Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Nokia's Big Data Analytics Optimizes QoE


Nokia Networks announced it is "unveiling research that combines newly developed telco-scale big data analytics, artificial intelligence and full process automation to make experience management dynamic. 

The Nokia Networks FutureWorks innovation is the world’s first technique to instantly optimize the individual application sessions of subscribers to deliver high Quality of Experience (QoE) to almost 100% of all sessions, even under high loads. This cannot be achieved by current methods because, without this, an automated, immediate and iterative loop between analytics, decision and optimization has been missing".

The innovation could help operators to increase customer retention substantially. Up to 30% extra capacity can also be created as more application sessions would run simultaneously with high quality, with sessions getting exactly the resources they need. This opens up a variety of potential new use cases. For example, the network could dynamically adapt to sudden use changes, subscribers could be provided with a consistent video experience along a travel route, or service-affecting faults could be corrected in real-time, relieving customer care.

The QoE enhancements can be achieved by utilizing telco-scale artificial intelligence in an analytics and decision engine that immediately pinpoints the cause of issues in a subscriber’s application session and decides automatically on the best corrective action. Machine learning techniques ensure ever more accurate decisions over time even when data is incomplete or new situations arise.

Full process automation is then applied to immediately implement the appropriate action, such as service adaption or traffic steering.

The innovation has been proven by Nokia Networks tests in real network environments using commercial devices. In the future, dynamic experience management could be deployed in multi-vendor 2G, 3G and LTE networks.


See "Nokia Networks big data innovation promises dynamic experience management" - here and "Applying telco-scale big data to dynamic experience management" - here.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Akamai Expands CDN to the RAN with Saguna

     
Saguna Networks expands its base-station caching technology, CODS, with CDN-Extend allowing it to participate in a CDN network.

According to the company, "It is a big step forward towards achieving our goal of creating an Open-RAN platform enabling any server-side application to run inside the RAN. CDN-Extend enables 3rd party CDNs to operate inside the mobile base station".

Saguna provides its technology to base station vendors on OEM basis (see "Rumors: NSN's Liquid Applications Uses Saguna's Technology - here and "Saguna's Optimization and Monetization Technology to be Deployed in 2014 - here).

One of Saguna's investors, Xenia, announced earlier this week (here, Hebrew) that the company raised $2M from a "strategic US investor, a leading player in distributed computing and communications networks, a financial investor from China and some of the owners", based on post-money valuation of $27M.

The first CDN provider partnering with Saguna is Akamai.

The company announced a ".. joint demonstration with Akamai .. showcasing the first Content Delivery Network (CDN) that operates from within the Mobile Base Station .. Getting content as close as possible to the mobile user is crucial to reducing round-trip-time (RTT) and making accurate performance tuning decisions, in order to improve the mobile Internet user experience. Radio network edge placement, in concert with the CDN serving the content, is especially beneficial when trying to optimize HTTPS content, since this type of content cannot be cached or optimized inside the mobile network using standard “transparent” caching methods or optimization techniques".


In the demonstration, Akamai’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) is integrated as a server-side application running on the Saguna CODS Open-RAN platform, which operates inside the mobile base station. Using Saguna CODS CDN-Extend, Akamai’s CDN can cache content for delivery as close as possible to mobile users at the mobile network edge".

See "Saguna and Akamai Showcase the World’s First Content Delivery Network Operating from the Mobile Base Station" - here.