21 March, 2017

Welcome to the era of the super (virtual) network operator

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to mature organisations are looking for platforms that can provide them with the widest possible range of connectivity options and support services. Here, Jim Morrish, the chief research officer at Machina Research, interviews Nigel Chadwick, the chief executive of Stream Technologies to learn what companies want in the IoT and how they want to buy their services (more…)

03 March, 2017

Is your network smart enough to pass the virtualisation IQ test?

Philippe Morin of EXFO tells VanillaPlus that the industry is entering the critical automation phase of virtualisation, where CSPs will need smarter service assurance with real-time insights from all three dimensions: network, service and subscriber. (more…)

18 November, 2016

Testing and service assurance must be active and automated to enable real agility, efficiency and great customer experience in emerging networks

The industry’s move towards virtualisation requires new automated approaches to active testing and service assurance. Here Marcus Friman, the chief product officer and co-founder of Netrounds, a specialist provider of automated active test and service assurance platforms with more than 270 customers, explains why the correlation between active and passive test data added to a DevOps style approach to testing processes can enable communications service providers (CSPs) to achieve true agility (more…)

09 November, 2016

Virtualisation maturity sees focus move from cost savings to revenue generation and cloud service agility

Fran Heeran is vice president and general manager of SDN/NFV at Netcracker. Here he tells George Malim that, while virtualisation has taken longer than expected to materialise into reality, the contributing technologies of network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) are in deployment. (more…)

07 November, 2016

3D Analytics plus passive monitoring and active verifier data will enable visibility into hybrid operations

Anssi Tauriainen is director of the Analytics and Advanced Services Business Unit at EXFO. Here, he tells VanillaPlus that analytics systems that can automatically derive insights across multiple network domains are vital for enabling communications providers to have visibility into their operations across physical, virtual and hybrid networks (more…)

02 November, 2016

Manage customer value across the whole lifecycle with telecoms data analytics

As communications service providers (CSPs) start to utilise big data more effectively, it’s analytics capabilities that are driving cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Here, Amit Sanyal, the business head for Consumer Value Solutions at Mahindra Comviva talks to Sandra O’Boyle, a senior analyst at Heavy Reading about its vision for enabling CSP customers with big data analytics (more…)

19 October, 2016

Monitoring, optimisation and analytics come together to transform CSPs’ performance

Abdelkrim Benamar is chief executive of Astellia, the provider of monitoring, troubleshooting, network optimisation and, more recently, analytics solutions. A long term telecoms industry executive, Benamar has been putting a transformation plan in place at the company to position it for virtualisation, 5G and the business intelligence capabilities enabled by data analytics. Here, he tells VanillaPlus that Astellia’s mission is to help its communications service provider (CSP) customers to refine their operations and processes so they can extract the proper value from their networks, services and subscribers. (more…)

21 July, 2016

CSPs are missing out on maximising the billing experience

Billing has always been important but the focus has traditionally been on its utility to the communications service provider (CSP) and not on the way it impacted customers. Now though, Alan Coleman, the chief executive of Brite:Bill, tells VanillaPlus, CSPs are waking up to the benefits of providing better customer experiences through telecoms billing VanillaPlus: […]

20 July, 2016

BSS for digital commerce is a business imperative, not an IT or networking project

Dave Labuda is the founder, chief executive and chief technology officer of MATRIXX Software, the provider of systems that enable digital commerce. Here, he tells George Malim that the functionality previously covered by the BSS domain is no longer about IT or the network. Instead, the responsibility for digital transformation is moving to chief digital […]

24 February, 2016

Virtualisation architecture with open interfaces and protocols will accelerate CSPs’ migration and integration

Swamy Vasudevan is the chief technology officer of strategy and business development for software defined networks (SDN), network functions virtualisation (NFV) and cloud at Ericsson North America. Here he tells VanillaPlus that, as virtualisation technologies are deployed, a framework architecture that encompasses analytics and policy management in addition orchestration and management is required. Such an architecture is vital to enable communications service providers to unleash the benefits of virtualisation regardless of whether they take a holistic, hybrid or step-by-step approach to their transformation.

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