[Infonetics]: DSC Market to Reach $1.3B by '18; Led by Huawei, F5 and Oracle

A new report by Diane Myers, Principal Analyst, Infonetics Research finds that ".. the Diameter signaling control market will grow threefold between 2014 and 2018, to $1.3 billion .. Globally, the Diameter signaling control market totaled $381 million in 2014, an increase of 81 percent over 2013.

Developed as the next-generation signaling protocol, Diameter has begun to permeate networks, driven by increasing LTE usage and the emergence of VoLTE (voice over LTE). As a result, the Diameter market spiked 81 percent in 2014 from the previous year.

The Diameter vendor landscape is beginning to shake out: 

[See my product list page - here]

• it’s a tight race at the top between Huawei, F5 and Oracle. 
• We see a strengthening of Ericsson and a push from Alcatel-Lucent, Sonus and now Mavenir with its acquisition of Ulticom [see "Mavenir Turns Ulticom OEM to Acquisition" - here] 
• The consolidation continues, and we expect even more in 2015

The top use case for Diameter signaling control in 2014 was once again centralized routing, but roaming via DEA (Diameter Edge Agent) was right behind"

See "Diameter Signaling Controller Market Soared 81 Percent in 2014 on the Wings of LTE" - here.

[TheDeal]: Procera for Sale; Sandvine is a "Better Buyer than Allot"

Procera trade on Friday - volume 4.2X average

TheDeal (see video below) reports that "Procera Networks  under attack from activist shareholders, has tapped Stifel Financial Corp. to shop the business, according to three sources familiar with the situation. 

For the Fremont, Calif.-based network equipment maker, the move comes after investor Ronald Chez in October urged the board to evaluate strategic alternatives, including a sale. Chicago-based hedge fund Castle Union LLC joined Cehz about a week later and disclosed its 5% stake in Procera, arguing that the company is undervalued and should be sold. Castle Union subsequently increased its stake to 6.6% in December [here]. 

'They're not distressed, but they're losing share,' said an industry source about Procera.'They're the third player in a three-man race.' In the communications equipment space, Procera competes with Hod Hasharon, Israel-based Allot Communications Ltd. (ALLT) and Waterloo, Ont.-based Sandvine Corp. (SVC). 

Toan Tran [pictured], a managing partner of Castle Union (one page Web site), told The Deal in October that he believed Procera could be sold for $12 per share or more and that it could garner interest from strategics such as Sandvine, Allot, F5 Networks Inc. (FFIV), Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) and Ericsson Inc. (ERIC). He also said that of the two players Procera directly competes with 'Sandvine and Allot' the former would be a better buyer because Allot and Procera would be a tough cultural fit. 

Sources said Procera's recent board shift could bode well for a sale. The company appointed Tom Sapanos as new chairman in October [here], and the person he replaced, Scott McClendon, was known to be against selling Procera.

Procera's stock hit a high of $20 range in 2012. On Friday, shares finished at $9.15, a 5% rise from Thursday and up 28% for the year thus far. Castle Union told The Deal last month that it will launch a proxy fight and nominate at least four board members if Procera doesn't publicly start a strategic review process by the end of January"

See "Networking Company Could Sell to Allot, Sandvine, F5, Cisco or Ericsson" - here.

[ABI]: Sandvine, Allot and Citrix Lead the Independent $600M DPI Market

A new report by Joe Hoffman [pictured], Practice Director, ABI Research evaluates the "independent vendors delivering Deep Packet Inspection, Traffic Steering, and Policy Control in the Gi-LAN space, and finds Sandvine as best of breed, followed by Allot and Citrix ByteMobile

... This research covers the leading independent vendors, Allot, Citrix ByteMobile, F5 Networks, Ipoque, Sandvine, and Procera Networks that account for nearly US$600M in revenues in this market space.

With the DPI commoditized, the independent vendors work hard to present differentiated value propositions to the telecom market:

• Sandvine takes top rating because of its industry leading power-performance efficiency [see "Sandvine Adds a 200Gbps/2RU Appliance w/100GE Interfaces" - here], focus on compact form-factor suitable for distributed or centralized networks, and a very rich analytics and monetization emphasis.
   
• Allot takes second place with virtually the same power-performance [see "Allot Launched the New Service Gateway; Orders from 4 Operators (over $9M)" - here] but in a NEBS compliant ATCA platform.

Allot's ServiceGateway Tera

Sandvine's PTS 32000

• The Citrix ByteMobile ATM places third with the added richness of its total package solution, and also with NEBS compliance.

See "Sandvine, Allot, and Citrix Top ABI Research’s DPI and Traffic Management Competitive Assessment" - here.

F5 Business Update: 40 DSC Deployments

Some quotes from the recent F5 Q4 F2014 earning call, by Andy Reinland, CFO and John McAdam [pictured], CEO (retiring in a year):

• we continue to win large deals in service providers with both our traditional traffic-steering solutions and telco-specific offerings such as Policy Enforcement Manager, CGNAT, and Traffix Diameter products
   
• We have also made significant progress with our Traffix Diameter solutions for LTE rollouts. Our competitive win rate is very high and we now have approximately 40 projects currently in production, with several other projects in process
   
• we're pretty excited. I am, and so is the service provider team, about the TCP optimization stuff that we've done during the year. I wouldn't underestimate that opportunity. Basically for heavy traffic, it's a great money-saver for the -- and increases the quality for the service providers. Traffix, we feel really good about

• [Q] by Catharine Anne Trebnick: "Could you tell me roughly how many different use cases you would see in the different operators? I think that would help with -- because you're getting a lot of traction with Traffix and PEM, but like let's take a Tier 1 operator versus a Tier 2 operator. And how many different use cases would they use of F5 today versus maybe perhaps a year ago?"

• [A] by Manuel F. Rivelo - EVP, Security and Strategic Solutions: "Well, Catharine, it's Manny. It's hard to -- I don't have year-on-year comparisons. So it's hard to give you that, but I'll show you when we -- on 2 weeks, when we're over at the Analyst Conference, I'll show you 11 use cases that we're selling aggressively into service providers this year. ..  what we're seeing with service providers is not only the standard use cases we sell around TCP optimization, firewall security, application security, the list goes on and on, but we're also seeing service providers use the extensibility of our product, the openness of the platform, allowing them to program the platform to solve their unique application, traffic-steering problems and/or application problems inside that environment. And that's the power of iRules, iApps, et cetera".

See "F5 Networks' (FFIV) CEO John McAdam on Q4 2014 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by Seeking Alpha, here.

DSC Deployments [322]: BASE Company [Belgium] Selected F5

F5 Networks announced that ".. BASE Company [formally KPN Belgium] —best known for its consumer-orientated mobile services brand, BASE, and one of Belgium’s largest telecom providers—has selected the F5® Traffix® Signaling Delivery Controller™ (SDC™) to meet subscribers' increasing demand for data. 

Last year, BASE Company became the second operator in Belgium to launch 4G for its customers, providing them with much higher speeds to optimize user experience while watching video and consuming rich media".

Ben Volkow, VP, Product Development, F5 said: “Our Diameter-based SDC has proved itself in more than 50 installations [see "F5: We are Starting to See Policy Enforcement Wins; Tremendous Progress with Traffix Diameter" - here] with leading operators across the globe. One of its prime roles is to enable operators to manage the huge increase in signaling messages that typically occurs with LTE technology, primarily due to consumer behavior with smartphones”.

In Q2, 4G at BASE Company was also made available in Brussels. End of Q2 4G is offered in more than 700 cities, towns and villages, equaling approximately an outdoor population coverage of 55% of the Belgian population.

BASE 4G Map 

 See "BASE Company Selects F5’s Diameter Signaling Delivery Controller to Provide Optimal LTE Customer Experience" - here.

F5 Partners with Siemens Convergence Creators' PCRF

F5 Networks and Siemens Convergence Creators announced that they have "successfully completed comprehensive interoperability tests of F5’s BIG-IP® Policy Enforcement Manager™ (PEM™), and Siemens Convergence Creators’ policy and charging rules function (PCRF) product, Siemens Policy Manager (SPM) .. Combining F5 and Siemens technology gives operators the ability to monetize networks by enabling them to customize rate plans for different types of use cases and subscribers. Also, CSPs can generate additional revenues by creating subscription plans that are tailored to fit their strategic business goals"

See more on F5's Policy Enforcement - here and here and on Siemens Convergence Creators PCRF - here.

"Joint customers can set policies to meet their business needs (such as tiered/premium service offerings or plans) with Siemens’ PCRF capabilities, while BIG-IP PEM provides the awareness and enforcement necessary to assure policies are carried out appropriately based on network and user conditions specific to the services being delivered".

See "F5 and Siemens Convergence Creators Help CSPs Pursue Policy-Driven Business Models and Increase Subscriber Satisfaction" - here.

Allot: Customers Double Orders within 2 Years; We Don't See F5

Hadar (left) and Elefant,
 Photo: Azi Ronen (2006)

Quotes from Rami Hadar, retiring CEO, Allot Communications (see "Andrei Elefant to Replace Rami Hadar as Allot's CEO" - here), notes during the company's Q1 earning call.

[See "Allot Communications Reports Non-GAAP 17.2% Revenue Growth for First Quarter of 2014" - here]

• "Our past experience shows that booking delivered collectively from new customers in the given year is in the range of 50% to 20% of the annual booking. While new deals tend to be lower than average in gross margin they are our major contributor to our future growth. Given the fast growth of data and the desire for new value added services typical mobile customer will more than double its orders from Allot within two years from the initial sale. Those following orders are most soft oriented and therefore tend to be with high gross margins than average"
   
• "Gross margins during the first quarter was 73% slightly below our usual 75%, 76% range. The main underlying reason is one large deal with the new Tier-1 fixed customer which was highly competitive and where the initial order was more hardware-biased versus software. We don’t think this represents a new trend. We are happy to say that we have already won a following order of this account which carries higher gross margins compared to the initial deal .. It was a multi-million dollar deal .. I’m proud that Allot prevailed in one of the deals. This is a very large Telco in APAC .. Obviously, we like the software content to be higher. The specific deals that we took in APAC was to the other side because of a large geographical distribution"
   
• "During the first quarter, we have continued to make progress with our value added service business which represented 28% of our bookings for the quarter"
   
• About F5 - "we haven’t seen them any pure DPI RFP. Now, having said, I caution, we don’t have perfect worldwide coverage, it could be that they are showing in certain locations. And we are not aware of it. But, we haven’t ran into them in a straight out RFP. It seems to me sitting on the sidelines, I’m just more focused on doing a good job on security front. And it seems that they are complaining of their progress in DPI and policy control and charging functions. It could be just me but this is me kind of watching their statements and public discussions"
   
• US - " It is a fairly slow quarter for America on a relative basis to other region, as you can figure out, the large deals came in other territories. We totally hope to continue our success with penetrating Q1 mobile operators in the U.S."

See "Allot Communications' CEO Discusses Q1 2014 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.

Opera/Skyfire Adds Real-Time Analytics

Opera Software's Skyfire (here) unit released "Rocket Insights™ as part of its Rocket Optimizer platform to help operators better manage their network loads by providing a real-time analytics dashboard that analyzes mobile video congestion. Operators can now instantly view key metrics such as stall rates, video start times, bitrate distribution and mean opinion score, and use this data to improve their overall network traffic management.

Rocket Insights elegantly addresses the current lack of existing real-time video monitoring analytics in a graphical and user-customizable dashboard. It provides operators with visibility into the importance of actionable quality of experience (QoE) monitoring that can intervene as needed to improve the video experience for each user on the network. Operators can test and refine their optimization strategies using the dashboard, and measure how these rates improve or change on the basis of real-time adjustments that they make.

Prior to the release of Rocket Insights, traffic management analytics were limited to packet- or URL-level data, which were often a poor proxy metric for application session quality, and did not allow for session mitigation actions in real time. Rocket Insights, on the other hand, now allows operators to easily see the impact of video on their networks, down to individual subscribers and their anonymized location in the network.

Rocket Optimizer is currently deploying with Telenor’s mobile networks across 11 countries, as well as across the national network of a Tier 1 US-based operator. Rocket Optimizer is also currently in live user trials with multiple operators around the world. The new Rocket Insights module is also compatible with leading traffic steering partners of Skyfire’s such as F5, Procera Networks [see "Procera Partners with Skyfire: Detects and Steers Video Traffic for Optimization" - here] and ConteXtream [see "Telenor Manages OTT Video Traffic With: ALU, Opera/SkyFire, ConteXtream and Velocix" - here]

See "Opera’s Skyfire Adds Video Analytics Dashboard to Rocket Optimizer Platform" - here.

DSC Deployments [290]: Oi [Brazil] Selects F5/Traffix

F5 Networks announced that "Oi selected the F5®Traffix™ Signaling Delivery Controller™ (SDC™) to meet the Diameter signaling management demands of their LTE network.

Tom Carter, VP Worldwide Sales, Carriers and Service Providers, F5 said: “F5’s signaling solutions have been deployed by more than 30 operators around the world We view this as a result of F5 offering the most mature routing, load distribution, and Diameter signaling capabilities on the market”

Oi has "46.3 million clients in the segment of personal mobility, of which 38.0 million pre-paid and 5.3 million post-paid users and 9.0 million users in the business/corporate segment, including fixed and mobile telephony and broadband"
See "Oi Selects F5 Diameter Signaling Solution" - here.

SDC Deployments [284]: CITIC [Asia] Deploys F5 for IPX Service

F5 Networks announced that "CITIC Telecom International .. has deployed the F5® Traffix® Signaling Delivery Controller Diameter solution to optimize its IPX (Internet Protocol eXchange) service .. The IPX solution provides a one-stop-shop turnkey solution for IDD voice, mobile roaming signaling, SMS messaging, and roaming data services for both mobile and fixed network operators, as well as Internet service providers (ISPs). Seamless connectivity provided by the F5 Traffix SDC gateway enables CITIC and its customers to quickly enter new roaming agreements, and the solution’s Diameter Edge Agent (DEA) protects the network to maintain reliable LTE roaming services" 

See "CITIC Deploys F5® Traffix® Signaling Delivery Controller™ (SDC™) to Optimize LTE Roaming Services" - here.

[Infonetics]: Oracle, F5 and Huawei Lead the DSC Market (54% CAGR to 2018)

A new report by Diane Myers [pictured], principal analyst, Infonetics Research on the Diameter Signaling Controllers (DSC) market forecasts that the ".. global Diameter signaling controller revenue to grow at a 54% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2018 .. Expected strong growth in the Diameter signaling controller (DSC) market is attracting vendors from varying backgrounds, from telecom hardware and software vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, and Oracle, to traditional signaling vendors (Ulticom), pure play vendors (Diametriq), IP experts (F5), and vendors in the policy and control space (Amdocs, Comptel, Openet)".  (see vendor list below and here)

See last year's report: "[Infonetics]: Diameter Router Market: +900% in 2012, +100% in 2013; Tekelec, F5 and Acme Lead" - here.

“The Diameter signaling control market is still relatively new, but in 2013 it matured through the success of a broader range of vendors and strong growth worldwide, with revenue more than doubling over the previous year .. The vendor landscape continues to shift with acquisitions and new entrants. Oracle, via its acquisition of Tekelec and Acme Packet, is the Diameter signaling control market leader in 2013, followed very closely by F5 and Huawei”

DSC vendor list:

Vendor	Product	Blog Post
Alcatel-Lucent	5780 Dynamic Services Controller/Diameter Control Point
Alepo	Diameter Signaling Controller	X
Amdocs	Intelligent Routing Controller	X
Dialogic	BorderNet Diameter Services Helix	X
Diametriq	Diameter Routing Engine	X
DigitalRoute	DigitalRoute Routing Control	X
Elitecore Technologies	ELITEDSC
Ericsson	Ericsson Diameter Signaling Controller
F5	Traffix SDC	X
Jinny Software	Diameter Router	X
Marben	MARBEN DiamX Router	X
Openet	Dynamic Context Router	X
Oracle Acme Packet Tekelec	Diameter signaling controller Diameter Signaling Router (DSR)	X X
Radware	AppDirector and AppXcel	X
Sonus [Performance Technologies]	SEGway Universal Diameter Router (UDR)	X
Tango Telecom	Diameter Signaling Controller
Tieto	Diameter Signaling Controller	X
Ulticom	Ulticom DSC	X

See "Exploding mobile device traffic, acquisitions heat up Diameter signaling controller market" - here.

4GIsrael Highlights

Yesterday I attended IMA's 7th 4G Israel Event (here). This year the event focus was on the extra value LTE is expected to bring to MNOs.

I collected the following highlights:

• Rani Wellingstein, Cisco (Co-Founder, CEO Intucell - see "[Cisco Acquired] Intucell CEO Speaks about SON Opportunity" at 4GIsrael 2013 - here): "Cisco SON activity is based in Israel, with 150 people".
   
• Shira Levine, Directing Analyst, Infonetics Research provided information on innovative LTE (and 3G) business models around the world - many based on policy management solutions. 

• Lauri Oksanent, VP Research and Technology, NSN LTE-Advanced vision:

• Paulo Lamberti, Head of Regional Offering LTE & Heterogeneous Networks, Ericsson on small cells

• Glenn Booth, VP & GM LTE Business Unit, Alcatel-Lucent on the fast success of LTE

• Leonid Burakovsky, Sr. Director, Strategic Solutions, F5 Networks explained why "LTE is less secured than 3G":

• Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis, described the voice opportunity in LTE - "Voice is not Telephony":
   
• VoLTE: "Right idea, five years late", 
• WebRTC: "The most exciting thing in web communication in 10 years"

• Dr. Ron Marquardt, Vice President Technology, Sprint introduced Sprint's LTE netwrok - Spark 

Join Us at IMA's 7th 4G Israel Event

This year I was honored to join IMA 4G Israel event's advisory board, and would like invite everyone to attend the one day conference, in Tel Aviv, on January 9th.

   

4G Israel is the largest wireless technology event in Israel, attracting hundreds of thought-leaders and decision-makers from across the country.The conference program provides a vertical view – from business and technology to infrastructure and applications, with case studies of deployments and monetization models.

Among the speakers this year are two of my frequently mentioned industry analysts - Dean Bubley (here), Founder of Disruptive Analysis and Shira Levin (here), Directing Analyst Service Enabelment & Subscriber Intelligence Infonetics Research.  Both will provide their views on the industry and opportunities for MNOs in the LTE era.

Other speakers are from Sprint, Partner (Orange) Israel, Merrill Lynch, NSN, Ericsson, F5, Alactel-Lucent and Mellanox - including a keynote by Dr. Ron Marquardt, VP Technology, Sprint.

See my posts from last year's event:

• Partner (MNO, Israel) on OTT: "We are Crying at Night"; Presents Shopping List - here
• [Cisco Acquired] Intucell CEO Speaks about SON Opportunity  - here.

Registration (through Eventbrite) - here.

F5: We are Starting to See Policy Enforcement Wins; Tremendous Progress with Traffix Diameter

Quotes from F5's CEO, John McAdam [pictured], and Manuel F. Rivelo, EVP of Strategic Solutions, made during its Q4, 2013 earning call (revenues were $370M, +9% Y/Y - see "F5 Networks Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2013 Results" - here):

• We are starting to see wins in the service provider market with our new policy enforcement [see "F5 Announces DPI; 320Gbps/Chassis" - here] and carrier-grade network address translation modules
   
• we have also made tremendous progress with our Traffix Diameter solutions for LTE rollouts. Our competitive win rate for Diameter opportunities has strengthened throughout the year, and we believe we have a real technology advantage with our Diameter solution portfolio. We are involved in some large-scale implementations with Tier 1 service provider LTE rollouts and the pipeline of future business continues to grow.

Source: F5

• We think we've got great a strategy with the consolidation strategy that fits exactly where they want to go in terms of reducing the number of boxes [see "F5: SPs Love the Idea of A single Chassis for DPI, Policy Enforcement, NAT, Steering .." - here], having them in one consolidated solution, whether it's Policy Management, Traffix D, security
   
• We feel very confident with our application and Traffic steering solutions, and really confident also with our Diameter stack to take advantage of the 4G movement that's out there
   
• .. the 4G movement is really still in its infancy in the sense that only 1/3 of the global operators in the world have moved to Diameter. But the movement over the next couple of years is to 100%. So we expect that these 400 or so mobile operators out there that are going to be implementing Diameter solutions and only growing, over that window of time, their needs.

See "F5 Networks Management Discusses Q4 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha - here.

Marben's Diameter Router Added

My list of Diameter Router products (here) was updated with Marben's DiamX Router an "enabler of a fluid Diameter traffic between the key components of the IMS based network architecture namely HSS, AAA Server, PCRF, OCS on one side and PCEF, MME, PDN Gateway and GGSN on the other side thanks to its combination of DEA and DRA roles .. Marben offers a software solution dedicated to run on any hardware or cloud infrastructure". 

 

Xavier Gadefait, PLM, Marben, updated me that "Marben has been developing its Diameter expertise since 2004 as first Diameter Stack provider with Traffix [now F5 - here and here] and has now references".

Marben also offers a Diameter Gateway- "MARBEN DiamX Gateway solves the Mediation between Diameter based interfaces from EPC or LTE equipment and legacy systems with former protocols (MAP, LDAP, CAMEL) or new platform e.g. OCS or PCRF"

DSC Deployments [264]: M1 [Singapore] Uses F5 for Control and IPX Integration

F5 Networks announced that "M1 Limited has deployed the F5® Traffix™ Signaling Delivery Controller™ (SDC™) Diameter solution to optimize mobility management in its LTE home network and provide high quality LTE roaming services".

Patrick Scodeller [pictured], COO, M1 said: “.. we selected the F5 Traffix Signaling Delivery Controller as a Diameter Edge Agent (DEA) to enable simple and seamless integration between our network and IPX carriers, and as a Diameter Routing Agent (DRA) for consistent network reliability and tight control”.

At the end of Q2, 2013, M1 had 1.1M postpaid and 985K prepaid subscribers which is ~25% market share.

 

See "M1 Deploys F5® Traffix™ Signaling Delivery Controller™ to Optimize LTE Roaming Services and Mobility Management" - here.

F5: SPs Love the Idea of A single Chassis for DPI, Policy Enforcement, NAT, Steering ..

 
John McAdam [pictured], CEO, F5, addressed the vendor's DPI/policy enforcement product (see "F5 PEM Has DPI - Made by Qosmos" - here and "F5 Announces DPI; 320Gbps/Chassis" - here) in the company recent earning call:

• We have enjoyed great success in increasing the addressable market for our solution portfolio, especially in the security and service provider markets, with products like our Advanced Firewall Manager and the BIG-IP Carrier-Grade NAT and policy enforcement modules, and we will continue to expand and enhance the functionality of all these modules.
   
• And meanwhile, in between, when we talk to service providers about our strategy of consolidation, where we talk about being able to do policy enforcement management, DPI, Carrier-Grade NAT, traffic steering, a whole range of areas where they have separate boxes right now to do these functions, if we can do them within the same chassis or within the same appliance, they'll love that strategy. So I think Manny's 18 months is probably spot on. But meanwhile, the consolidation approach we have is very attractive to them.

See "F5 Networks, Inc. (FFIV) Management Discusses Q3 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", By SeekingAlpha, - here.

[TechNavio]: DSC Market - 51% CAGR for 2012-16

A recent report by TechNavio forecasts ".. the Global Diameter Signaling Controller market to grow at a CAGR of 50.73 percent over the period 2012-2016. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing deployment of LTE networks"

Other recent reports stated:

• Arc Chart: 90% CAGR, 2012-2017 [here, Feb 2013]
• Infonetics: 900% in 2012 over 2011 [here, Jan 2013]
• Exact Ventures: Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC) cumulative product revenues between 2011 and 2016 are forecasted to approach $1 billion [here, June 2012]

"Key vendors dominating this space include Acme Packet Inc.,F5 Networks Inc., and Tekelec Inc". [the first and last acquired by Oracle, and it seems that Oracle will focus on the Tekelec product - see "Oracle - All the Diameter s/w One may Need, Now with Tekelec" - here]. 

"Other vendors mentioned in the report are Allot Communications Inc., Bridgewater Systems Corp. [Amdocs], Procera Networks Inc., and Sandvine Corp.". 

See "Global Diameter Signaling Controller Market 2012-2016" - here.

GENBAND Expands its Signaling Solution with F5's DSC

  

Last month GENBAND ditched its OEM relations with Procera Networks (here) - and now it announces a new OEM agreement with F5 Networks, a Procera's competitor in the DPI space, for F5's diameter signaling solutions.

GENBAND explains that the need (see below) for the technology derived by  "Subscriber demand for bandwidth-hungry apps is placing strains on mobile networks" a good explanation for the use of DPI-based traffic management solution as well. However, it seems that focusing on the signaling plane, with SIP SBC and Diameter creates a unique offering, while managing traffic is a very competitive space, with huge TEMs and pure players.

The partnership with F5 made "..to deliver integrated SIP and Diameter signaling solutions. In line with the F5 partnership, GENBAND is introducing its QUANTiX DSC (Diameter Signaling Controller), which integrates Diameter functionality with its market-leading QUANTiX Session Border Controller to uniquely provide advanced, secure and scalable voice and data roaming capabilities for IMS and LTE network operators .. The integrated SMART EDGE solution from GENBAND delivers a Diameter Routing Agent (DRA), a Diameter Edge Agent (DEA), a Diameter gateway interworking function (IWF), a Diameter load balancer, and a SIP Session Border Controller – all on a common platform with centralized management. These enhanced capabilities offer secure, seamless connectivity within and between IMS and LTE networks to enable simple, scalable, and cost-effective deployment of rich LTE voice and data services".

B.G. Kumar, President of GENBAND’s Multimedia Business Unit said: “Subscriber demand for bandwidth-hungry apps is placing strains on mobile networks and creating new complexities at the network edge for handling surging signaling traffic growth .. Mobile operators around the globe are adopting LTE at a significant rate. F5’s Diameter leadership and innovation make it an ideal partner for GENBAND to provide the best integrated solution for the network edge to its customers”

See "GENBAND Partners with F5 Networks to Bring to Market Integrated SIP and Diameter Signaling Solutions" - here.

F5 Discusses Traffic Management and Diameter Routing Business

 
F5's CEO, John McAdam (pictured) provided some insights to the recently announced policy enforcement product (see "F5 Announces DPI; 320Gbps/Chassis" - here) and  Diameter Signaling Router (acquired from Traffix Systems) market in the company's earning call:

• Traffic Management business - "Clearly, we were very disappointed with the results in the service provider market last quarter. However, we have a strong pipeline and are convinced that we have a winning strategy with our intelligent services platforms that can consolidate complex traffic steering, carrier-grade NAT solutions, application and network firewall protection and our policy enforcement module .. F5's Application Delivery Firewall solution is the first in the industry to combine DDoS protection, the world's fastest network firewall application security, access management and DNS security, as well as comprehensive traffic management functionality"
   
• Diameter Signalling Business - ".. we are seeing good success and initial project wins with our Traffix Systems Diameter solutions for LTE deployments. And over the past year, we have closed wins with more than 25 operators worldwide .. we feel really good about the Diameter solution, the Diameter product. We think it's the best out there. We thought that before the acquisition. I don't know what will happen".
   
• Competition with Oracle, following its Tekelec and Acme Packet acquisitions - "Acme would also compete in that space. I'm not sure what will happen there. Obviously, that's up to Oracle. But there was really 3 before. And I think that we have -- the deal with us here is basically to get more and more projects to make sure we're partnering with the right partners, and I think that's a good strategy to do that. And I'm very hesitant here because Oracle is a great partner of ours, right? So there is coopetition also a great customer. So -- but I do think the Diameter solution is a great opportunity". 

Manuel Rivelo (pictured) -EVP of Security and Strategic Solutions added:  ".. the Diameter business is going as we projected. It's early in the market, as you all know. LTE is rolling out. As LTE rolls out, the complexity of those networks increases, and that's really when you need the DRA and DEA solutions that are in the market segment. So what we've seen is a huge ramp-up in the number of deals that we're being invited to. From an ARX [Traffix?] point of view, we're seeing more proof-of-concepts out there than ever before. And over the last, I would say, 45 days or so, we've seen an interest from a lot of the operators who had already gone with some solutions prior to us entering the market, re-approaching us in that arena for our portfolio. So we're pretty excited. We think it's going according to plan. Obviously, time will tell".

See "F5 Networks Management Discusses Q2 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript", by SeekingAlpha, here.