Brocade Acquires Vistapointe for Mobile Traffic Visibility/Analytics

Brocade has acquired Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California with operations in Ireland and Bangalore, India, for its cloud-based and real-time network intelligence solutions for mobile operators. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vistapointe specializes in data extraction, analysis and insight generation technologies that enable mobile operators gain visibility into their mobile networks. Vistapointe’s product portfolio leverages Network Functions Virtualization (NFV architecture), enabling it to run in the cloud. The Vistapointe solution enables Mobile and Het-Net operators to monetize the explosion of data traffic, save and optimize their cost-structure through better visibility and reduce subscriber churn through better QoE. The solution passively taps into the data, session and signaling layers of 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi networks non-intrusively, while complying with 3GPP, IETF & IEEE standard protocols.

Brocade said the acquisition helps it to address the emerging opportunities and requirements of mobile network operators, providing them with enhanced network visibility and analytics of subscriber data traffic.   These capabilities will be essential for MNOs rolling out 4G/LTE technology across the billions of mobile devices deployed worldwide, led primarily by data networking requirements. This also establishes a firm technology foundation for MNOs as they begin the migration path to 5G technology in the coming years. The expected revenue for data traffic over mobile handsets will exceed $358 billion (USD) by 2018, representing the single largest source of revenue for MNOs over the next six years, according to industry research firm Analysys Mason.

In addition to enhancing the Brocade NFV technology portfolio, the Vistapointe acquisition directly complements the existing Brocade MLX-based IP telemetry solution to provide MNOs with an end-to-end network intelligence solution, from the network packet broker to analytics applications. With this transaction, the Vistapointe technologies are being incorporated into a new Network Visibility and Analytics group reporting into Jason Nolet, Vice President of the Switching, Routing, and Analytics products group, Brocade.

"With the massive growth in connected devices and the dominance of data in mobile networks, network visibility and analytics will be more important than ever. And, as mobile operators continue the aggressive pace at which they intend to adopt software networking solutions, they will benefit from complementary, NFV-based analytics tools to improve subscriber quality of experience and security while also dramatically reducing costs," Nolet said. "The Vistapointe team has recognized the disruptive opportunity of leveraging NFV-based solutions for analytics, and we believe its technology is at the forefront of this space and perfectly aligned to the needs of mobile operators."

"The Vistapointe acquisition affirms our commitment to SDN and NFV as a means to disrupt the status quo of the networking industry," said Ken Cheng, CTO and Vice President of Corporate Development, Brocade. "We will continue to execute against a focused strategy that leverages M&A, strategic partnerships, open source communities, and organic innovation to deliver next-generation networking solutions that are open, virtual, and simple."

As part of the transaction, Vistapointe CEO, Ravi Medikonda, has joined Brocade as Vice President of the Network Visibility and Analytics product group. Furthermore, Brocade has hired the Vistapointe development team, and they will report into Medikonda as part of the new business unit.

http://newsroom.brocade.com/press-releases/brocade-acquires-vistapointe-visibility-and-analyt-nasdaq-brcd-1144303#.VBb_m_ldW1g
http://vistapointe.net/

• Vistapointe was headed by Ravi Medikonda (CEO), who previously held leadership roles at Juniper Networks in its Product Management & Marketing groups. Before Juniper, he was Director of Product Management at Tellabs/Vivace Business Unit with P&L responsibility for the IP/MPLS products and successfully led Tellabs into the 3G/Wireless RAN backhaul market.

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Gigamon Announces NFV for Tools (NFVfT)

Gigamon introduced an NFV for Tools (NFVfT) concept that aims to standardize APIs and the demarcation point for network traffic and Big Data to be brokered into an elastic compute architecture for analysis. The NFVfT framework would offer visibility arbitration so that the Big Data analytics tools can virtualize their functions and process data on demand enabling a per-unit-of-information-processed pricing model.

Gigamon said its vision is to create a new paradigm for the more effective processing of Big Data by Customer Experience Monitoring (CEM), troubleshooting and Quality of Service (QoS) tools, as well as the OSS/BSS function and other monitoring and analysis solutions. Gigamon’s Visibility Fabric would be used to normalize, filter and forward data in to a storage medium through a virtual demarcation point. The Orchestration Layer of the Unified Visibility Fabric Architecture and any developed APIs would discover which tools are available to the Visibility Fabric and their capabilities. This enables what would be called the Analytic Data Arbitration Function (ADAF) which manages the brokering of analytic tools with the supply of data that needs to be processed or analyzed. The ADAF capability is in many ways similar to a portal, but where a provisioning and arbitration function exists to broker vendors of analytic tools with those who supply data that needs to be processed or analyzed.

“Big Data is changing the status quo for mobile carriers. The current business model for service providers could become problematic as they fund the rising cost of transporting this data,” said Andy Huckridge, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Gigamon. “Many service providers have now realized the value of the Big Data in their pipes and are now in the process of enabling the monetization of that data. However, this model begins to break down with the legacy analytic tool vendors. The NFV for Tools concept empowers the tools of the future to analyze the bandwidth of the future with the end goal of enabling the monetization of Big Data.”

“Vistapointe was founded on this exact NFV vision of decoupling the analytic tools from the underlying custom hardware probes and enabling this functionality via software on x86 compute platforms. This architecture eliminates the current method of deploying multiple custom probe-appliances, and leverages the existing data-center compute infrastructure, therefore drastically reducing the total cost of ownership,” said Ravi Medikonda, CEO, Vistapointe Inc. “With an integrated solution of Vistapointe software analytic tools and Gigamon’s innovative NFVfT, the future of service provider monitoring will create a cost-effective and scalable platform for big-data applications.”

http://www.gigamon.com/visibility-fabric-architecture

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Gigamon Partners with Vistapointe on Big Data Monitoring + Network Intelligence

Gigamon and Vistapointe announced a partnership to provide mobile network operators with deep visibility and insight into the operations and transactions occurring on their network.

Vistapointe delivers data extraction, analysis and insight generation technologies for mobile traffic.  Its product portfolio, following the NFV architecture, is completely software-based, runs on COTS and ATCA platforms, and provides a 360°visibility around Subscriber, Applications, Networks, Roaming, Tethering and Device proliferation. The solution passively taps into the data, session and signaling layers of 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi networks non-intrusively. It complies with the 3GPP, IETF & IEEE standard protocols, without requiring any integration with the existing vendors.

Gigamon provides an intelligent Visibility Fabric architecture for enterprises, data centers and service providers. Its GigaVUE portfolio of high availability and high density products intelligently delivers the appropriate network traffic to management, analysis, compliance and security tools.

Under the partnership, Vistapointe becomes part of Gigamon's Visibility Fabric Ecosystem Partner Program, which offers visibility solutions for network security, troubleshooting, application analysis, forensics review and SOX compliance.

"There are significant changes occurring within carrier networks as a result of various forms of virtualization and Big Data," said Andy Huckridge, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Gigamon. "The associated business impacts are also changing the way these operators deliver services and generate revenue. The Gigamon Visibility Fabric and a new class of tool vendor, like Vistapointe, are addressing the needs of these mobile service providers. We look forward to working with Vistapointe to truly deliver greater value to our carrier customers."

"Vistapointe is excited to partner with Gigamon to bring new and valuable solutions to mobile operators," said Ravi Medikonda, CEO, Vistapointe Inc. "Mobile providers are looking for ways to deal with the explosion in the amount and variety of traffic flowing through their networks. They need to enhance subscriber experience, while reducing churn and revenue erosion. The combined Vistapointe and Gigamon solution can support this new Big Data business model, while working towards delivering enhanced value in increasingly virtualized environments."

http://www.gigamon.com/
http://vistapointe.net/

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Vistapointe Raises Funding for its Cloud-based, Network Intelligence Solution

Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California, closed a second round of funding for its cloud-based and real-time network intelligence solutions for mobile operators.

Vistapointe specializes in data extraction, analysis and insight generation technologies that enable mobile operators gain visibility into their mobile networks. Vistapointe’s product portfolio following the NFV architecture, is completely software-based, runs on COTS & ATCA platforms and provides a 360° visibility around Subscriber, Applications, Networks, Roaming, Tethering & Device proliferation. The Vistapointe solution enables Mobile and Het-Net operators to monetize the explosion of data traffic, save and optimize their cost-structure through better visibility and reduce subscriber churn through better QoE. The solution passively taps into the data, session and signaling layers of 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi networks non-intrusively, complies with the 3GPP, IETF & IEEE standard protocols, without requiring any integration with the existing vendors.

The funding came from Navenby, a British Virgin Islands based investment company. It has a made a wide range of investments including internet infrastructure, application software delivered as a service, mobile products and services and new media convergence. Vistapointe is the first investment by Navenby in the mobile segment.

“Vistapointe has quickly scaled up: In 5 quarters, it has launched the product, established a customer base in North America and is pursuing large opportunities in the APAC region. It has built up technology and channel partnerships within the industry ranging from a market leader in Wi-Fi products to large system integrators” says Paul Tori, Director and Investment Manager, Navenby.

“The market is ripe: Mobile Operators are dealing with ongoing revenue erosion in their traditional voice & SMS revenues. They are exploring new business models and effective ways to deal with the mobile data explosion and the associated signaling storms. We provide an elegant and flexible solution. This round of funding will help scale our field operations and expand our customer foot print, said Ravi Medikonda, CEO, Vistapointe Inc.

http://vistapointe.net/

• Unlike general purpose, deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network intelligence platforms, Vistapointe features a Linux-base packet parser engine to selectively decode 3GPP and 4G/LTE protocols, capture only specific protocol fields, apply compression and then deliver this data to a cloud-based mobile analytics platform.  The cloud-based analytics enables Vistapoint to offer a highly scalable Network Intelligence As A Service (NiAS) for 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi carriers.  Vistapointe's Dynamic Subscriber Profiling enables the operator to predict subscriber usage patterns and profile their mobile data customers so as to offer fine-tuned tariff plans.  Vistapointe also said its dynamic subscriber profiling could leverage APIs to integrate with 3rd party mobile ad platforms.
  
• Vistapointe is headed by Ravi Medikonda (CEO), who previously held leadership roles at Juniper Networks in its Product Management & Marketing groups. Before Juniper, he was Director of Product Management at Tellabs/Vivace Business Unit with P&L responsibility for the IP/MPLS products and successfully led Tellabs into the 3G/Wireless RAN backhaul market.

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ACG Research: Mobile Data Traffic Dominated by Google, Facebook, YouTube

Data published by ACG Research reveals that Google, Facebook and YouTube dominate in terms of mobile traffic carried by a Tier 2 mobile operator in North America. Traffic analysis was provided by Vistapointe, which specializes in cloud-based and business intelligence solutions for mobile and enterprise Wi-Fi operators.

Some key findings:

• Consumption of multimedia applications (YouTube, Netflix, and ESPN) is approximately 70% of total usage; capping of unlimited data plans has led consumers to consciously move toward using multimedia apps, mostly smartphones, while on Wi-Fi coverage.
• Utilities traffic is approximately 25% of the total data: Signaling (GTP attach, detach messages & PDP context activations) and IP control plane & session establishment traffic, initiated by smartphones; mobile carriers have been inaccurately complaining about smartphone control and signaling traffic, claiming that it is huge.
• Apple, Google &Microsoft are emerging as the smartphone OS app store leaders: Google dominates in the mobile application ecosystem, both from data traffic consumption and percentage of users; Facebook is second in data traffic consumption and percentage of users.

Vistapointe, which is a start-up based in San Ramon, California, offers a Mobile Analytics and Business Intelligence solution for 3G and 4G networks. It non-intrusively taps into data and signaling layer interfaces to offer actionable insights that can be leveraged to profile mobile data customers dynamically, optimize the RAN and packet core backbone to enhance QoE, and identify opportunities to drive marketing programs and create innovative new service plans.

http://acgresearch.blogspot.in/2013/07/snapshot-mobile-data-usage.html

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Vistapointe: Mobile Analytics and the Customer Experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnRwVpg5lLA

What's really interesting about Vistapointe is that they've developed a real-time, customer intelligence engine that leverages only necessary data to understand the customer experience and get a better handle on application security. Understanding the impact that applications are having on the network is essential, explains Andrew Coward, Principal Consultant at Kirin Solutions and Board Advisor at Vistapointe. http://vistapointe.net

0:40 -- Some Use Cases
2:18 -- Getting a Hold of Quality of Experience
4:15 -- Customer Care
5:24 -- Mobile App Security

Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California with R&D in Bangalore, India, offers a cloud-based and embedded network intelligence solutions for mobile and enterprise Wi-Fi operators.

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Vistapointe - The Power of Mobile Analytics & Mobile Advertising

Click to Watch:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyzcuQ84B1Y

Mobile operators have a wealth of information about how applications are being used across their networks. Mobile users are consuming ever increasing amounts of media on smartphones and tablets. Looking deep into the data could unlock significant value for the network operators, users in search of contextually-relevant media, and third-party advertisers, explains Shrikant Latkar, VP of Marketing at InMobi and Board Advisor at Vistapointe.

http://vistapointe.net

1:00 -- Mobile Operators Look to New Revenue Streams
2:00 -- Smartphones Change the Game for Network Traffic and Media Consumption
4:00 -- Unlocking Value with User Data
5:10 Mobile Apps Can Leverage Network Intelligence
7:38 -- Context Delivers Ultimate Value for the User

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Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California with R&D in Bangalore, India, offers a cloud-based and embedded network intelligence solutions for mobile and enterprise Wi-Fi operators.

Unlike general purpose, deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network intelligence platforms, Vistapointe features a Linux-base packet parser engine to selectively decode 3GPP and 4G/LTE protocols, capture only specific protocol fields, apply compression and then deliver this data to a cloud-based mobile analytics platform.The cloud-based analytics enables Vistapoint to offer a highly scalable Network Intelligence As A Service (NiAS) for 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi carriers.  Vistapointe's Dynamic Subscriber Profiling enables the operator to predict subscriber usage patterns and profile their mobile data customers so as to offer fine-tuned tariff plans.  Vistapointe also said its dynamic subscriber profiling could leverage APIs to integrate with 3rd party mobile ad platforms.

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Vistapointe Combines Packet Parsing with Cloud-based Analytics

by James E. Carroll

Vistapointe, a start-up based in San Ramon, California with R&D in Bangalore, India, introduced its cloud-based and embedded network intelligence solutions for mobile and enterprise Wi-Fi operators.


Unlike general purpose, deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network intelligence platforms, Vistapointe features a Linux-base packet parser engine to selectively decode 3GPP and 4G/LTE protocols, capture only specific protocol fields, apply compression and then deliver this data to a cloud-based mobile analytics platform.The cloud-based analytics enables Vistapoint to offer a highly scalable Network Intelligence As A Service (NiAS) for 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi carriers.  Vistapointe's Dynamic Subscriber Profiling enables the operator to predict subscriber usage patterns and profile their mobile data customers so as to offer fine-tuned tariff plans.  Vistapointe also said its dynamic subscriber profiling could leverage APIs to integrate with 3rd party mobile ad platforms.
http://vistapointe.net

• Vistapointe is headed by Ravi Medikonda (CEO), who previously held leadership roles at Juniper Networks in its Product Management & Marketing groups. Before Juniper, he was Director of Product Management at Tellabs/Vivace Business Unit with P&L responsibility for the IP/MPLS products and successfully led Tellabs into the 3G/Wireless RAN backhaul market.

By capturing only the selected protocol fields, Vistapointe substantially improves data collection efficiency while still gaining granular visibility into mobile users and applications.

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