Spirent Communications and Redback Networks Team Up to Support Service Assurance in Carrier IP Networks
Monday October 14, 10:17 am ET
ROCKVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2002--Spirent Communications(TM), a wholly owned business unit of Spirent plc (NYSE:SPM - News; LSE:SPT - News), today announced a joint interoperability alliance with Redback Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:RBAK - News), a leading provider of next-generation broadband networking equipment, involving Spirent's performance and fault management operations support systems (OSS) and Redback's NetOp(TM) product suite, and SMS(TM) family of subscriber management systems.
The alliance is a response to mutual service provider requirements of a unified solution for performance and fault management within their IP networks. At present, service assurance in these networks is complicated by the absence of a single platform that is capable of assuring both the physical transport and logical layers. A unified service assurance approach allows providers to integrate alarm information from multiple layers and network element types, including deployed Redback's SMS platforms. This visibility will permit faster and more accurate problem identification, location and resolution. Carriers using this approach are expected to realize reductions in mean time to repair, enhance revenue from each circuit, and improve customer satisfaction.
"Our number one priority is to ensure our service assurance solutions work seamlessly for our customers, no matter what their network configurations may be," said Jim Schleckser, president of Spirent Communications' Service Assurance Broadband Division. "By collaborating with market leaders like Redback, we can help fulfill our customers' immediate service assurance needs in the current legacy/next-generation hybrid environment, as well as build a service assurance migration path to the all-IP network."
"Integrating our SMS platform and NetOp product suite with Spirent's Perform(TM) performance management OSS and Spirent's Sentry(TM) fault management OSS allows our carrier and service provider customers to more tightly monitor their networks and offer increasingly stricter SLAs thereby increasing revenues and margins on a per customer basis, said Shailesh Shukla, vice president of marketing and business development at Redback. "Customer's deploying our SMS platform and network management suite of products now have a choice of a more sophisticated monitoring tool to identify performance issues prior to impacting services which lead to significant operational cost savings."
Under the first phase of this alliance, the Redback® SMS 10000 platform and NetOp element management system will gain interoperability with Spirent's Perform(TM) performance management OSS and Spirent's Sentry(TM) fault management OSS. In subsequent phases, Redback will extend interoperability from its SmartEdge(TM) 800 Router to Sentry, Perform, and Spirent's REACT remote test management OSS. Sentry, Perform and REACT are integral GUI-based components inside CenterOp(TM), Spirent's end-to-end solution for service quality management in multi-vendor, multi-service, multi-technology networks. Spirent's Perform OSS provides automated quality of service (QoS) monitoring and assurance to help manage wholesale Service Level Agreements. The Sentry OSS provides a single automated means for negotiating alarm storms, accurately identifying the source and location of a network fault in seconds, and positively associating that fault with specific customers and services. Spirent's REACT combines intuitive interactive operation with extensive test and analysis capabilities for both logical and physical testing.
The SMS platform, Redback's industry-leading family of subscriber management systems, has established a new category of solutions that enables service providers and carriers to provision, aggregate and manage broadband, leased-line and dial-up subscribers and services via a single, unified platform. Redback's SMS 10000 platform addresses mid-range to high-end subscriber aggregation deployments for service providers who wish to aggregate and manage tens of thousands of broadband subscribers, supporting a very large concentration of broadband subscriber traffic from such devices as DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs), cable modem termination systems (CMTSs) and wireless concentrators. The SmartEdge 800 Router is a platform purpose-built for the network's edge with a keen focus on establishing high availability, scalability and flexibility. This is the first platform in the industry that boasts a true aggregation operating system for the aggregation layer of the network, built from the ground up at Redback. |
