Our focus is directed towards all players delivering services off an IP based infrastructure: InfoVista

When did InfoVista come to India? What do you plan for the Indian market?

In India, we started early in 2003, working through system integration partners and being awarded a couple of government bids, followed by penetration into a couple of large non-government ISPs. Since 2008, we have our direct representatives propagating the InfoVista value proposition with customers and prospects, to help them deliver 'Application Aware Proactive Service Assurance' to their enterprise customers. Our focus is directed towards all players delivering services with an IP based infrastructure-be it using the standard wireline, WiMax or over the mobile infrastructure. Our plan is to work closely with our alliance partners; the NEM's to deliver OOB service assurance across multi-vendor based IP infrastructures, within weeks from deployment.

Please explain network performance management for the mobile broadband industry in brief and explain the advantage that InfoVista bring to the table.

Mobile broadband is increasingly based on packet based transport technologies underneath. We are quickly witnessing the disappearance of T1s or E1s for mobile backhaul transport links. As such, this technological shift leads to more unpredictability in user experience which is now prone to typical IP performance degradation like latencies, packet/frame loss and delay variations. In a age where all service providers are at par in terms of bandwidth being offered, the only avenue to compete and differentiate is user experience. This is precisely the advantage InfoVista brings-to enable operators to not only measure user experience, but also pinpoint the root cause within the network or among application delivery platforms.

What are the challenges faced globally by mobile broadband providers?

Faced with data traffic tsunami, service providers are compelled to move to packet based transport mediums (like Ethernet) to prevent capital and operating costs from spiraling (as data traffic explodes). The first challenge this entails is often a lack of perception about the effects this is likely to have on end user experience. Secondly, with this new medium of transport, many operators don't foresee the need to gain the same operational and engineering readiness they established (over the years) for TDM transport. This snowballs as operational gaps in their internal processes and could even lead to complete network meltdown as has been witnessed in Europe in recent times.

What would InfoVista's role be in 3G optimization in India? How do you plan to check performance of the mobile broadband SP, what is the array of solutions from InfoVista?

InfoVista's current offerings help right size and optimize the mobile Ethernet backhaul so that operators achieve their original economic objective (of cost reduction) that they set to achieve by rolling out Ethernet backhaul.

How does InfoVista assure complete operator and customer satisfaction for 3G and other mobile broadband technology service providers?

InfoVista is capable of monitoring the entire mobile infrastructure from end-to-end together with an underlying Ethernet/IP/MPLS transport medium. In addition, InfoVista monitors the exact path and segments of mobile broadband delivery helping operators to compartmentalize and identify the sub-network causing poor user experience. However, the origin of end user problems may not be the network at all, it may be the actual application delivery platforms that give an impression of poor broadband experience. To that end, InfoVista also offers application performance monitoring solutions that identify application delivery bottlenecks inside or outside service providers' environment.

Does InfoVista have the technology to check performance and aid in LTE testing and 4G operations?

No, InfoVista does not offer testing solutions. But InfoVista is capable of monitoring network and transport infrastructure that help deliver such technologies.

Who are InfoVista's global customers in the mobile broadband space? How does InfoVista support its customers and addresses their challenges?

We have over 600 customers globally, including India. InfoVista has a 24x7 technical assistance support following the daylight model and works closely with our SIs and resellers in delivering these services to our customers.

Mobile broadband is going to change the way Internet is looked at, hand-held devices will be used as smart clients which will allow triple play in high speed. What is InfoVista's role to address this space?

InfoVista stands by mobile operators to face this challenge from the standpoint of operating their networks/applications as well as engineering their network (sub) entities to handle the traffic explosion. As mobile broadband technologies like LTE are purely IP based, InfoVista is in a good position to help operators make this migration with confidence.

berylm@cybermedia.co.in