Consumer and business subscriber demand for new technologies, services, and user experiences has never been greater. To meet it, network operators must grow and change or wither and die.
The Growth Challenge
To grow Subscriber Count, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), and Average Margin Per User (AMPU), network operators must also grow Bandwidth Speed and Availability, plus Content and Services. And to retain subscribers, they must assure a high level of service, wherever, whenever, and however users demand it.
For large carriers, organic growth is not enough. Becoming and staying a leader means mergers, acquisitions, unprecedented partnerships, and new geographies and topologies. And for network operations and engineering, that means new technical challenges.
The Change Challenge
The advent of 5G, acceleration of Work-from-Home (WfH) and the Gig Economy, and exponential growth in IoT devices are expanding the network edge and changing the technical requirements and operational priorities for business broadband providers. Office-bound PC users are becoming remote mobile device users and employees are becoming contractors. Traditional tools and methods for network traffic analytics, bandwidth management, and applications security assurance were not designed for tomorrow’s network realities.
Multi-party video conferencing, real-time mobile transaction apps, and intelligent IoT device operation are forcing network operators to change their plans for network monitoring, analytics, and automation.
Innovation Imperatives for Network Operators
Cisco Annual Internet Report (2018–2023) White Paper
Summary: Multi-domain innovation and integration redefines the Internet
Throughout the forecast period (2018 – 2023), network operators and IT teams will be focused on interconnecting all the different domains in their diverse infrastructures – access, campus/branch, IoT/OT, wide-area, data center, co-los, cloud providers, service providers, and security. By integrating these formerly distinct and siloed domains, IT can reduce complexity, increase agility, and improve security. The future of the Internet will establish new connectivity requirements and service assurance levels for users, personal devices and IoT nodes, all applications (consumer and business), via any network access type (fixed broadband, Wi-Fi, and cellular) with dynamic security. Through our research and analysis, we anticipate innovation and growth in the following strategic areas.
Read MoreApplications: Across virtually every business sector, there is an increased demand for new or enhanced applications that improve customer experiences. The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and business analytics are changing how developers build smart applications to simplify customer transactions and deliver new business insights. Businesses and service organizations need to understand evolving demands and deliver exceptional customer experiences by leveraging technology.
Infrastructure transformation: The rapid growth of data and devices is outpacing many IT teams’ capabilities and manual approaches won’t allow them to keep up. Increased IT automation, centrally and remotely managed, is essential for businesses to keep pace in the digital world. Service providers and enterprises are exploring software-defined everything, as well as intent-driven and context-powered infrastructures that are designed to support future application needs and flexibility.
Security: Cybersecurity is a top priority for all who rely on the Internet for business and personal online activities. Protect every surface, detect fast and remediate confidently. Protecting digital assets and content encompasses an ever-expanding digital landscape. Organizations need the actionable insights and scalable solutions to secure employees’ devices, IoT connections, infrastructure and proprietary data.
Empowering employees and teams: To achieve business agility and prepare employees for the future, empowering global workforces with the right tools is a must. Automation, collaboration and mobility are essential for managing IT complexity and new customer expectations and demands. Business teams, partners and groups in all types of organizations need to collaborate seamlessly across all application mediums that are relevant to various roles and responsibilities. Employees and teams need accurate and actionable data to solve problems and create new growth strategies.
A Leader’s Story
One of the world’s largest Multi-Service Operators has pursued growth through the acquisitions of multiple smaller MSOs, and an expanded investment in their fiber infrastructure build-out. Through these moves, they have been able to rapidly grow their subscriber base, broaden their service selection, increase network bandwidth for more users and prepare for the new requirements of business broadband.
The enormous network now comprises:
- Hundreds of telemetry-capable routers
- Thousands of Cable Modem Termination Systems
- Millions of managed Wi-Fi gateways
- Tens of Millions of DOCSIS devices
More Users, More Problems
This rapid network expansion also introduced several key challenges to effective network traffic monitoring and analytics, threatening the operator’s ability to maintain network health, security, and, profitability.
Data Silos
Combining the infrastructure, subscribers, and businesses of multiple networks resulted in numerous network traffic data silos for different protocols, equipment types, and operating regions. Collecting, aggregating, integrating, and delivering timely traffic data required the use of 100 different point tools and added considerable management and automation complexity.
Protocol Explosion
With the addition of the acquired cable systems to its already vast RF network assets, the MSO saw a dramatic increase in the resources needed to maintain efficient and effective network traffic monitoring and analytics using IPDR protocol templates. And to support their increasing fiber build-out and services offerings, they faced new traffic monitoring requirements for additional protocols, including BMP/BGP, NetFlow, and Telemetry.
Real-Time Monitoring
Preventing network bandwidth congestion, protecting network security, and providing timely services on their rapidly growing network, the MSO needed to significantly reduce traffic monitoring latency and improve the accuracy of their analytics. But they struggled to rapidly collect, integrate, and analyze sufficiently-large traffic data samples to assure effective responses to changing network conditions and unforeseen network events.
A Simple Solution
To meet these challenges, the MSO turned to VelociData’s innovative Network Traffic Data Fabric solution for seamless, scalable data collection, integration, and delivery, which rapidly brought about impressive results.
- Scalable Traffic Data Collection Volume
- 100+ TB of Data Per Day
- Scalable Network Event Processing
- 21 Billion Events Per Day
- Real-Time Traffic Data Transformation
- Milliseconds Processing Latency
- Reduced Traffic Analytics Latency
- 12.5 Hours to 4 Minutes Analytics Speedup