As seen in the June 18, 2012  COMPTEL Connection

InfoVista
Headquarters Location:

• World and European Headquarters: 6, rue de la Terre de Feu, 91952 Courtaboeuf Les Ulis, France
• Americas Headquarters : 12950 Worldgate Drive, Suite 250, Herndon, VA 20170, United States

http://infovista.com/ 

Q: What does your company do and how long has it been in operation?
A: InfoVista is the leading provider of service performance assurance software solutions for network and application services transported by all-IP networks. We empower communications service providers (CSPs) to deliver high-performing and differentiated services while cost-effectively monetizing, operating and optimizing their networks. The industry-leading scalability, service-modeling flexibility and open integration capabilities of our service performance assurance platform equip 80 percent of the world’s largest CSPs.

Q: To what do you attribute your company’s success in the communications industry?
A: Built on InfoVista’s market-leading, integrated and patented performance assurance and service level agreement (SLA) management platform, the company’s solutions provide business service providers, wireless and broadband operators with a new level of visibility and control and the network intelligence they need to process customized and actionable information in real time across \all-IP networks.

InfoVista offers the most scalable, flexible and cost-effective service performance assurance technology platform on the market. It supports CSPs’ need to cost-effectively deliver a greater number of differentiated services transported by all-IP networks, maintain optimal quality of service (QoS) and end customer quality of experience (QoE), while reducing OPEX/CAPEX and lowering total cost of ownership (TCO).

Industry-leading scalability, service modeling flexibility and open integration features allow CSPs to minimize TCO, quickly support custom SLAs and seamlessly integrate with their OSS/BSS ecosystems. InfoVista’s platform is uniquely suited to help CSPs meet the service performance assurance, operational excellence and network optimization needs and demands. It supplies the intelligence necessary for engineering and operations to optimize the delivery and assure superior QoE of a vast array of converged network and IT services, including:

• Carrier Ethernet retail and wholesale services
• Ethernet backhaul
• IP/MPLS network services
• Mobile data services
• 3G and LTE RAN optimization
• Private cloud and hosted services
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
•  IP VPN and Application-Aware VPN
• Application Performance Management - Packet-flow (NetFlow) and DPI
• Data center services

InfoVista’s technology platform encompasses an unmatched set of capabilities to ensure the efficient delivery of proactive service assurance with end-to-end service monitoring, customer-facing and self-service reporting, proactive troubleshooting, problem resolution and pre-emptive capacity planning functions. The unique technical attributes of our platform architecture are:

• Multi-tenant, multi-vendor, multi-service, multi-technology platform
• Scalability in worldwide deployments
• Flexible patented service and object data model
• Out-of-the box yet customizable reporting
• Real-time performance degradation early warning system across network domains
• Fully integrated data processing and analysis
• Openness enabling integration within OSS/BSS environments

Q: What have been some of your company’s most recent achievements (new customer wins, new service/product deployment, etc.)?
A: A full list of recent InfoVista news can be found at http://infovista.com/content/news-and-events.

InfoVista delivers solutions to 80 percent of the world’s largest CSPs. They are equipped with the actionable network intelligence they need to ensure a high-quality user experience by holistically and cost-effectively managing the performance and the quality of the IT services they deliver. Sample customers include AT&T, Bell Canada, Bharti Airtel, Cable & Wireless, Cricket Wireless, Deutsche Telekom, Fairpoint Communications, MTN, Optus, Saudi Telecom Company, Singtel, Shaw Communications, SFR, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Telcel, Telstra, US Cellular, Verizon, Vodafone and XO Communications.

Recently, InfoVista launched its latest innovation, a self-optimizing radio access network (RAN) solution, VistaSON, which enables mobile operators to dynamically optimize the capacity and quality of their networks, delivering reduced OPEX and a competitive advantage. The solution has been designed around a step-by-step self-optimizing network (SON) framework that helps mobile operators ensure a safe transition from manual RAN optimization to automated self-optimization.

InfoVista’s flexible, easy-to-use and self-service network and application performance dashboard, Vista360, won the ‘Innovations in Networking’ category in Pipeline’s 2012 Innovation Awards. Seventy companies were nominated in the inaugural awards program, making it an extremely competitive race, and a select group of finalists were chosen and presented to Pipeline’s exclusive industry judging panel for final voting. The award judges included key executives from top CSPs around the world, such as AT&T, BT, Cox, Intelsat, TELUS, Turkcell and Yota, as well as influential industry analysts.

Also in 2012, three InfoVista innovations were Named Finalists in Network Products Guide’s 2012 Hot Companies and Best Products Awards, including Vista360 and VistaInsight for Networks.

Last but not least, InfoVista’s dedication to customer service was also recognized and awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2011 Global Customer Service Leadership Award in the Network Performance and Monitoring Market.

Q: Why is it important for your company to be a COMPTEL member?
A: InfoVista believes strongly in supporting the telecommunications industry and its representative associations. Via COMPTEL, InfoVista can develop business relationships and reach out to today’s communications marketplace.

Q: What have been the biggest obstacles your company has faced in the marketplace?
A: For many years now, InfoVista has been the sole independent service performance assurance solution provider to the CSP market. Our main competitors are large software fabrics that provide service performance assurance only as a piece of a larger product suite.

This has led InfoVista, since its inception in 1995, to:

• Permanently deliver the best service performance assurance technology platform in the market. InfoVista recently won the ‘Innovations in Networking’ Category of Pipeline’s 2012 Innovation Awards.
• Establish technology partnership with industry-leading vendors, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Juniper, NSN and Oracle, to proactively align our technology platform with their latest technology and OSS applications, and offer our CSP customers the benefits of best-of-breed software without the typical costs and risks of complex integration.
• Ensure our proactive service assurance solutions are performing at their best for our global customer base by providing them with the level of support they need for the successful implementations and ongoing development of our solutions. In 2011, InfoVista won the Frost & Sullivan Global Customer Service Leadership Award in the Network Performance Management market. This 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.

Q: What do you see as your greatest challenges going forward?
A: Today’s CSPs are facing serious threats to the sustainability of their business models from three main directions. The established downward trend in traditional voice and data revenues is set to continue, resulting in an ongoing decline in CSP revenue and net profit. Additionally, the need to diversify service offerings is expected to intensify as service differentiation becomes increasingly critical from a competitive point of view. Finally, mobile operators and backhaul transport providers are battling to lower the per bit cost of exploding mobile data traffic volume, preparing to accommodate the 3G to 4G transition and moving to all-IP as the underlying technology of LTE.

The combination of these three trends means CSPs are under even greater pressure to control costs and improve operational efficiency, while transforming their business models and OSS to support more rapid service innovation and deployment.

Given the day-to-day tasks CSPs face, such as providing network intelligence to various business units on time and on budget, and dealing with OSS consolidation and transformation projects to support more rapid service innovation and deployment, it is often difficult to make this happen.

InfoVista’s greatest challenge is to continue being the market-leading service performance assurance solution provider to help CSPs overcome these challenges, better their businesses, and be prepared to handle future challenges. Our proven and unified network, service and application performance platform was designed with these issues in mind and is the most scalable, flexible and cost-effective performance management technology available.