BT to Offer Riverbed as Service to Accelerate Cloud Applications

BT announced that "..as part of its Cloud of Clouds vision it will deploy virtual Riverbed SteelHead application acceleration technology in the core of its global network, providing superior application performance for customers accessing BT’s own cloud services as well as other leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. 

It is the first time Riverbed technology has been deployed into the core of a global telecoms network"
  
Related link "Gartner's WAN Optimization Report", positioning Riverbed as a leader in WAN Optimization - here.

"BT and Riverbed are embedding their services at global business hubs in Europe, North America and Asia in locations where BT has direct links to leading cloud providers and high-capacity internet breakout. 

The service will be available globally from early 2016 and accessible through BT’s IP Connect VPN from 198 countries and territories. A series of pilots of the new capability showed substantial network performance improvements for SaaS applications such as the Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite.

In addition to application acceleration and network bandwidth optimization, customers using the new service also gain increased control over their applications, better end-to-end visibility into performance, and significantly improved reliability and security compared to delivering applications over the internet". 

See "Customers to benefit from improved performance when connecting to applications in the cloud" - here.

Oracle's Diameter Signaling Router is Now Cloud-deployable

Oracle has "..introduced a new version of Oracle Communications Diameter Signaling Router. The new release of the proven product is now cloud-deployable, designed to help communications service providers (CSPs) monetize their networks by creating new services and use a virtualized infrastructure to launch these services more quickly.

Oracle Communications Diameter Signaling Router

.. A diameter signaling router that CSPs can deploy in a common and shared infrastructure with other telecommunications applications in a private or hosted cloud: This can help CSPs realize the benefits of NFV—rolling out new services faster and reducing operating expenses". 

See "Oracle Communications Diameter Signaling Router Is Now Cloud-Deployable" - here.

Ubiscope [Korea] to Use Sandvine's Cloud-based PCRF

Sandvine announced that "Ubiscope, a provider of security, network and consulting services in South Korea will be using Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller to offer innovative new services to their business customers.

Ubiscope selected Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller because they required a best-of-breed, application-aware, network policy control solution that would provide the flexibility for IT managers to deploy real-time productivity controls across their network of business customers.

Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller is a completely virtualized platform, built upon the foundation of network functions virtualization (NFV) and is compatible with software-defined networking (SDN) standards. This framework enables on-demand, elastic provisioning for maximally efficient use of carrier cloud resources as well as a wealth of deployment options through integration with numerous provisioning systems, customer-premises equipment (CPE or Virtual CPE) devices, and other Ethernet access devices" 

See "Sandvine Receives First Cloud Services Policy Controller Order" - here.

Kontron Partners with Sandvine

Kontron SYMKLOUD

Kontron announced that it is "collaborating with industry leaders Red Hat and Sandvine to give communication service providers (CSPs) an economically and operationally optimized open solution to deploy cloud business services using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure.

The solution combines Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, Sandvine’s network policy control platform for traffic optimization, analytics and subscriber service creation, and the Kontron SYMKLOUD high-density, modular converged hardware platform for carrier-cloud networks.

Kontron’s SYMKLOUD converged hardware platform is massively scalable and extremely dense, packing up to nine hot-swappable modular servers (each with single or dual independent x86 nodes) and two OpenFlow-ready 10GbE switches – all in a 2U enclosure. This high density and converged infrastructure in a single hardware solution greatly improves the economics of CSP infrastructure.

Don Bowman [pictured], CTO, Sandvine. said “Kontron’s modular, high-density SYMKLOUD hardware gives our mutual CSP customers highly economical physical capacity that they can monetize with our Cloud Services Policy Controller platform .. Combined with Red Hat’s OpenStack virtualization capabilities, the result is an ideal NFV environment for CSPs looking to out-perform the market in terms of cost, capabilities and service levels”.

See "Kontron Collaborates with Red Hat and Sandvine to Offer CSPs Exceptionally Economical, Adaptive and Reliable NFV Reference Solution" - here.

Ipanema-as-a-Service: Cloud-based Management System

Ipanema Technologies announces the launch of "IpanemaCloud Central Management, Ipanema’s first ever cloud-based service. This new cloud-based service allows VARs, MSPs and telcos to reduce time to market by months, offering them easy access to Ipanema’s platform to quickly deliver Ipanema-based managed services to their customers. 

Since it requires no upfront investment in infrastructure or set up costs, IpanemaCloud offers service providers a cost-effective solution and allows them to focus resources on their core business areas, safe in the knowledge that their management platform is fully up to date. 

As a cloud-based service management platform, it leverages Ipanema’s carrier class management software and combines it with a secured service portal based on leading certified technology partners, Rackspace hosting and force.com.
  

See "Ipanema Technologies accelerates its move to the cloud announcing IpanemaCloud, with Central Management as the first of a series of cloud-based services" - here.

APPanalyz Launched a Cloud-Based, Application Aware, Visibility Solution

APPanalyz launched a "SaaS Platform specifically for the purpose of Measuring, Monitoring and Analyzing Application Delivery ..  can be used on servers both on-premises and in the Cloud. There is no software to install, and no packet capturing required, leaving the memory and resources of the server for other purposes. It is all about providing complete visibility into how business-critical Applications are being delivered to the end users.

APPanalyz provides complete visibility into how business-critical Applications are being delivered to their end users. The application traffic analyzer seamlessly monitors business transactions between individual app components and helps to accelerate delivery of high-quality applications. This scalable application traffic analyzer proactively finds critical issues even before they impact the end user. APPanalyz is able to detect issues and link them to the services that are at risk to resolve the problem before the business’s service is affected"

See "Appanalyz launches new SaaS platform creating a new paradigm in real-time packet analysis" - here.

EliteCore Offers PCRF as Cloud Service

Elitecore Technologies follows the trend of offering cloud-based policy management and analytics systems, in a service business model (see Tango Telecom, Openwave Mobility and Sandvine)

The company announced the ".. availability of Virtualized NetVertex PCRF on Cloud as SPI model for CSP on a Pay as you go. The Pretested and Preconfigured NetVertex Policy Control Solution comes bundled with integrated NetVertex Policy analytics and on board EMS system.

.. The complete solution is available Preconfigured on cloud, enabling operators accelerate ready- to- use deployment timelines from 4-6 weeks to 1 day and also considerably reduce cost, time and effort for IOT and POC ..  it offers Rule based Auto Scaling to meet CSP Peak hour traffic, where by capacity is increased and up within minutes for the Peak time only. This does away need for additional hardware procurement and database each time to increase capacity. It offers greater Elasticity to increase performance and scale at a lower cost in minimal time.

NetVertex PCRF is available on cloud across 41+ Point of Presence connected to over 25+ Datacenters, offers added advantage of local presence across all these locations with committed SLA of 99.999% uptime and Secure connectivity over VPN or Direct link to CSP in premise data center".

See "Elitecore Announces Network function Virtualized NetVertex PCRF on Cloud available to CSP as SPI (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)" - here.

Tango Extends Cloud-based PCC to the Middle East

Tango Telecom extends the availability of its Policy in the Cloud (see "Tango Telecom Offers Cloud-based Policy Management" - here) to the Middle east (see "Interop Technologies to Offer Tango Telecom's Cloud-based PCC in US" - here). 

The vendor announced ".. the availability of its Policy in the Cloud solution for the Middle Eastern market. The solution offers mobile operators in the region all the benefits of Tango Telecom’s best of breed Policy Control Solution to monetise the growth in mobile data traffic combined with the reduced CAPEX and OPEX and the improved service velocity of a cloud deployment and virtualised model.

See "Tango Telecom brings Cloud-based Policy to Middle East" - here.

Allot Makes Rain from the Cloud

Allot Communications announced it has "received a new multimillion dollar order from a U.S.-based, multinational cloud provider for its Deep Packet Inspection-enabled Service Gateway solution. The solution will be deployed in multiple data centers worldwide. This order was received in the third quarter of 2013 .. Using the Allot Service Gateway, cloud providers can constantly monitor and manage this traffic on a variety of levels, such as per customer, per customer branch office, and per application. The Allot Service Gateway also gives cloud providers the tools necessary to meet any and all Service Level Agreements".

See "Allot Communications Receives Multimillion Dollar Order from Major U.S. Based Cloud Provider" - here.

Ipanema Helps Enterprises Manage Cloud Applications Performance

Ipanema Technologies announced its new "Cloud Application Management (CAM) solution. The CAM solution helps companies manage applications flowing across networks to and from the cloud. With CAM, enterprises can easily understand and control their business application usage and performance from public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud, protecting vital network resources from being consumed by recreational apps such as YouTube and Facebook"

".. Ipanema’s CAM solution is complimented by its Dynamic Hybrid Network solution, which allows enterprises to combine both traditional MPLS networks with Internet networks. The Dynamic Hybrid Network solution simultaneously and automatically monitors, controls, accelerates and selects the most appropriate path for an application traffic flow, across two or more networks".

See "Ipanema Technologies launches new solution to easily manage cloud-based application performance" - here.

Tango Telecom Offers Cloud-based Policy Management

Tango Telecom announced the "..availability of its cloud-based Policy Control solution for the North American market. Cloud-based policy control by Tango Telecom offers carriers all the benefits of a best of breed policy solution to drive mobile data revenues while reaping the cost and resource savings of a cloud deployment model .. Cloud based service deployment allows carriers to concentrate on operating profitable services and not on deploying and running hardware and software installations. Tango Telecom’s Policy in the Cloud can be managed remotely by the carrier’s own technical team or the company also offers a fully managed service when required".

See "Tango Telecom delivers Cloud-based Policy to CCA members" - here.

Openwave Offers Analytics as a Cloud Service and Dashboards (Screenshots Inside)

Openwave Mobility announced the "..latest version of Mobile Analytics. This solution combines mission critical mobile data analysis functionality, greater ease-of-use and the option of hosting it in the cloud (Cloud Edition) or in-network (Business Edition). The solution can also be deployed in a virtualized environment with dynamic scaling that closely aligns with the industry initiative for network function virtualization (NFV) .. available immediately" 

"Key features of the new Mobile Analytics (Cloud Edition) and (Business Edition) solution include: Virtualized deployment model .. Dynamic segmentation & real time report generation .. Integrated, interactive dashboards .. Trending ..Correlation of key data points .. Actionable intelligence and Standard interfaces to integrate with existing data warehouse, user repositories and restful API.

Openwave shared with me some screenshots of the new dashboards:

• The Devices Dashboard provides a starting point for analysis based on the mobile devices using a carrier's network:

source: Openwave Mobility

• The Categorization Dashboard provides a starting point for analysis based on the sites visited based on their Category:

Openwave Mobility

• The Segmentation Dashboard provides a starting point for analysis based on the sites visited based on subscriber segment:

Openwave Mobility

See "Openwave Mobility Launches Cloud-Based Mobile Data Analytics Solution" - here.

Radware Adds Network DDoS Prevention Service; Helps ISP Maintain High SLA

 
Radware announced "DefensePipe, an integrated and comprehensive solution to help mitigate volumetric DDoS attacks which threaten to saturate a customer’s Internet pipe, or the ‘outside line’ that connects enterprises to the web .. Available to Radware customers that currently deploy an on-premise Attack Mitigation System (AMS), it is a scalable solution that automatically engages once the customer’s AMS detects that pipe saturation is imminent .. The organization’s suspicious Internet traffic is immediately diverted to the DefensePipe cloud based scrubbing center where it is distanced further from the protected network and its scalable resources can mitigate high volume attacks. Once the traffic is “cleaned” it is then sent to the organization and regular operations continue once the attack has ceased."

"Also included is access to Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT), a ‘round the clock’ staff of security experts who are knowledgeable and experienced with emerging cyber threats, their detection and mitigation .. integrated reporting system provides information both from the on-premise mitigation and in the cloud mitigation. This enables the customer to perform more efficient forensics, better understand the threats it is facing and to better plan its mitigation strategy for future threats"

Robert Proulx (pictured), president and founder of Xittel Télécommunications said: "Radware’s DefensePipe was a natural fit, as we’re very pleased with their attack mitigation system and its unmatched capability .. The combination of an on-premise AMS and DefensePipe in the cloud provides us with maximum security coverage and the ideal solution to ensure the availability of our customers' business. Furthermore, it allows us to maintain our high SLA with our hosted customers, providing a much greater value for them"

See "Radware Introduces its New Cloud Based Attack Mitigation Solution to Protect Customers Against Internet Pipe Saturation" - here.

Procera Reports New DPI Deals - ME MSO, Taiwanese Cloud Service Provider

Procera Networks continues to show traction in the large DPI deals (2 in one day, this time).

Beyond the traditional deployments by ISPs, MNOs and MSOs, Procera also reports a more unique use of DPI by cloud service providers (see "Procera Adds Application and Subscriber-Aware Solutions to Cloud Service Providers" - here).

The vendor announced it has received:

PL-8920

• "..multi-million dollar initial order from a Tier 1 multi-system operator (MSO) in the Middle East. This operator serves cable subscribers across its countrywide footprint as part of its residential triple play service offerings. This new service provider customer selected the PacketLogic PL8920 following extensive competitive product evaluation and testing that included many stand-alone and integrated competitors. Procera expects to begin to recognize the majority of revenue from this initial order in the fourth quarter of 2012"
  
  and
   
• [see also - "DPI Win: Procera Enforces SLA for Cloud Services in Asia" - here] "a follow-on order from a Tier 1 cloud service provider in Taiwan. This operator serves more than 20 million fixed and mobile subscribers across its coverage footprint, and offers cloud services to large end customers, as well as white-label services to other cloud service providers. Procera’s newly expanded Intelligent Policy Enforcement (IPE) systems are deployed to ensure a high Quality of Experience (QoE) for the Taiwan government cloud services that are hosted by the operator. Procera’s up-to-date, extensive signature database also enables the cloud operator to optimize the traffic and bandwidth management of its network resources".

See "Tier 1 Middle Eastern Service Provider Selects Procera Networks" - here and "Tier 1 Taiwanese Cloud Service Provider Expands Procera Deployment" - here.

Cisco: Meraki Offers Land Acceleration, Security and Application Visibility and control

During Cisco's conference call on the recent Meraki acquisition [$1.2B, here], the following answer was given by Robert Soderbery (pictured), SVP and GM, Enterprise Networking Group, Cisco:

[question is ".. about the kinds of the outside of security.. other things that they’re doing in layer 4-7 that are interesting and innovated for that midmarket sort of customers"].

 

"So from L[ayer] four to seven perspective today Meraki offers land acceleration, they offer security and they offer application visibility and control. Increasingly clients are seeing that they need more control over their applications to the granular level in important force policies in areas like BYOD and enforce them with optimization whether to be on the wireless links or the RAN links. Underpinning Meraki’s architecture is a deep packet capability on L[ayer] four to seven allowing them to implement these services on top of their architecture. Additionally, we believe the Meraki platform is a very extensible platform and well architected platform and will be able to continue to offer new services and capabilities, again all focused at this midmarket opportunity".

 

See also - "DPI/QoS Announcements: Meraki's Traffic Shaper" - here. 

 

See "Cisco Systems' Management Discusses Intent to Acquire Meraki Conference (Transcript)", by SeekingAlpha, here.

[Infonetics]: Cloud-Based Security to Grow by 83% by 2016

 
A new report by Jeff Wilson (pictured), principal analyst for security, Infonetics Research, concludes that "Cloud-based security services in particular are gaining momentum, fueled by North America and greenfield opportunities in developing markets in Asia and Latin America". "

"We’re forecasting global revenue from cloud-based security services to grow 83% from 2011 to 2016, an eyebrow-raising figure, especially in the enormous security market".

  

"The volume of network security attacks is up significantly in 2012, with more threats coming—or appearing to come—from trusted sources .. DDoS services like those provided by Prolexic [see "Prolexic Q2 Report: "Shorter, but higher volume DDoS Attacks"" - here] and Verisign are a major and growing segment that Infonetics may break out in its managed security report when more data is available from providers in this space". 

Related posts: 

• "DDoS DNS Attack Disrupted AT&T Data Traffic" - here
• "KDDI [Japan] Uses Arbor for DDoS Prevention" - here
• "Tata Uses Arbor for DDoS Protection" - here. 

See "Cloud-based security services set to surge 83% by 2016" - here.

ALU: Why will Enterprises Pay Premium for a Carrier Cloud Service?

A presentation delivered by Andreas Lemke (pictured), Director Cloud Solution Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent, at the Network Automation Conference held in Paris, recently about the carrier cloud, which "is a new class of cloud that brings together the data center and the carrier network for a differentiated, much higher value end-to-end offer. However, to realize the potential, the operation of the carrier cloud needs to be industrialized and automated. This way, the set up times of a networked cloud service can be reduced from weeks to minutes".

Slide 4 "Why should a service provider care? Enterprises will pay premium for carrier cloud" shows why enterprises will pay premium for a carrier cloud service, as oppose to the well-known public clouds. 

The main reasons are latency and bandwidth guarantees. 

See "Critical orchestration and automation tasks in the carrier cloud" - here

Procera Explains the New NAT and Steering Features

Procera Networks published a white paper - "Intelligent Policy Enforcement and Application Delivery Networking - Advanced Traffic Steering and Carrier Grade NAT Technology Deployments" (here), explaining the features it has released earlier this week for network and cloud service provider (see "Procera Adds Application and Subscriber-Aware Solutions to Cloud Service Providers" - here).

• Advanced Traffic Steering - "PacketLogic Advanced Traffic Steering combines the subscriber and service awareness of the PacketLogic Subscriber Manager with the Application Awareness of the PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement. The PSM provisions the PRE with the Traffic Steering policies, which can be based on subscriber ID, subscriber service plan (for example subscriber is under 18), location, and device attributes, and combined with the specific traffic or application types that will receive traffic steering treatment"

• Carrier Grade NAT - "PacketLogic Carrier Grade NAT is the first IPE-based large scale NAT solution for network operators. Network operators are finding it increasingly difficult to manage their subscriber growth with their existing address space. Most operators do not have the ability to request more address space from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), as there is very little address space available (none in some regions). As a result, operators are attempting to launch IPv6 services to ease address congestion, but this rollout has been hindered by many different engineering and product challenges. As a result, operators are attempting to deploy Carrier Grade NAT (also known as Large Scale NAT) to ease their address shortages. The challenge with implementing with current CGN products is that they lack subscriber and service plan awareness, and most are not designed to scale with transparent stateful processing of application traffic".
   

 

Procera Adds Application and Subscriber-Aware Solutions to Cloud Service Providers

  

Earlier this year Procera Networks announced it has "..received and deployed an initial order from a Tier-1 Asian Fixed/Mobile operator for a Cloud Services deployment" (here) and now the DPI vendor announces new product category targeting the same market with the "..  introduction of new PacketLogic™ products designed to simplify large-scale subscriber deployments for network and cloud service providers. The new product offerings for this market are Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation (CGN) and Advanced Traffic Steering, which both leverage the subscriber, service, and application awareness of Procera’s PacketLogic solutions"

"In order to meet the service and quality expectations of consumers, cloud providers will require solutions that can dynamically adapt to the changes in Internet applications by leveraging Deep Packet Inspection technology. Current solutions for CGN and traffic steering cannot meet these requirements at the scale required to support tens of millions of subscribers and billions of consumer devices"

"Application and Subscriber-Aware Traffic Steering is becoming a strategic technology for cloud operators and service providers to better manage and scale value-added services. Unlike traditional load-balancing systems, intelligent policy enforcement-based traffic steering solutions can make policy decisions based on subscriber service plans and applications without complicated configurations or integrations".

See "Procera Enters Application Delivery Market – Delivers Innovative Subscriber-Aware Carrier-Grade NAT and Advanced Traffic Steering Products for Network and Cloud Service Providers" - here.

DPI Win: Procera Enforces SLA for Cloud Services in Asia

 
I believe that the following announcement from Procera Networks shows a new direction for the use of application and subscriber-aware traffic management and reporting solutions - managing traffic for "Cloud Services".

While DPI companies sold such solutions in the past (when it was simply called "hosting" or "co-location"), it wasn't a great success. Now, with the popularity of cloud services there is not reason why bandwidth consumption wont be one of the measured and charged items of the service, and traffic will be prioritized based on its business value, the same way storage and CPU cycles are used.
 
Procera announced that ".. it has received and deployed an initial order from a Tier-1 Asian Fixed/Mobile operator for a Cloud Services deployment. This operator serves more than 20 million fixed/mobile subscribers across their coverage footprint, and these cloud services apply to their customers as well as hosting subscribers .. The IPE deployment for the cloud service is focused on enforcing service level agreements (SLAs) for hosting customers and measuring bandwidth usage for billing purposes. Each customer is provided with detailed reports from PacketLogic Report Studio [here] that cover the applications being used to access their hosting service, the traffic load and peak values, as well as the delivered QoE, which can include packet loss on the Internet ".

See "New Tier-1 Asian Fixed/Mobile Operator Selects Procera For Cloud Services Deployment" - here.