Zain [Jordan] Adds Procera's Analytics

Procera Networks announced an "..extension of the strategic partnership with Zain in Jordan. The leading provider for mobile services has been a Procera customer since 2012 deploying the company’s PacketLogic™ products to provide better quality of experience (QoE) for its subscribers. The relationship will now expand to include the analytics family of solutions to leverage the granular network analytics captured .. Zain is also deploying Procera’s enforcement solutions with online charging integration (Gy). It enables monetization of over the top services by restricting and enhancing access depending on subscription type".

Related post - "Zain Jordan CTO Lists Technologies Used to Ensure Capacity" - here.

  

Yousef Al-Mutawe, COO at Zain. said: “We have decided to continue our partnership with Procera through upgrading the current platform to the new version and adding on top of the data inspection tool the insights analytics solutions. Insights and its Customer Care tools will enrich the customer experience and engagement and will provide us with a wider view about our user’s behavior and deeper view about applications and user’s preferences.”

 

At the end of Q3, 2015 Zain Jordan had 4.1M subscribers (from population of 7.7M), During the first 9 months of 2015, Zain capex expenditures in Jordan were $40M, amounting to 12% of the revenues. 

See "Procera and Zain Deepen Innovation Partnership to Add Analytics and Enable New Monetization Strategies" - here.

Procera Launches Virtual Experience Probe

Procera Networks announced the release of its ".. game-changing Virtual Experience Probe, eVolution. 

Engineered to deliver intelligence to real-time analytics systems, eVolution is an all-virtual data enablement solution that empowers fixed, cable, mobile and WiFi operators to enhance the subscriber experience, by providing contextual intelligence they can act upon immediately. 

Rather than simply providing raw byte counts that are delivered by traditional probing systems, eVolution provides a broader subscriber view that enables an operator to take advantage of the intelligence in real-time with discount or turbo offers or for customer care problem resolution .. eVolution is available for purchase now. 

The eVolution data probe runs in VMware or KVM virtualization environments on COTS hardware, and is the world’s first fully scalable real-time big data source for network intelligence based on native DPI technology. eVolution is differentiated by:

• Infrastructure and Vendor agnostic data acquisition
• Real-time virtualized software with highly optimized performance on COTS hardware
• Deployment flexibility for a broad ecosystem of customers: carriers, enterprises, system integrators, OEMs, channel partners, and third party big data providers
• Flexible data and KPI formats for use by big data repositories
• Best cost per subscriber value designed to augment or displace cumbersome and expensive passive probing solutions

eVolution’s base solution enables traditional DPI visibility through Traffic Perspectives, with additional Perspectives available to provide a comprehensive view into Subscriber, Routing, Device, Score, RAN, and Content data. These Perspectives are used to enhance the subscriber-focused data feed even further and give a holistic view of the subscriber experience. 

   

See "Procera Networks Launches eVolutionTM Virtual Experience Probe for Broadband Operators" - here.

Savvius Introduces Network Performance Monitoring Appliance

Savvius Insight

Savvius announced "Savvius Insight a mini network appliance that delivers vital network performance and security information. 
  
Priced at $1,500 and the size of a small trade paperback, Savvius Insight includes Savvius OmniPeek® network performance management software for monitoring and local or remote troubleshooting and Splunk® Forwarder to send network analytics to Splunk Enterprise™ or Splunk Cloud™. Performing network analytics locally and in real time".

[Related post: "Savvius Adds Application Classification with Procera's DPI" - here]

"Enterprise and Service Providers extending multi-segment analysis and visibility from the data center to the network edge, including remote and distributed offices or customer locations.

OmniPeak Packet level analysis

• 100 megabit-class network.
• Savvius Insight uses an external power adapter and has no moving parts.
• Four-core Intel Atom processor with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD.
• Pre-loaded, tested, and fully integrated Savvius Capture Engine for OmniPeek™ running on Linux.
• Bi-directional bridge ports with automatic bypass for inline use.

See "Savvius™ Announces Savvius Insight™ for Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting of Smaller Networks" - here.

Sandvine NFV Reaches 1.1 Tbps Throughput w/10 RU of Servers

Sandvine announced that "NFV Now a Reality for Operators of Any Size 

.. the Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch (PTS) Virtual Series has established a new Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) performance benchmark by achieving 1.1 Tbps of throughput performance.

.. The test conducted by Sandvine utilized a Dell™ PowerEdge™ M1000e Blade Enclosure, 14 Dell™ PowerEdge™ M630 Blade Servers, Intel® Xeon® processors E5 v3, Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapters X540 and X710, the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) providing exceptional packet processing performance, and the Intel® Open Network Platform Reference Architecture (Intel® ONP)". 

Related posts:

• Sandvine States 155 Gbps NFV Performance (Beats Procera by 5 Gbps) - here. 
• [Infonetics]: Gradual Transition to NFV-Based DPI; Allot and Sandvine Lead the Market  - here.

".. the 1.1 Tbps benchmark was achieved using a traffic mix that uses various packet sizes and flow-types which is representative of real-world network conditions. Additionally, each Dell PowerEdge M630 Blade Server utilized only one of its dual sockets, with the Intel® Xeon processor utilizing approximately 60% of its processing capability. This extra compute room ensures that it is possible for operators to implement the same advanced traffic measurements and intelligent broadband use cases that they have previously done on purpose built hardware.

See "Sandvine Virtual Series Achieves 1.1 Tbps of NFV Performance" - here.

NI Deployments [359]: SoftBank [Japan] Uses Procera for Subscriber Experience Visibility

Just before replacing its CEO (here) Procera Networks announces a high profile customer for its DPI and analytics solutions (Perspectives).

"SoftBank has deployed Procera’s PacketLogic solutions to enhance its LTE service offerings in Japan. Procera was selected to replace the existing traditional analytics and assurance vendors [see other solution they use below] due to the enhanced Subscriber Experience visibility that Procera was able to provide for the operators on top of traditional mobile analytics. 

Softbank is committed to providing a superior subscriber experience as broadband usage increases with the popularization of smart phones and tablets .. This deployment was delivered to SoftBank in partnership with ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation". 

Procera reported in Q1 (here) that "For the three months ended March 31, 2015, revenue from Itochu Techno-Solutions Corp. represented 14% of net revenue" - bringing the revenues from Itochu to $2.9M in Q1 2015 (which may include other customers and represents just a portion of the revenues from the SoftBank deal),

Related posts:

• Softbank Selected JDSU’s ariesoGEO - here
• SoftBank Uses Ericsson's Mobility-based Policy to Relief Congestion  - here
• Softbank Uses ALU for Better QoE  - here 

See "Procera Networks Deployed on SoftBank’s LTE Network" - here.

Procera Gets a New CEO

Procera Networks announced today that its Board of Directors has "..named Lyndon Cantor [pictured] as chief executive officer to replace James Brear, who has announced his departure from the company"

This comes shortly after Procera was acquired by Francisco Partners Management turning it back to a private company (see "Procera Networks' Acquisition Completed Successfully" - here).

".. Lyndon Cantor has 30 years of experience in telecommunication and enterprise technology markets. Most recently he served as president of Tektronix Communications [recently acquired by NetScout Systems], a network assurance solutions provider serving network operators across fixed, mobile and cable environments. In his three years as president, Cantor helped increase revenue from $323 million to $463 million, while considerably increasing operating margins. He also drove an aggressive innovation agenda that launched several new products". 

See "Procera Networks Names Lyndon Cantor as CEO" - here.

Procera Enables MNOs to Measure Applications' QoE

Last month Procera Networks published the results of a survey, showing that although mobile users have QoE issues on a daily basis (here) they do not complain. To solve this user's laziness, Procera now unveiled a way for MNOs to measure users' QoE - their "biggest announcement of 2015", I am told.
 

".. ScoreCard, a new solution enabling improved visibility and measurement of the quality of experience (QoE) that operators’ networks are capable of delivering to subscribers. The solution reports scores separated into application categories that matter the most to subscribers, providing actionable insights about where QoE issues occur in the network and where to target investments and actions for operators to achieve maximum impact on the subscriber experience, network performance and ROI.

ScoreCard measures activities such as web surfing, streaming video, social media, real-time gaming, uploads, downloads and voice applications and scores each of these seven application categories using letter grades from A to F, clearly showing what level of QoE the network can deliver. 

The solution offers different views to visualize QoE by subscriber tier, device or location for operators to fix bottlenecks and prioritize investments. It scores the network by isolating potentially problematic factors including applications, devices, cell towers, latency or throughput and creates value for customer care, marketing, engineering and executive management departments at fixed or mobile broadband providers.

ScoreCard is an out-of-the-box ready solution for operators to deploy physically or virtually that visualizes scores by application, device, location, and subscriber tier. It gives operators the power to fix bottlenecks and make informed decisions about how to deliver an improved subscriber experience and manage subscriber expectations.

Its simplified intelligence enables CAPEX prioritization for improved ROI to justify the cost of network upgrades and build the best network while also benchmarking performance for engineers and consumers to analyze, contrast and compare service levels. This means that operators can avoid over-engineering in the wrong areas, create a more accurate investment plan and clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of any improvements made.

See "Procera Networks Defines Broadband Subscriber Experience with Scorecard" - here.

Procera Networks' Acquisition Completed Successfully

Procera Networks is now a private company. The tender that was announced in April (here) has been completed. Do I am left with the other two players as far as revenues and other public reports are concerned. 

Francisco Partners Management announced the ".. results of its tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Procera Networks // for $11.50 per share .. as of the expiration of the tender offer at 12:00 a.m. New York City time at the end of the day on Thursday, June 4, 2015, a total of 16,529,499 shares of Procera common stock had been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn, representing approximately 79% of Procera’s outstanding shares .. the condition to the tender offer that a majority of Procera’s outstanding shares be validly tendered has now been satisfied and Francisco Partners intends to complete its acquisition of Procera later today"

See "Francisco Partners Announces Results of Tender Offer" - here.

Survey: Mobile Users Have Daily Video QoE Issues, but They don't Complain

Thomas Vasen

Procera's Sr. Director

 of Subscriber Experience 

Marketing

A recent survey by Procera Networks (responded by 540 consumers - 30% from the U.S., 35% from Europe and 35% from the rest of the world) finds that 60%  feel they "don’t have continuous high-speed coverage".

Other findings:

• 75% stream video on mobile devices several times per week with 80% expecting this to increase in the future and 70% rating it very important to have good quality video streaming
    
• But 90% experience video quality problems every day

Procera finds this both "surprising and troubling":

• Surprising because "a combined 90% rated their worst experiences as falling into only two categories: poor video quality; and basic connectivity/ coverage problems, and despite the combination of high consumer expectations and poor experiences with mobile coverage and video quality, a combined 85% of them never, or rarely, call customer service"
    
• Troubling "considering the trend towards a mostly-mobile lifestyle that is taking place globally".

See more - "[InfoGraphic] Results: Procera Networks’ Mobile Subscriber Experience Survey" - here.

Savvius Adds Application Classification with Procera's DPI

Procera Networks announced that its "Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) has been selected by Savvius .. to deliver real-time, application-aware network capture and analysis for the latest versions of its Omnipliance hardware and OmniPeek software solutions. 

Visualizing, analyzing and troubleshooting performance bottlenecks – Savvius embeds Procera’s NAVL software engine into all of its products: Omnipliance hardware, OmniPeek software and the recently introduced Savvius Vigil security forensics appliance. This integration allows its customers to classify applications in real time and gather information to better understand what is going on in the network.

Savvius OmniPeek

..Combined solution provides industry-leading DPI functionality – Savvius has been leveraging Napatech accelerators to capture, timestamp, filter, and slice packets for several years". 

See "Savvius Selects Procera Networks for Network Traffic Visibility and Napatech for Performance Acceleration" - 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.

Procera to be Acquired for $11.50/Share (Current Price $9.51)

 
Procera Networks announced that it has "signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by private funds managed by Francisco Partners Management, L.P., a leading global technology-focused private equity firm, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $240 million.

Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Francisco Partners will commence a tender offer no later than May 5, 2015 to acquire all outstanding shares of Procera’s common stock for $11.50 per share in cash. This represents a premium of approximately 21% over the closing price of Procera’s common stock on April 21, 2015, and a premium of approximately 32% over the unaffected closing price on January 22, 2015, the last day prior to an article reporting the potential sale of the company. Procera’s Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction"

Contract is here.

Procera also announced preliminary results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015:

"Revenue for the first quarter of 2015 is expected to be in the range of $19.5 million to $20.5 million. The ratio of bookings to revenue for the first quarter was below one. The company expects the gross margin percentage to be approximately 60% and to incur a net operating loss on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis for the first quarter of 2015. The company is not revising its previously announced guidance for the full year".

See "Procera Networks to Be Acquired by Francisco Partners" - here.

Procera Doubles NAVL Performance to 10Gbps/Core

Procera Networks announced "Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) 4.3, the latest next-generation Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) software engine that provides real-time, Layer-7 classification of network traffic. NAVL 4.3 provides cutting-edge application identification and classification for today’s demanding consumer and enterprise Internet services, and offers a two-fold increase in performance .. NAVL 4.3 is generally available today for new and existing customers

..In recent benchmarking tests, NAVL achieved average performance gains of over 50 percent on standard x86 platforms, and doubled performance when utilizing an external connection management configuration. Leveraging an Intel Sandy Bridge processor Procera observed 10 Gbps of throughput per core and linear scalability as cores were added on a dual socket E5-2670 at 2.6 Ghz with HyperThreading and Turbo-Boost disabled. Integrators that require embedded DPI in specialized use cases like low-power devices (such as machine-to-machine [M2M] communication) or specialized CPUs (such as security) will especially benefit from NAVL 4.3’s global optimization. NAVL 4.3 also provides a simplified deployment process, consolidating hundreds of files down to one simple download".

Related post - "Procera: "lower than anticipated total addressable market" for NAVL" - here.


See "Procera Networks Releases NAVL 4.3, Doubling Performance for Embedded Internet and Application Intelligence" - here.

[MarketsandMarkets]: Network Analytics Market Growth CAGR - 25.6%

A recent report finds that "The network analytics market is expected to grow from $589.6 million in 2014 to $1,842.2 million by 2019, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 25.6%. 

Although the mature markets (such as the U.S. and the U.K.) hold larger shares in the network analytics market, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 32% during the forecast period. Growing network traffic, upgradation of technologies, Quality of Experience (QoE), maintenance and targeted marketing are expected to remain the major drivers behind increased adoption of network analytics solutions. 

Through network analytics solutions, organizations can avail benefits such as monitoring and analysis of real-time and historical data, getting network summary via dashboards, traffic management, network capacity planning, routing efficiency assurance, and congestion analysis. Moreover, emerging economies such as India, Brazil, Singapore, and China are creating growth opportunities for the network analytics market in these regions. "

Major players in the market are IBM, Cisco, SAS, Tableau Software, Sandvine, Procera Networks, Accenture, Calix Inc., and JDSU. These players along with the others present in the market are expected to make a big impact in this rapidly growing marketplace in the next five years". 

See "Global Network Analytics Market 2015-2019 - Mobile, VOIP and Fixed Line, Unified Communications Analysis of the $1.8 Billion Market" - here.

13.7% Growth for the DPI Market in 2014

With the release of Procera Networks' financial results  for Q4, all 3 public DPI companies have published their full year 2014 reports, totaling to $315.9M compared to $277.8M in 2013 (+13.7%), with Sandvine leading the market.

	Allot Communications	Procera Networks	Sandvine  (Nov 30)
Symbol	NASDAQ: ALLT	NASDAQ:PKT	TSX: SVC
2013 Earning press release link	Here	Here	Here
Revenues
2014	$117.2M	$75.4M	$123.4M
2013	$96.5M	$74.7M	$106.5M
Change	+21.4%	+1%	+15.9%
Net Income (GAAP)
2014	-$2.5M	-$24.8M	$22.9M
2013	-$6.5M	-$16.3M	$12.9M
Gross Margin
2014	75%	59%	77%
2014	72%	55%	74%
Market Cap (Feb 26, 2015)	$311.9M	$181.8M	$555.2M
Cash (end of 2014)	$132.5M	$102.5M	$151.1M
Enterprise Value	$179.4M	$79.3M	$403.9M