Unified Service Performance Assurance Platform

InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform is the single, unified Platform for assuring and optimizing IP based networks, services and applications. Industry-leading scalability, service modeling flexibility and open integration features allow platform administrators to minimize total cost of ownership (TCO), quickly support custom service level agreements (SLAs) and seamlessly integrate with their existing OSS/BSS ecosystem. The Platform supplies the intelligence necessary for Engineering and Operations to optimize the delivery of services and applications and assure superior quality of experience (QoE).

The Most Scalable and Flexible Service Assurance Platform

Orchestrating network performance

VPN Customer AVPN Customer BMNO CustomerWholesale CustomerCloud Consumer...

CSP CustomersInternal User GroupsNOC EngineerCustomer Care RepresentativeService Account ManagerNetwork PlannerNetwork Optimization EngineerData Center Manager...

Service topologysynchronization

Data collectionDiscovery

Multi-Role, Multi-Tenant Self-Service PortalReal-time service performance reporting

Core Network

Compute + Storage Resources

Customer A

Customer B

MME

RNC Radio NetworkData Center Mobility Services

VPN Services

OSS/BSS Ecosystem Intuitive Web 2.0 Portal/Interface

Uni�ed Service Performance Assurance Platform

Customer ReportingService Level ManagementBusiness Intelligence AnalysisCapacity PlanningTroubleshooting

Performance Assurance Functions

ApplicationsIPDRs

ServicesKQIs

InfrastructureKPIs

Carrier Grade Architecture Service and Business Data Models

Platform and Solution Administrator

ServiceFul�llment

CustomerCare

ServiceAssurance

Billing

NetworkOptimization

Figure 1. InfoVista’s Unified Platform for Service Performance Assurance

Respond Quickly to Business RequirementsFlexible service definition templates empower IT staff to model and monitor new network entities and services without professional service engagements, software upgrades or scripting. By simply tailoring existing service templates through a GUI-based application, IT staff can define how to collect, correlate and graph data, and start monitoring immediately. These service templates can be updated to support the monitoring of complex and custom SLAs per service and customer, enabling Communication Service Providers (CSP) to define and rollout new services on time and on budget.

Minimize Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)InfoVista’s Platform is unrivaled in its ability to scale efficiently in order to manage large, diverse and geographically dispersed networks and their infrastructure, services and applications. Patented technologies for high performance data collection and aggregation and performance-enhancing techniques such as load sharing and virtualization technology maximize server utilization while ensuring exceptional performance. Better server utilization means less hardware and a lower TCO.

Augment the Value of your OSS/BSS EcosystemInfoVista opens its Service Assurance Platform through a variety of real-time and schedulable import/export mechanisms. These open interfaces enable IT staff to tightly integrate the Performance Assurance Platform with business critical applications, OSS systems and existing processes to automate real-time, large-scale data sharing between systems. Whether a CSP deploys InfoVista’s Platform to manage a new IP-based service offering or consolidates legacy performance assurance tools, they can realize improved operational efficiencies and reduced operating costs.

Architectural Overview

With one performance assurance platform, organizations responsible for delivering mission critical services and applications can monitor their entire IP infrastructure – all resources, vendors, technologies, domains, application traffic and service usage –and deliver real-time, actionable dashboards through a configurable, role-based reporting interface.

InfoVista has experience in massive-scale carrier implementations and regularly tests and benchmarks its Platform’s performance with customers and technology partners. This experience provides the insight that allows IT managers to accurately predict and optimize investments in management platform hardware based on their monitoring and management requirements.

The open integration features, combined with out-of-the-box integrations for popular inventory, fault and provisioning systems, give CSPs the capability to unite their OSS/BSS ecosystem into a comprehensive management framework. Open integration features can also feed network and service usage intelligence to charging and policy control solutions to enable more accurate billing and support subscribers’ selfservice control of bandwidth usage and billing parameters.

InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform consists of three functional layers that distribute network management tasks. This layered architecture enables the Platform’s efficient scalability as well as its operational resilience and role-based views of real-time performance data. A single management interface simplifies platform administration and maintenance.

Bulk FileUpload

Discovery

Data Collection via Active/Passive Polling using:

Single ManagementConsole

Interactive,On-Demand Reports

and Dashboards

Network EMSs:Alcatel-Lucent SAM 5620,Huawei U2000, Cisco ANA,NSN NetAct...

Activation,Provisioningand Inventory Solutions

Schedule andEmail Reports

Self-service reportingand dashboarding

Real-timeAlert Noti�cation

Real-time Mass DataExport and ExtractionDistributed Collection and Analysis

Redundant Consolidation and Aggregation

Automated Orchestration Uni�ed Presentation and Collaboration

Uni�ed Service Performance Assurance Platform

Business, Service, InfrastructureData Models KPI Generation

Central Database

DPI Appliances(Physical/Virtual)

NetFlowAppliances

(Physical/Virtual)Device and

Interface Polling

Live Standby Replication

N+1 Failover

SNMP, WMI, VMware API, ICMP, DPI, Network Flow Analysis (NetFlow, IPFIX, J-Flow, sFlow, cFlow),CSV, XML, Cisco IP SLAs, Juniper RPM, Huawei NQA, CLI, XML CLI, …

Figure 2. Three Functional Layers of InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform

Distributed Collection and Analysis LayerThe fully distributed Collection and Analysis Layer is a network of autonomous, centrally managed virtual and physical collectors. This highly scalable architecture delivers reliable real-time collection and mediation of tens of millions of metrics from virtually any complement of IT resources.

Data collection functions utilize a combination of passive data gathering and active monitoring that simulate user transactions to measure end-user experience. An open architecture and many out-of-the-box integrations make it simple to interconnect legacy toolsets, element management systems and OSS solutions to augment monitored performance data.

A patented service-centric Object Data Model defines the contextual relationship between a service and the IT resources that enable it. Through this relationship, the Platform is able to support real-time, preemptive analysis of the effects of individual IT resources (network, system, application, storage, etc.) on complex, multi-tiered services.

Redundant Consolidation and Aggregation LayerThe Consolidation and Aggregation Layer centralizes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) within an optimized, industry-standard data mart environment. Flexible APIs allows data import/export mechanism for simple integration with third-party tools. High-availability configurations, achieved through a number of methods, including database replication and data recovery mechanisms, ensure global data integrity.

Automated processes of the Consolidation and Aggregation Layer obtain KPIs from the collection and analysis elements and perform required data aggregation to optimize storage utilization and ensure delivery of the proper granularity of data. Synchronous time-series data (e.g., SNMP data from network infrastructure entities) and asynchronous transactional data (e.g., network flow and call data records) have respective algorithms to optimize their storage and aggregation.

All KPIs are aggregated from across the infrastructure within global service and technology groupings. These groupings serve to standardize multi-vendor performance data and support high-level, executive dashboard views and global performance alerting. This efficient, easily manageable repository of business and technical KPIs is vital for efficient performance management.

Capabilities z Efficiently scales to support the

world’s largest and most complex business technology environments

z Maximizes server capacity, data collection and storage performance by employing virtualization technology

z Separately optimizes data storage and aggregation for synchronous time-series data (such as network infrastructure SNMP data) and asynchronous transactional data (Flow and Call Data Records)

z Discovers IT resources within changing environments

z Associates underlying network resources with the services they support

z Manages dynamic provisioning of performance reporting to reflect frequent changes in the IT infrastructure

z Collects performance metrics from virtually any infrastructure resource in all network domains, including Data Center, IP Core, Backhaul and Radio Access Networks

z Supports cloud-enabling data center infrastructure, including virtual entities like VMware virtual machines, SAN switches, storage arrays and disk volumes, as well as data center network gear like load balancers and firewalls

z Aggregates business technology metrics over time to construct powerful trend analyses

z Incorporates business data from external sources into comprehensive service management views

z Provides a holistic view of service, technology and device KPIs from infrastructures of all sizes

z Simplifies the administration of performance management solutions with automated report provisioning, self-monitoring, load balancing and fail-over processes

z Provides an interactive portal interface where users can drill into detailed, real-time analysis from KPIs

z Integrates seamlessly with third-party tools to eliminate handoffs, redundancies and errors

Business Support System Integration

By combining InfoVista’s service performance

assurance with BSS charging and policy capabilities,

CSPs can improve customer QoE by empowering

them with new self-service control of their bandwidth

usage and billing parameters. This integration will

also enable CSPs to maximize revenue by accurately

charging customers that exceed their contract data

rate to encourage them to subscribe to a higher

bandwidth profile.

Unified Presentation and Collaboration LayerA single, intuitive and configurable Presentation and Collaboration Layer facilitates contextual performance views of both the services and infrastructure domains. The interactive portal supports a structured, service-centric model that intelligently associates IT resources with services, functions and properties (e.g. groups of users, applications, technologies, geographic locations, business lines and service offerings). These associations enable easy, real-time navigation through resource views, performance reports, KPIs and associated functional properties.

The Presentation Layer is fully configurable and can be branded for customer reports. It includes an intuitive administrator console to define the content and style for each user or user group. Users can tailor their display of information, including on-demand graphs of one or more metrics on a single, easy-to-view chart. The Presentation Layer’s ease-of-use and remarkable aesthetics promote rapid adoption and user self-service, saving IT staff valuable time.

Automated Orchestration with Single Management ConsoleAn intelligent, centralized automation and management architecture greatly simplifies the deployment and management of the InfoVista Service Performance Assurance implementation. Automated administration functionality monitors critical Platform processes, gathers detailed configuration information

and implements recovery procedures in the unlikely event of a component failure. A convenient dashboard displays the status of all components at a glance. Automated functions reduce the need for human touch and help minimize errors resulting from manual interventions and hand-offs.

Solution-Aligned Products for Proactive Service Performance AssuranceThe InfoVista Platform’s modular design supports the 5View and VistaInsight lines of pre-packaged products for application performance and network performance management, respectively. The products can work together as an integrated service performance assurance solution or independently to address market solutions for networks and IT. InfoVista’s solutions include tailored sets of pre-configured analytics, KPIs and best-practice workflows for the efficient management of IP services, including IP VPNs, application-aware networks, unified communications, private cloud, Carrier Ethernet networks and mobile backhaul.

Figure 3. InfoVista’s Unified Presentation and Collaboration Layer

InfoVista’s proven Service Performance Assurance platform allows STC to monitor business, mobile and broadband data services and to offer network intelligence to disparate business units, from operation to marketing. Its ability to monitor millions of resources in real time, to scale as our needs grow and to massively export data to other OSS solutions is unique on the market and enables us to gain competitive advantage at an affordable TCO. InfoVista’s approach and CSP expertise, combined with its innovative collaborative platform capabilities, enables us to reduce

the time required to identify and resolve service affecting problems and ultimately increase QoE and QoS.

Nezar N. Alhuzaimi, OSS Performance Manager, STC

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Optimized Storage and Aggregation of Flow and Call Data RecordsEfficiently processing massive amounts of asynchronous data, like Flow or Call Data Records, requires a unique approach. InfoVista’s Consolidation and Aggregation Layer employs patent pending partitioning and indexing technologies to optimize asynchronous data insertion and retrieval. It also utilizes industry standard OLAP technology, enabling long-term data retention and data mining capabilities while providing unmatched scalability and performance when handling network flow data or xDRs.

Key Features of InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform

CollaborationCollaboration across organizational silos benefits CSPs by providing improved operational efficiencies and the ability to better address complex network problems. Together, these capabilities help CSPs assure end-to-end customer QoE. InfoVista’s Service Assurance Platform unites performance data from all network resources, services and applications. It promotes collaboration by providing a single presentation layer with views of the unified performance data, tailored for the various functional groups and solution workflows for each network domain. The intuitive Web 2.0 reporting interface makes it easy for stakeholders to learn how to use the applications quickly without extensive training. Its ease-of-use and remarkable aesthetics promote rapid adoption and user self-service. There are also features for sharing information, such as emailing scheduled reports, exporting interactive charts and graphs of the data with Active PDFs and allowing guests to run applications themselves. IT organizations can save time and money by deploying one easy-to-use reporting interface for all user groups, including customers, and delegating the task of custom report development to users.

Real-time and On-DemandAccess to current performance information is critical for effective service level management and proactive troubleshooting. InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform aggregates data and calculates performance indicators immediately after collection. Simultaneously, it calculates statistics for the last hour, day and week and measures the deviation from baseline performance thresholds for each KPI. All of this data is immediately available in its central database for on-demand reporting and automated alerting algorithms. This approach enables efficient, higher-order analytics, such as busy-hour and standard deviation.

These time-based, deviation-from-baseline statistics can be generated at up to five minute intervals. Additionally, one minute intervals can be supported for short time periods or specific network segments. Along with responsive on-demand reporting and KPI generation, users can also launch graph reports at a high polling rate (up to one second intervals) on specific KPIs for troubleshooting purposes.

InfoVista’s Unified Service Performance Platform provides the ability to:

z Minimize TCO – minimize the cost of procuring and owning service performance assurance solutions by deploying one, unified Service Assurance Platform for all network domains that efficiently scales and grows to meet business and operational requirements

z Manage Across Functional Silos – extend and grow service performance assurance solution to support the management of multiple domains, applications, services, and network infrastructure elements through a single pane of glass

z Expose Open APIs – seamlessly interoperate with existing network and business environments

z Accelerate Time to Market – facilitate integration with new devices and interfaces and the rapid definition and rollout of new services

z Satisfy High-Value Customers – simply tailor out-of-the-box service definition templates to meet their specific service level reporting requirements

z Provide Peace of Mind – deploy in high availability and failover configurations that navigate in-house and customer-premise security constraints

z Quickly Deploy Application and Network Performance Management Solutions – in a single pane of glass, link application performance to the customers using them and the network and service infrastructure supporting them

z Offer a Unified Web 2.0 Portal/Interface – deliver real-time views of all network services and domains with reporting and dashboards tailored to users’ roles

z Accelerate Stakeholder Adoption – support easy-to-use but powerful self-service reporting and dashboard capabilities for end-users

Figure 4. Active PDFs allow viewers to interact with charts and graphs of time-series network performance data.

Industry Recognition for Superior Customer Service2011 Frost & Sullivan Global Customer Service Leadership Award in the Network Performance Management Market

The Frost & Sullivan Global Customer Service Leadership Award is presented to the company that has excelled in the following criteria: quality of service, timeliness of service, impact of service on customer value and cost of service to customers.

InfoVista supports its customer base to help them make the most of their technology investment, meet their particular needs and attain the business value they seek. InfoVista’s service offerings have demonstrated how to go beyond technology alone and help customers maximize their technology investment.

Mariano Kimbara , Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst.

Metro Ethernet Forum AlignmentCarrier Ethernet services have

garnered significant industry

support and revenue for CSPs.

InfoVista was the first service

assurance software member

of the Metro Ethernet Forum

(MEF). InfoVista’s commitment to the MEF is demonstrated

by the Platform’s embedded Ethernet service model and

its integration of network equipment vendors that enable

MEF-aligned service delivery (Adva, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena,

Cisco, Huawei, Juniper, RAD and others). CSPs are able to take

full advantage of the flexibility and differentiated offerings

enabled by MEF standards and provide the service quality

visualization to showcase those offerings.

Carrier-Grade ArchitectureService performance assurance is critical to CSPs’ business. InfoVista’s Service Assurance Platform’s solid and reliable performance ensures operational continuity and minimizes the possibility of lost performance data. Its distributed architecture supports massive scaling and can geographically distribute components to help improve performance – e.g. to locate collection functionality in proximity to the data center and presentation functionality local to users. Fault tolerant configurations ensure the availability of the Service Assurance Platform and the integrity of its data, while a variety of automated processes, including data recovery and failover, work together to protect against lost performance data. Finally, a single-window administration dashboard simplifies the management of the entire Platform.

Multi-TenancySupporting all of its customers on a single service assurance platform saves CSPs money and time and improves operational efficiencies. Platforms that do not support multi-tenancy may require dedicated components, such as individual polling appliances for each customer site, which are expensive and inefficient. Multi-tenancy is intrinsic to InfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform, designed into the Collection and Analysis Layer through to the Presentation Layer. Customer data is logically segmented from the moment it is collected and grouped by region, account and type. Data aggregation, reporting and user management functions are mapped to customer organizations so a customer will never see another’s data. Adding a new customer site is a simple configuration within the existing Platform.

SecurityInfoVista’s Service Performance Assurance Platform effectively addresses deployment complexities due to security considerations. Its distributed architecture supports remote and selective locating of components, including virtual collectors at customer sites to navigate their firewall and DMZs. Its network discovery functions can utilize proxies to reach devices behind firewalls to manage security constraints. For private networks, it can poll devices with a soft IP address. Support of single sign-on through LDAP and Radius authentication allows integration with existing IT security policies.

IP-Based Service Performance Assurance ExperienceInfoVista has nearly two decades of IP-based service performance assurance. Through hundreds of implementations, InfoVista has developed extensive expertise in service assurance best practices with a clear understanding of which aspects of the network to monitor, what to collect and how to report on the resulting data. This experience has been distilled in its library of actionable and service-relevant KPIs. InfoVista’s award-winning customer service professionals ensure that implementations go smoothly and CSPs maximize their ROI. InfoVista’s depth of experience, reflected in its products and staff, serves to minimize the technical and business risks associated with the deployment of a large-scale service performance assurance implementation and the uncertainty of the future.

Platform Compatibilities and Interfaces

InfoVista’s Service Assurance Products

InfoVista Products Description

Vista360 Web 2.0, self-service reporting dashboards

VistaInsight for Networks Solution for service quality visualization of IP-based networks and IT services

VistaLink for Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM Pre-built integration with Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager

5View Application Usage Manager Solution for application usage monitoring and analysis, based on flow records

5View Application Response Manager Solution for application performance management and analysis, utilizing deep packet inspection (DPI)

Mobile Knowledge Pack Extension for managing mobile networks

Broadband Knowledge Pack Extension for managing residential broadband networks

Unified Communications Knowledge Pack Extension for managing Cisco-based unified communications services

VistaBridge Adapter for loading batch-oriented data at regular intervals

Technology Coverage

Technology Partners Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Juniper, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and VMware

Protocols/Data Capture TechnologiesSNMP, WMI, VMware API, ICMP, DPI, Network Flow Analysis (NetFlow, IPFIX, J-Flow, sFlow, cFlow),

CSV, XML, Cisco IP SLAs, Juniper RPM, Huawei NQA, CLI, XML CLI, …

Network Element Management System

(EMS) Integrations

Alcatel-Lucent SAM 5620, Alcatel-Lucent RAM 5670, Cisco NAM, Cisco ANA, Ericsson OSS-RC, Nokia

NetAct, Huawei U2000 and Huawei M2000

OSS/BSS Ecosystem Integrations Activation, Provisioning, Inventory, Fault, Billing and Policy Management Platforms

Network Domains Managed

99 Data Center

99 IP Core

99 Backhaul

99 LTE

99 Radio Access Network

99 Broadband Access Networks

Network Services Supported

99 VPN and Application-Aware VPN

99 Private Cloud

99 Business Services – Retail and Wholesale

99 Mobile Data

99 Carrier Ethernet

World and European Headquarters InfoVista S.A.S. 6, rue de la Terre de Feu 91952 Courtaboeuf Cedex Les Ulis, France Tel +33 (0) 1 64 86 79 00 Fax +33 (0) 1 64 86 79 79

Americas Headquarters InfoVista Corporation 12950 Worldgate Drive Suite 250 Herndon, VA 20170 United States Tel +1 703 435 2435 Fax +1 703 435 5122

Asia-Pacific Headquarters InfoVista (Asia-Pacific) Pte Ltd 300 Tampines Avenue 5 Level 09-02 Singapore 529653 Tel +65 6449 7641 Fax +65 6449 3054

For more information, please visit www.infovista.com For sales inquiries please email marketing@infovista.com

Copyright 2012-2015 InfoVista S.A.S. All rights reserved.

Orchestrating network performance

About InfoVistaInfoVista is the leading provider of IP and RF planning, assurance and optimization software solutions and services that enable efficient network and IT transformations. Our award-winning solutions empower communications service providers and IT-intensive enterprises to deliver high-performing and differentiated services while cost-effectively planning, operating, optimizing and monetizing their network. InfoVista’s combined expertise and technology innovations in radio and IP networks provide more than 550 customers worldwide with a new level of network intelligence, visibility and control across the entire network life cycle. Using InfoVista’s solutions, they deliver optimal quality of service, ensure a high-quality user experience, invest appropriately and consolidate their OSS/BSS ecosystems while keeping total cost of ownership as low as possible. For more information, please visit www.infovista.com.

InfoVista’s approach to performance management has meant we can consolidate all our services under one

umbrella with a common look and feel, and also dynamically address service issues internally. By offering

our business customers enhanced visibility into service delivery and network performance, we have been

able to significantly improve operational and financial efficiencies and even more importantly outperform

our competitors in terms of reliability and value.

COLT

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