providers to its list of more than 240 MediationZone customers during 2011. These include Tier-1 service providers in the USA and Europe that went into live operation with MediationZone within 6 months after project start. As a result of the recent success DigitalRoute has accelerated its revenue growth in 2011, achieving 59% year-over-year growth while also increasing profitability".
  
  See "DigitalRoute Increases Growth 59% with Tier 1 Customer Wins" - here
   
• BroadHop - ".. reported it has secured 23 Quantum Network Suite customer wins in 2011, doubling the number of customers from the previous year. Innovative Communication Service Providers (CSPs) in four continents have selected BroadHop’s next-gen policy platform as scalability and service velocity become increasingly critical for Tier 1 operators looking to compete in hypercompetitive markets and in the post “all you can eat” bandwidth world. Demand for Quantum Network Suite grew significantly in Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (AP) markets where the Company secured 15 customers in competitive wins. Further expanding its geographic footprint, BroadHop secured 7 competitive wins in North America".
  
  See "BroadHop Announces 23 Quantum Network Suite Customer Wins in 2011" - here.
  
  I asked BroadHop if they can name at least one customer, but the response was they can’t because of - "Competitive advantage…" (?).
    
• BTI systems - " With a global customer base of close to 400, packet optical expanded to more than 60% of BTI deployments in 2011, bolstered by customer demand for the Company's market-leading mobile backhaul, Ethernet business and Internet services solutions".
  
  See "BTI Systems Momentum Fueled by Content and Service Provider Demand for High-Bandwidth, Application-Aware Metro Network Solutions" - here.
   
• Orga Systems - "Orga Systems continued its revenue growth driven by investments in its products, services and sales coverage. The 2011 annual turnover has grown 30% higher over the past 2 years. The volume of year-end backlog for 2012 has almost tripled as compared to that for 2010. This excellent result is due to 18 months of extensive business transformation with more than 80m subscribers added on its systems".
   See "Orga Systems continues growth curve" - here.

On the other hand, Tellabs announced, due to challenging Q4 results, that "We will reduce expense and stop new development work on the Tellabs SmartCore 9100 LTE product, while continuing to support Tellabs SmartCore 9100 WiMax customers" (here). The 9100 is Tellabs' DPI enabled core router - see also "DPI Announcements: Tellabs New LTE SGW/PGW" - here.

Cache Deployments [109]: S.I Net [Cambodia] Uses BTI to Improve QoE and Save Transit Costs

 

BTI Systems announced that "S.I. Net, Cambodia’s leading provider of high-speed Internet, fiber and hosting services, chose WideCast, the transparent caching solution, from BTI Systems. With WideCast, S.I. Net is able to cache the most popular video, applications and other content and improve the quality of experience for its customers while significantly reducing its IP transit costs .. WideCast is coupled with the BTI Systems 7000 Series packet optical networking platform and integrated packetVX™ Ethernet services modules as its underlying foundation. With its ability to redirect packet optical traffic at Layer 2/Layer 4, the 7000 Series will allow S.I. Net to deliver Ethernet-based services and expand its 10GbE metro network in the capital city of Phnom Penh"

BTI's caching solution, WideCast (covered here), is an OEM from PeerApp (here and here).

See "BTI Systems Facilitates Video, Content Streaming for S.I. Net" - here.

BTI and PeerApp Partner to Optimize Streaming at the Network Edge

 

BTI Systems is going to announce today "an agreement with PeerApp, the leading provider of Transparent Internet Caching and content delivery platforms, to manage the flood of content streaming onto access networks. With this agreement, BTI Systems can maximize the effectiveness of its transparent caching solution within its WideCast platform, including the ability to accelerate the delivery of Flash video, YouTube, Facebook video and other Over-the-Top Internet content for network operators and their subscribers"

See earlier posts - "Video Caching Announcements: BTI Systems WideCast™" - here and "Caching Market: PeerApp OEMs to ALU, Allot and BTI Systems" - here. 

"WideCast will use transparent caching to increase the resolution and performance of video delivery to the consumer while dramatically reducing the “re-streaming” of large files across both access and peering networks – dramatically improving quality and attracting new subscribers while shrinking service provider transit costs and containing exploding bandwidth growth rates .. The solution transparently improves broadband Internet service delivery without violating the constructs of net neutrality. WideCast is the first integrated, network-ready solution for content caching that integrates L2 Ethernet upgrades, L4 application routing and transparent caching in a compact 4RU solution".

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.

Video Caching Announcements: BTI Systems WideCast™

   

Another vendor had joined recently the video caching market, enabling operators to save and monetize OTT video traffic. 

"BTI Systems .. introduced WideCast, a new portfolio of applications and networking solutions that enables a phenomenal change in how bandwidth hungry video content is delivered to the subscriber .. Designed to provide an open application delivery platform, WideCast permits BTI Systems partner and customer applications to be deployed efficiently and closer to the subs"

See the press release - "BTI Systems Unlocks Video at the Edge with WideCast™ Content-Aware Networking" - here, product page - here and datasheet here.

"The WideCast portfolio [see chart below] contains the following key components:

• WideCast Transparent Cache—Release 1.0, A Self Learning Cache with full P2P, HTTP, Flash support for bandwidth hungry downloads that transparently deliver traffic at the edge without operators having to manage content;
   
• WideCast 200 and 300 server modules to support applications at the edge of the network that includes a performance optimized—lights out—Linux OS that is integrated with the BTI 7000 series products; and
   
• WideCast Application Routing Software upgrades to BTI 7000 packet optical networking solutions to maximize video caching benefits without impacting throughput for non-cacheable traffic."

The video caching market becomes crowded - with offering from Bluecoat (here), Huawei (here), PeerApp (here), Juniper (here), Alcatel-Lucent (here), Acision (here), Allot and Oversi. 

Related post: Yankee Group report "CDNs Expand to Mobile Broadband" - here.