Throughout the incredible journey of the telecom OSS/BSS sector over
the last 10 years, VanillaPlus has remained a reliable source of both key
news but also informative, objective and thought-provoking assessments of
the key trends which have shaped our industry. I am looking forward to
VanillaPlus and their more recent Stream journal continuing to play a key
role in providing valuable insights as we enter one of the most exciting
phases of the telecoms OSS/BSS market evolutions.
Kieran Moynihan
Vice President & CTO Telecoms
IBM Tivoli Division
Test & Measurement
Launch of Test Automation Alliance led by Spirent
Spirent Communications plc (LSE: SPT), a global provider of
performance analysis and service management solutions, has announced
the formation of the Test Automation Alliance (TAA), an "ecosystem" of
best-in-class testing companies focused on improving productivity across
the entire telecom product development and service deployment life
cycle. This alliance is the first of its kind to promote a common vision
enabling service providers and network equipment manufacturers to
optimise lab resources through advanced automation.
Achieving
seamless, straightforward, sustainable and cost effective test
automation is a significant challenge for lab managers. TAA offers a
unique framework called Automation Continuum™ which integrates
best-in-class test automation technologies such as lab management,
configuration management, test authoring and test management.
Members of the alliance include EdenTree Technologies,
FanFare and MRV. These companies have a track record of
delivering automation technology and are committed to
leveraging their combined expertise to advance the Automation
Continuum.
Spirent TestCenter™ offers enhanced testing productivity by
covering a broad range of network technologies from Layer 2 to Layer 7
for LAN, Enterprise, Metropolitan, Carrier and Broadband Access
networks and their devices – all on a single platform. EdenTree
provides a software platform that delivers a dynamic lab
environment to optimise equipment usage, sharing and tracking.
Fanfare's test authoring and test management tools iTest™ Team
and iTest™ Personal eliminate the need for manual and repetitive
testing tasks. While MRV brings a comprehensive set of physical layer tools
that enable test automation of the physical layer and facilitates
remote testing, reduces cable-related test errors and allows test
equipment to be shared between multiple testers.
“The Test Automation Alliance challenges the status quo and
redefines testing as a continuum that integrates best-in-class lab
testing tools to create a holistic approach to lab automation,” said
Elisabeth Rainge, director of Network Software at IDC. “It focuses on
the requirements of service providers and network equipment
manufacturers to accelerate the deployment of new services and products
as the testing cycles have begun to exceed development cycles.”
Test automation traditionally is developed and supported with
in-house solutions that require labs to shift highly skilled test
operators from testing and troubleshooting to creating and supporting
complex in-house test automation environments. Today, automation
technologies are highly advanced and much more cost effective to
deploy, which minimises the need for in-house solutions. The Automation
Continuum enables test labs to either choose from a suite of
device-agnostic, best-in-class tools targeted at advancing a specific
area of their existing automation framework or purchase a complete test
automation framework. No matter what level of automation the test labs
have deployed, the alliance enables a continuum in automation
advancements.
ariesoGEO aims for faster, more accurate subscriber data collection
Current subscriber data monitoring techniques often provide data
that is incomplete or imprecise, leading to unnecessary and ineffective
expenditure without solving the real network issues. Now, wireless
network optimisation provider, Arieso has launched a geo-location event
observer, ariesoGEO, for network performance monitoring and
optimisation.
Using the new software, which is compatible with
both UMTS and CDMA2000 networks, operators will be able to pinpoint
technical performance issues as and when they occur, based on the
subscribers’ experience.
Through the real-time, automated
collection and analysis of existing data, ariesoGEO enables operators
to solve potential network faults before subscribers are aware of them,
thus reducing churn and minimising operating costs.
ariesoGEO
collects data transmitted by mobiles in the normal course of conducting
a call and requires no additional hardware, such as GPS handsets. By
geo-locating tens of millions of calls per minute, ariesoGEO reportedly
creates a true-to-life picture of network performance as witnessed by
the networks’ subscribers, whether they are indoors or outdoors, or in
business or residential areas, and at any time of the day, any day of
the week.
ariesoGEO was recently used by a tier-1 US operator to
identify critical problem areas within its network, in order to gain
the maximum return from a limited budget. The outcome was said to be a
dramatic improvement in all of the operator's strategic KPIs, including
a 24% reduction in dropped calls.
Shirin Dehghan, CEO of Arieso, commented: “By providing access to more accurate
and timely data, ariesoGEO will enable operators to focus their resources and
drastically reduce their CapEx and OpEx for both current and future network
developments. ariesoGEO will, for the first time, enable operators to really
know how their network is functioning at any given time or
location.”
Dehghan added: “Access to information of this quality that
allows you to spot and correct the kinds of faults that lead to unhappy
customers and increased churn is unprecedented. Knowing what the subscriber is
experiencing, without the need to invest in expensive probes, will give
operators a huge competitive advantage.”
ariesoGEO estimates the
geographical location of mobile subscribers, and identifies the spatial
characteristics of the subscriber profile and network performance, enabling
operators to visualize a diverse set of metrics in the form of high-resolution
maps and detailed charts or reports. These metrics may range from explicitly
financial (e.g. revenue and ROI) to technical (e.g. interference and call drops)
Key Performance Indicators.