[Infonetics]: Business Analysis of the 5 Leading SDP Vendors

 
A recent survey by Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence. IHS "profiles and analyzes the top 5 SDP software vendors as identified by service providers: Ericsson, HP, Huawei, OpenCloud and Oracle:

• Ericsson, Huawei and Oracle have all built strong portfolios, both organically and via acquisition, around the SDP opportunity, and that is reflected in their leadership positions in this year’s scorecard.  However, as the market shifts toward emerging opportunities such as API platforms and alternative delivery models, these established players may get a run for their money from smaller suppliers with a more targeted focus, 
   
• Ericsson’s longstanding presence in the wireless industry in general—and SDP market specifically—helps it land a leadership position
   
• Huawei ramped up in the SDP space quickly, gaining market share by selling into developing regions
   
• Oracle enjoys strong financials, a solid customer base, and a reputation for reliability and support which have helped the company maintain a leadership standing in SDP
   
• Despite a solid roster of customers, HP is struggling in the SDP market as it addresses financial issues and revamps its product suite
   
• Smaller player OpenCloud continues to grow by positioning itself as a less expensive and more innovative option to the larger SDP suppliers

See "IHS Names Ericsson, Huawei and Oracle Leaders in Service DeliveryPlatform Scorecard" - here.

[Infonetics]: The DPI Market is Slow to Adapt NFV; to Reach $972M in 2015

A new report by Shira Levine [pictured], research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence IHS on the DPI market:

• "projecting the global deep packet inspection (DPI) market to grow to $972 million in 2015, up 15 percent year-over-year, as communications service providers continue to use DPI as a key tool for bandwidth management and the creation of new services and feature ..
   
• The majority of the traditional DPI appliance suppliers had a challenging first half of 2015, but smaller players, particularly the embedded DPI suppliers such as Qosmos, saw healthy year-over-year growth [see "Openwave Mobility Integrates Qosmos' DPI " - here]
  
  [Related posts: "Is there a problem in the DPI Market ?" - part1, part2, part3]
  
  The chart on the right shows Infonetics' prediction for the DPI market from 2010

• While the major DPI suppliers are tackling the virtualization trend head-on, moving aggressively to introduce virtualized versions of their products and forge relationships within the NFV ecosystem, their customers are slower to jump on the bandwagon. Performance concerns remain an issue, and operators continue to be conservative with deployments of virtualized DPI technology
   
• DPI is playing a key role in another hot area—analytics—with operators increasingly interested in leveraging network intelligence gleaned from DPI as part of their larger ‘big data’ strategies
   
• There is renewed opportunity for DPI suppliers to address operators’ security concerns, leveraging their solutions to tackle network infrastructure threats such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, worms and viruses on a real-time basis" [related post - "Allot: $8M Expansion Order for Security Services" - here]

See "Deep Packet Inspection to Play Key Role in Operator Analytics, BigData Strategies" - here.

[IHS] Software is 80% of the $11.6B (on 2019) NFV Market

A new report by Michael Howard [pictured], senior research director for carrier networks, IHS forecasts that "the global network functions virtualization (NFV) hardware, software and services market to reach $11.6 billion in 2019, up from $2.3 billion in 2015. NFV represents operators’ shift from a hardware focus to software focus, and our forecasts show this. We believe NFV software will comprise over 80 percent of the $11.6 billion total NFV revenue in 2019 .. The software is always a much larger investment than the server, storage and switch hardware, representing about $4 of every $5 spent on NFV,” 

• Service providers are still early in the long-term, 10- to 15-year transformation to virtualized networks
   
• Revenue from outsourced services for NFV projects is projected to grow at a 71 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019
   
• Revenue from software-only video content delivery network (CDN) functions for managing and distributing data is forecast by IHS to grow 30-fold from 2015 to 2019

See "NFV Market to Grow More than 5-Fold Through 2019, Says IHS" - here.

[Survey]: Huawei, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent are the Top IMS Vendors

  

Diane Myers [pictured], research director for VoIP, UC and IMS, IHS (Infonetics Research): "conducted in-depth interviews with global service providers that have IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core equipment in their networks or will by the end of 2017 and discovered that only 8 percent are running IMS network elements in a network functions virtualization (NFV) environment today .. more are on the path by starting to utilize software running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware as a stepping stone to full NFV. One of the biggest drivers for NFV is the ability to scale services up and down quickly and introduce new network services more efficiently and in a timely manner, which makes IMS a good early fit for NFV".

"80 percent of service provider respondents indicated that parts of their IMS elements will be running in an NFV environment by 2017, which IHS believes is somewhat optimistic. In an open-ended question asking respondents who they consider to be the top three IMS infrastructure vendors, operators most often named Huawei, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent"

See "Service Providers Optimistic about Moving IMS Networks to NFV, Rate Vendors" - here.

[Survey]: OTT Partnerships Drive SDP Deployments; Oracle, Ericsson, Huawei Lead

A new survey of "21 convergent, mobile and cable operators" by Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, IHS (Infonetics Research) finds that "nearly half of respondents identified supporting partnerships with over-the-top (OTT) providers and better monetization of subscriber data as very important drivers behind their service delivery platform (SDP) deployments .. Operators continue to deploy long-standing use cases such as messaging and single sign-on via their SDPs, but they are increasingly looking to expand the capabilities the SDP to support new use cases including partnerships with OTT providers and better monetization of subscriber data” 

• The majority of respondents have deployed their SDPs on-premises with commercially-available hardware, though virtualized deployments on shared hardware and via an internal cloud are most likely to be under evaluation
   
• Consequently, support for deployment on commercially-available hardware came in relatively high on the list of key criteria for SDP suppliers, although product reliability and support capabilities topped the list
   
• Oracle is the SDP supplier cited as a leader by a majority of survey participants, with Ericsson and Huawei following closely behind [links are for product pages]

See "OTT Partnerships, Subscriber Data Monetization Top Reasons Operators Deploy Service Delivery Platforms" - here.

[Infonetics]: Huawei and Cisco ($89M) are the PCC Market Leaders

 
Maywun Wong announced in Cisco's Service Provider blog that "Last week, we were thrilled to receive the news that Infonetics scored Cisco Policy Suite as a Leader in the Policy Management Scorecard. 

Cisco was one of only two leaders recognized by Infonetics in this space and was recognized for building “… up its position in the market rapidly after its acquisition of BroadHop [Dec '12; here], demonstrating strong momentum around policy virtualization”.

See also - 

• Policy Management Market Rises 27 Percent in 2014; VoLTE, Data Monetization Play Big Role" - here 
• [Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape" - here.  

See "Cisco Scores as Leader in the Infonetics Policy Management Scorecard" - here.

[Infonetics Survey]: CSPs Expect to "significantly increase" Wi-Fi Access Point Deployment

A recent survey by Richard Webb [pictured], research director for mobile backhaul and small cells, Infonetics Research, finds that "service providers across the globe that operate carrier WiFi networks or will do so soon .. expect to significantly increase their access point deployments by the end of 2016 .. a quarter of the respondents expect that by 2016, 26 percent of their access points will be Hotspot 2.0-compliant to enable seamless roaming among WiFi networks and between WiFi and cellular networks"

Related post - "Ruckus/Global Reach Enables Hotspot 2.0 Service in San-Francisco Area"  - here

“Revenue generation has become a key driver of carrier WiFi deployments. Not only does Hotspot 2.0 support integration of WiFi with mobile and fixed networks, but it supports the creation of new revenue models for WiFi services”. Says Richard. 

• Survey respondents’ top drivers for deploying carrier WiFi are preventing churn, bundling service with mobile broadband, improving coverage and generating new WiFi access revenue
   
• Carriers surveyed are adopting a growing variety of monetization models, with tiered hotspots and WiFi roaming growing the fastest through 2016
   
• For the third straight year, Ruckus Wireless and Cisco lead respondent perception of top carrier WiFi vendors

See "Hotspot 2.0 and Virtualization Key to New Revenue for WiFi Carriers" - here.

[Infonetics]: SDM Market Grew by 29%, to $1.4B in 2014

A recent research by Shira Levine [pictured], research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research finds that the "worldwide subscriber data management (SDM) market grew 29 percent in 2014 over 2013, to $1.4 billion, fueled by operator demand for voice over LTE (VoLTE) and subscriber analytics .. momentum around big data and analytics has the potential to have an even more significant impact on the SDM market, as operators seek to break down the data silos that exist within their organizations and better leverage subscriber data to improve the customer experience and drive additional revenue" 

Other findings:

• "Operators are looking to deploy subscriber data management (SDM) as a centralized subscriber data repository that can be integrated with multiple front-end applications potentially from multiple vendors
   
• Virtualization of front-end applications such as home subscriber server (HSS) and policy and charging rules function (PCRF) are well underway, and virtualization of the backend SDM platform is following suit, but concerns about reliability, availability and security persist"

See "Subscriber Data Management Market Up 29 Percent as Big Data, VoLTE Rev" - here.

[Infonetics]: Gradual Transition to NFV-Based DPI; Allot and Sandvine Lead the Market

A new report by Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research, forecasts that the "..market for deep packet inspection (DPI) solutions deployed as a virtual network function (VNF) will grow at a 66 percent compound annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019

.. we are seeing trial activity and limited commercial deployments. Operators are likely to deploy virtualized DPI incrementally, leveraging it to support separate lines of business such as M2M and MVNO, and gradually expanding those engagements over time as they become more confident about the technology”

Related posts on the DPI vendors NFV activity: Sandvine, Procera, Allot  Qosmos,

Other highlights:

• The FCC has released its net neutrality rules in the US, but the issue is far from resolved and court challenges are underway; regulations in Western Europe are under reevaluation as well and the topic is rearing its head in emerging markets
   
• The focus of the deep packet inspection market is shifting toward use cases such as video optimization, granular charging, network security and content connectivity
   
• In machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, DPI technology is being used to enable better identification of traffic generated by connected devices and mitigate its impact on the network
   
• Sandvine and Allot are neck-and-neck in the race for the DPI market share lead, followed by Cisco and Procera

See "Virtualized Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to Grow at 66 Percent CAGR Through 2019" - here.

[Infonetics]: 1B Fixed Broadband Subscribers by 2019 (5% CAGR)

A new report by Jeff Heynen [pictured], principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV, Infonetics Research finds that "global fixed broadband subscribers, including DSL, cable broadband, FTTH, and FTTB+LAN subscribers. (Infonetics tracks mobile broadband subscribers in its Mobile Services and Subscribers report.) grew 8 percent in 2014, reaching 733 million as service providers around the world continue to steadily add subscribers" 

The report forecasts that "global fixed broadband subscribers to grow at a 5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2014 to 2019, led by China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

• Though DSL remains far and away the largest technology choice for fixed broadband, subscriber growth is being driven by FTTH and DOCSIS 3.0
   
• FTTH subscribers jumped 22 percent in 2014 from 2013, crossing the 100 million threshold for the first time"

See "Infonetics Projects Fixed Broadband Subscribers to Approach 1 Billion in 2019, Led by China" - here.

[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.

[Infonetics]: "significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape"

 
A new survey by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research, on the Policy management marker finds that:

"The next generation of policy management solutions has evolved to address the challenges associated with increased broadband consumption and a wider range of end-user devices. This shift has translated into significant changes in the policy management vendor landscape as suppliers look to refine and reposition their offerings .. There are new buyers for policy management within the operators and new requirements that policy solutions must address, and this has created challenges for many suppliers playing in the market -- a trend that we expect to continue in the coming years" 

Survey results: 

•  respondents put Huawei at the top of the list; Ericsson came in second, and Openet and Oracle tied for third
   
• Topping respondents' criteria for choosing a policy management solution are reliability and performance scalability
   
• While only 13 percent of respondents are currently running policy management software as a virtual network function (VNF), 57 percent plan to do so by the end of 2016. A surprisingly high 32 percent of operators surveyed plan to deploy policy via a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform by the end of 2016

See "Vendor shakeup expected in policy management market as operators seek more flexible solutions" - here. 

[Infonetics]: "Despite the rise of mobile data, blended ARPU continues to fall"

A recent report by Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, Infonetics Research (the first after being acquired by IHS - here - Congratulations to J'Amy, Shira and the team!) finds that:

• "Worldwide mobile service revenue barely budged in the first half of 2014 (1H14), up just 0.5% from the same period a year ago, to $385.5 billion .. For the first time, voice usage slightly slowed, dragged by China where over-the-top (OTT) alternatives took their share, and mobile broadband overtook SMS as the largest revenue generator of mobile data. 

• Mobile broadband revenue rose 26% in 1H14 from 1H13 and continued to drive overall mobile services market growth .. Despite the rise of mobile data, blended ARPU continues to fall, but at a much slower pace in every region, including developing Asia Pacific"  

See "Mobile broadband overtakes SMS as largest generator of mobile data revenue" - here.

[Infonetics Survey]: 50% of Operators will Buy Subscriber Analytics from DPI Vendors

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2014 Subscriber Intelligence Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, with the following findings: 

• “As [operators] look for ways to better monetize their customer base and differentiate against new competitors, we’re seeing interest in a wider range of analytics use cases, including identifying next-best-action marketing opportunities, ascertaining a subscriber’s relative profitability, and enabling variable charging based on factors such as network conditions and customer value

• The cost and time associated with subscriber data integration and migration are significant barriers to subscriber intelligence projects
   
• The top drivers behind respondents’ subscriber analytics initiatives are gaining a better understanding how subscribers use networks and applications and reducing subscriber churn
   
• Respondents reported either buying or being likely to buy subscriber intelligence solutions from traditional analytics vendors, though nearly half indicated they were likely to buy from DPI (deep packet inspection) vendors"

See "Subscriber analytics market opening up to alternative vendors" - here.

[Infonetics]: Reaffirms DPI Market CAGR: 22% ('13'-'18); Driven by LTE

Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research, published additional excerpts from its latest DPI report (see April's release - "[Infonetics]: "net neutrality is now less of an issue in the U.S" for the DPI Market" - here):

• The path that network functions virtualization (NFV) will take remains a bit uncertain as standards crystallize and operators develop their strategies, but we believe that NFV will ultimately have a significant impact on the deep packet inspection (DPI) market
   
• The global deep packet inspection (DPI) market is forecast by Infonetics to grow at a 22% CAGR from 2013 to 2018, to reach $2B. See Infonetics chart below. The other chart shows the past revenues for the 3 public DPI companies. 2014 revenues are for the first 3 quarters.
   
• Sandvine maintained its leading market share position in the overall DPI market, while Cisco narrowly took the lead in mobile DPI,
   
• There is a growing interest in leveraging DPI to support more innovative service plans and content bundles, particularly in markets where net neutrality is an issue
   
• LTE is driving spending on DPI in developed markets, where the additional bandwidth is igniting more video consumption

		Source: The Broadband Traffic Management Blog

See "Network functions virtualization (NFV) will have big impact on deep packet inspection (DPI) market" - here.

[Infonetics]: What are the Key Use cases for DSC?

A new white paper by Diane Myers [pictured], principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research, "examines the key Diameter use cases operators need to consider when planning for IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)".

“The growth of IMS around voice over LTE (VoLTE) deployments brings new challenges and opportunities related to Diameter and, ultimately, Diameter signaling controllers. When configured correctly, Diameter can enhance customer experience by ensuring quality of service in voice over LTE calls, video sessions, and enhanced messaging.

By managing Diameter traffic, Diameter signaling controllers (DSCs) play an important role in ensuring a high-quality experience for services running over IMS networks. The four use cases that represent opportunities for DSCs and for which operators need to consider in planning for IMS are 1) session binding, 2) charging, 3) subscription location function, and 4) monetizing assets"

See "Infonetics whitepaper examines the Diameter use cases operators need to plan for in IMS networks" - here.

[Infonetics]: VoLTE Slows down the IMS Market (led By Huawei)

A new report by Diane Myers, principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research finds that deployments of VoLTE services slows down the IMS equipment market - "The global service provider VoIP and IMS market totaled $878 million in 2Q14, down 6% from 2Q13, and down 12% sequentially .. Huawei and Metaswitch are the standout IMS/VoIP vendors in 2Q14, bucking the down quarter"

"To date, nationwide launches of voice over LTE (VoLTE) have taken place only in small countries and city-states such as South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong .. Larger nationwide launches of VoLTE in the U.S. and Japan are expected to begin toward the end of 2014; this, in addition to the activity of operators in Europe, Canada, and other parts of Asia, will fuel IMS equipment related to VoLTE in 2015.

The large network equipment vendors—Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia—are benefitting from VoLTE-related activity and product sets that extend beyond IMS". 

See "Service provider VoIP and IMS market enters period of correction after ramp-up to VoLTE" - here.

[Infonetics]: Ericsson Scores as Best SDP Vendor

A new vendor scorecard report by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research (new logo on the right) "ranks the 5 largest global vendors of service delivery platform (SDP) software: Ericsson, HP, Huawei, OpenCloud, and Oracle"

The report finds that “Based on completely quantitative metrics, including financial information, product capabilities and service provider feedback, we named Ericsson the top vendor in the service delivery platform (SDP) software market, with Oracle following close behind .. Ericsson scored particularly well on service and support and product reliability, and Oracle received high ratings on financial stability and solution breadth. Both companies, however, scored below average when it came to pricing .. Key to #2 Oracle’s continued success in the SDP software market will be its ability to capitalize on the demand for enterprise applications and services, including machine to machine"

See "Ericsson and Oracle shine in new service delivery platform scorecard" - here.

[Infonetics]: Centralized Signaling and Routing Control Market Expands to Relieve Congestion

A new report by Diane Myers [pictured], principal analyst for VoIP, UC, and IMS, Infonetics Research finds that "The centralized signaling and routing control (CSRC) market is not new, but the platforms are expanding as operators look to scale networks more efficiently with the rise in mobile broadband traffic. CSRC platforms are a class of solutions designed to help operators relieve congestion and simplify network management as they bridge legacy networks and next-generation IP ..  CSRC platforms facilitate interworking between the two by enabling operators to manage both legacy and next-gen signaling protocols, including SIP, Diameter, SS7, and Radius.

• Infonetics is predicting a cumulative $282 million will be spent globally on CSRC equipment from 2014 to 2018, driven by LTE network expansion
   
• A number of different applications can be integrated in a CSRC platform to broaden capabilities, including ENUM/Domain Name System (DNS), breakout gateway control function (BGCF), home subscriber server (HSS), Diameter signaling control, IMS call session control function (CSCF), and policy and charging rules function (PCRF) .. There are a few vendors in the CSRC space, including Italtel, NetNumber, and Sonus, that are finding success with operators that have a mix of legacy and next-gen networks, particularly large tier 1s

Source: NetNumber

See "Rise in mobile broadband traffic puts new focus on centralized signaling and routing control" - here.

[Infonetics]: Convergent Charging Grew by Expansions; To Reach $5.3B by 2018

 
A new report by Shira Levine, directing analyst for service enablement and subscriber intelligence, Infonetics Research finds that "Much of the recent growth in the convergent charging market has been in expansion of existing deals, with operators buying license capacity and related services to support additional subscribers and new lines of business" .. The global convergent charging market totaled $2.3 billion in 2013, and is forecast by Infonetics to grow to $5.3 billion in 2018". 

Related post - "[Infonetics Survey]: Convergent Charging Goes Into 2nd-Gen.; Led by Ericsson, Amdocs and Huawei" - here.

"Convergent charging allows operators to offer service tiers, location-based pricing, over-the-top (OTT) content packages, shared data plans, and sponsored data"

See "Network expansions driving convergent charging market, dominated by Asia Pacific" - here.