Expanding service assurance play with Tier 1 clients, integrator partners and new NFV/SDN products

One company, Centina Systems, is launching a service assurance product for SDN and NFV networks, pre-integrated into ODL (Object Definition Language) and open NFV platforms.

In a two-part interview, CEO and co-founder, Anand Gonuguntla, tells VanillaPlus exclusively that Centina can now manage orchestration and SDN controllers end-to-end and have an operational view of how the network has transformed, and he reveals new clients and partners.

INTERVIEW PART 1:

Jeremy Cowan, VanillaPlus: What was the motivation for establishing Centina Systems?

Anand Gonuguntla: We saw that there was a lack of innovation with the legacy players in the service assurance play. Secondly, we were also seeing the trends in the market where the business of the communications service providers (CSPs) was about to change in terms of consolidation, ARPU (average revenue per user), and profitability.

The old methods of having systems that required a lot of care and feed, a lot of administration, were not going to hold together. Also, the new generation networks had different quality requirements, different SLA (service level agreement) requirements.

Centina has been in business now eight years; we’ve been profitable for the last five years. We have not taken any venture capital yet, we’re able to organically grow the business year after year. Last year we made it to the Deloitte and Touche Fast 500 software companies in the United States.

We cater to a diverse set of tier two, tier three service providers. Mobile carriers, carriers’ carriers, undersea, submarine operators, cable MSOs, converged operators, you name it. We have touched every type of operator. (Also see: C Spire selects Centina Systems for strategic service assurance.)

What differentiates us from the markets is number one, it’s a hyperscale cluster architecture. The requirements of data collection, processing and presentation have become more real-time. The way legacy systems address this is by throwing in a very hunky Oracle rack type of installation and a massive hardware installation.

The approach we’ve taken is a very distributed cluster. It does not rely on expensive hardware or software, and it can scale incrementally for the needs of the individual operator. What we’re able to offer with that is very high granular polling, very quick turnaround from data collection to actionable intelligence and being able to cater that information to various types of users all the way to the customers.

The second differentiator we have is Smart Plug-in. Smart Plug-in enables our software to communicate with the vendor equipment within the carrier ecosystem. (Also see: Fidelity Communications deploys Centina NetOmnia.)

Now, historically how the carriers were doing that is by coding those integrations, it was more of a services component. Every operator has to repeat the process and it’s inefficient. That type of care and feed is very expensive to maintain when you have 70 to 100 different products that you’re managing.

With a Smart Plug-in approach it’s a product licence which will be fixed in terms of cost and it’ll be operated and maintained as a part of our annual maintenance and support. Carriers simply add a drag and drop, like a PDA app, and instead of managing and maintaining the system they’re now able to focus on the business, what they need to do for business so that they can get the desired results.

A third differentiation is the simplicity from operations, administrations and usability perspective. The entire UI (user interface) is mobile and web2.0-based. It is completely designed with the objective of making the operators empowered with day-to-day functions. They don’t need a very high-skilled staff to maintain the system.

It is very comprehensive in terms of functionality, you have fault management, performance management, workflow management. For automation there is analytics to use intelligence, reports and dashboard functionality. It offers end-to-end visibility of a multi-vendor, multi-technology infrastructure.

The last one is our ability to integrate with the legacy, in other words the carriers have invested in a number of different systems and a system like ours needs to be very easily able to interconnect and exchange data between billing systems, ticketing systems, inventory systems, provisioning systems and we’re able to achieve that with web APIs (application program interfaces).

More recently we also introduced a product offering for SDN (software-defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualisation) networks where we have completely pre-integrated our solution into ODL and open NFV type of platforms.

So, for orchestration and SDN controllers we built enough capability to manage those assets end-to-end and also be able to view operational visibility on how the network has transformed. Also, we built that remediation into the orchestration and controller in use.

VanillaPlus: How recent was your NFV interoperability development?

AG: This is yet to be announced. We have the product, now we’re sharing with a few select customers. In the next couple of months we’ll be announcing the full details and hopefully some of the customers’ reactions.

VanillaPlus: Does anybody else in the market offer that?

AG: Well, in the market there is a lot of activity on SDN and NFV on the network side itself, like, ‘How can I virtualise a switch or a router or a firewall or in uplinks?’ There is also a lot of activity in the orchestration of those assets. If it’s an SDN network there is a lot of activity on how they do SDN controllers, right? What’s missing is that remediation, the remediation and troubleshooting capabilities.

Imagine a scenario where you have a $200-$300 million investment into NFV, SDN type of networks at a reasonable scale. You’re talking about processing millions of data points within a few minutes window. Really understanding which of those assets are at risk and use the policies that are set up by the operator and make those recommendations into the controller and the orchestration.

Typically, if you look at any lifecycle of technology the first part is getting the network in place. You need to have the network to monetise it. The market is playing in that place right now and once we have that you need to provision it, that’s where the orchestration comes into play.

I think we’re kind of landing into that phase and the next phase is how to do you operate and maintain it, and that’s where we come into the play. I don’t think very many players are actually there in the third segment at this moment. I’m sure some will pop-up; there are a lot of investments that are made into this space. We certainly hope to be one of the first few to make that happen.

VanillaPlus: There’s been so much excitement, not to say hype, around NFV.

AG: Yes, hype is the right word. I think it is real, it is happening on a very small scale but in terms of mass scale we’re not anywhere near that.

VanillaPlus: What would you describe as mass scale? Where is the dividing line?

AG: If you take an operator and they’re actually able to do 20%, 30% of their assets in virtual I would say that’s mass scale. They don’t need to be at 90% but even at 20% that’s significant. Imagine if you’re a billion dollar operator and you’re deriving $200 million revenue from NFV networks, that’s a big number.

I’m not necessarily talking about how many elements they deployed, have they done a proof of concept, I think all of that is happening. How much of their revenue is coming from NFV related services, I say it’s probably not a lot of revenue. I would say zero but maybe some guys have actually got some revenue out of it.

If you take that and ask the next question, how many of them actually automated in terms of orchestration to operationalisation I would say I have not seen one yet. I think that some network level deployments are done but on the OSS in the orchestration I think we’re months away, if not years.

VanillaPlus:  You still think it’s coming?

AG: Yes. There are a few operators that have actually chosen their orchestration platforms and there are some that are kicking them in the labs, but imagine if you’re going to rely on an orchestration service it would need to be fully automated.

VanillaPlus: Do you think that for now they’re still just cherry-picking a few particular services like VoLTE?

AG: I believe so. VirtualCPE is a very straightforward application, evolved packet core, IMS. Anything that was more of an appliance-based deployment in the last 10 years is a candidate for me. Appliance was really a glorified server with software and as the processor architecture evolves to accommodate some of those custom functions all those will be candidates for NFVs.

I think there is definitely some low hanging fruit, the question is who is going to run fast with it? When you move to SDN and NFV it offers some challenges as well. When you take a solution that’s completely built on a purpose-built hardware and software it can offer five nines of availability and reliability.

When you go into a commodity-based, server-based architecture VMs and commodity-based software, and have this interoperable software, the reliability and availability is going to be an issue. There is some level of market acceptance and maybe the business model might be that it is so cost-effective that nobody cares. Today you have an issue with your phone or internet you’re calling in the operator.

If you have similar problems with Skype, what do you do? Skype is less than 10% of the cost of the regular service, now that will be the trade-off. If carriers want to deploy these services at a relatively low cost, they are also sabotaging their revenue. If they want to offer the same reliability and quality as traditional services, then they’ve got to invest in systems to get them that visibility and that quality out of these assets.

VanillaPlus: You’re in a competitive market, you need to differentiate, you’ve got the advantage that you’re profitable, but you’re relatively small. What size is Centina?

AG: We’re about 65 people. (Also see: Centina Systems appoints Donald Wadas.)

VanillaPlus: Who are your biggest competitors in this space?

AG: Believe it or not we seem to traditionally compete with IBM and the HPs of the world more often than innovative niche players.

VanillaPlus: Why is that?

AG: Well, the carrier market has not been innovative very much, like I said. We have come out with this solution and we’re making progress. Until SDN and NFV was talked about the carrier market was very boring for new ventures, but with SDN and NFV definitely there is more capital being invested in ventures focused on the carrier market.

Eighteen months ago you barely saw anything in the OSS space. Have you seen any innovation in the OSS space in the last eight years? There’s no such thing.

VanillaPlus: A fair amount of acquisition and merger.

AG: Right, mostly consolidation. We were able to capitalise even though the market was downturned with our differentiation and agility. To some extent the timing is right, you know, SDN and NFV is creating renewed interest in our space. The nice thing is now we have not a concept, we have a platform and business and environment that can succeed on what we built so far.

VanillaPlus: Where do you go next? What’s your current objective?

AG: We are expanding globally, we added customers in South America, Caribbean, Middle East and Asia. We’re looking to expand into Europe, that’s one of my challenges or opportunities whichever way you see it.

We also have started working with larger operators, tier one operators through our partner ecosystem. We’re starting to develop large SIs (system integrators) and equipment vendors to represent us on some of the opportunities that they’re working end-to-end and they have a missing portfolio.

VanillaPlus: Which partners are these?

AG: One we announced was Fujitsu. Fujitsu is a global comms and IT player, they’re our partner. We have regional partners in each part of the world.

We’re also working with other partners that I can’t name yet but the large equipment providers in the comms space. We’re enabling them with their end-to-end solution story, not only on current opportunities with the assurance and quality management but also on the SDN and NFV.

Finally, I think playing closely to the NFV and SDN environment where we can enable some of the key customers to take those into live environments.

VanillaPlus: How long do you think that’ll take?

AG: Definitely within the next 12 months we should be able to crack most of these things. The SDN and NFV is the question mark, you know, how far would the market move, how quickly. That said, it’s okay to be in that half. We can’t dictate the direction but you play when the play is there.

VanillaPlus: There was a lot of publicity around your win with C Spire, what others that have been less well publicised?

AG: True Broadband in Thailand. True is the tier one operator and we haven’t announced that in the press but it’s a project we won. They are a very large player in Thailand, a few billion dollars revenue. We’re helping them manage their broadband assets which is a new offering.

In Asia the mobile market is over 100% penetration. The next big thing in Asia is all broadband, on residential, commercial and also on mobile. We had a big win there, we’re managing a network that manages assets serving over a million subscribers.

It’s a unique opportunity because they had the ability to go to a number of different vendors but we were able to give them certain pattern-matching algorithms to predict potential failures based on topology and usage.

Secondly, (we could) localise the problem so they could reduce the truck rolls, improve the whole customer perception of the service by fixing issues ahead of the curve and dramatically reduce the number of support costs.

VanillaPlus: What sort of reduction are we talking about?

AG: They gave us roughly 50%, half. It was definitely a very high impact and it’s not over yet. I think their objective is to get to far below that.

VanillaPlus: Is there a timeframe on that objective?

AG: We’re working on them to figure it. The first improvement is quite easy to get because they had nothing in place except for a lot of people answering calls, to (get to) something in place that actually has some intelligence to reduce their pain. The next level of optimisation would be how efficiently are they running the processes, and are there improvements that we can bring to the table etc.?

C Spire is similar. We started with them on managing their enterprise back haul assets, they went through consolidation. Now they’re rolling the entire tower to data centre and they’re moving in-between under our platform. Wide Open West (WOW) is another example, they’re about a billion and a half dollar cable MSO based in Chicago.

GBI is Gulf Bridge International based in Qatar, it’s an undersea cable system. It’s a very different operator that we manage.

Part 2 of this Interview, Building an OSS company from an unanswered need,
will be posted on Friday.

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