IBM Tivoli Vallent

 NetworkAssure™ for Performance Management

Efficiently Manage your Multi-Vendor/Technology Network

The telecom market is a demanding place. You’ve got to deploy 3G wireless, wireless IP and broadband data networks in tandem with legacy wireless and wireline voice networks. This adds new complexity to the task of assuring high service availability and quality. Meanwhile, sophisticated new services and third-party content are putting further demands on network infrastructure and operations. And, of course, you want better insight into performance metrics to more fl exibly and efficiently manage network resources during these changing times. Now, imagine a performance management (PM) solution that pulls together OSS data to manage the most complex multi-vendor, multi-technology networks in the world. That’s NetworkAssure. We understand the pressures you are facing. That’s why we designed a solution that provides critical performance metrics to proactively manage all aspects of your network infrastructure and display it in intuitive visual representations for all users within the enterprise.

Vallent™ NetworkAssure solution combines and enhances our proven and globally deployed Prospect®

and Metrica® performance management solutions. It is a comprehensive, flexible and scalable performance management system that supports the most complex networks while providing end-to-end visibility into total network performance. NetworkAssure offers the most comprehensive PM feature set and the industry’s largest library of off-the-shelf network interfaces. It provides a seamless aggregation and correlation of data from multi-vendor, multitechnology networks and pre-built network interfaces for technologies, including UMTS, GSM, GPRS, IP, CDMA, ATM/FR, transmission, switched voice and others.

workAssure™ for Performance Management

NetworkAssure provides the intelligence to:

4 Improve network utilization and increase productivity.

4 Capture and analyze vital network metrics.

4 Help dictate and predict additional spending requirements.

4 Facilitate introduction and enhance customer perception of new value-added services.

4 Capitalize on emerging high-speed wireless voice and data opportunities.

4 Execute network-wide analysis of infrastructure performance.

4 Integrate with legacy and future systems.

4 Effectively manage ongoing changes in the network.

4 Automate time-consuming tasks.

4 Proactively monitor and predict important trends to support network planning.

How Your Business Benefits

Control Network Operating Costs

NetworkAssure enables you to deliver superior services to customers while effi ciently managing your network’s operating and maintenance costs. Using statistical measurement, sophisticated troubleshooting, and indepth analysis and measurement, NetworkAssure helps you identify and fix potential quality problems before customers experience degraded service. Granular troubleshooting provides network engineers the technical detail required to pinpoint problems in the network, remedy them quickly and communicate proactively within the organization or to customers. NetworkAssure also provides the historical daily, weekly and monthly analysis which is critical to optimize long term network performance and quality.

Easy to Use For Everyone

Designed for users with a wide range of technical skills, NetworkAssure is an intuitive tool. Via a web-based interface, NetworkAssure delivers up-to-date performance reports and analysis to ensure improved decision making. Enterprise-wide reporting provides insight, intelligence and analysis capabilities, enabling the entire organization to link network performance to business imperatives.

Rapidly Deploy New Services and Respond to New Technologies

Vallent has developed the largest library of network interfaces in the world, ready to deploy as your network requirements evolve. Our strong relationships with OEM vendors result in timely support for vendor upgrades and assured one-to-one mapping of release cycles. Pre-confi gured technology packs are quickly deployed, extended and modifi ed, and each NetworkAssure installation is supported by our staff’s extensive experience with a wide range of network elements, service offerings and technologies.

Proactively Improve Service Quality

Today subscribers are more sophisticated with a lower tolerance for poor quality service. NetworkAssure offers KPI reporting and dashboard capabilities to deliver key metrics that identify areas for service-quality improvement. You can also identify anomalies in near real-time, troubleshoot and test using custom reports and ad-hoc queries, and immediately review the results of corrective action. This functionality is critical to maintaining a high-quality service experience, as well as deploying new services.

NetworkAssure and The Virtuo™ Platform

A New Approach to Performance, Service and Business Management

You have a high bar for service quality. We can help you meet those standards while linking your business objectives to your network’s performance. Virtuo™ is the platform that enables the consolidation of PM and service quality management (SQM) into one highly scalable, Oracle-based platform. NetworkAssure can be installed independently, or more powerfully, combined with Vallent’s ServiceAssure and BusinessAssure applications. The solutions share common mediation, network interfaces and database. The result reduces operating costs while improving fundamental operating efficiencies.

The Virtuo platform provides several advantages over independent solutions:

4 A modular and incremental approach to adding SQM/SLA functionality at low risk.

4 Common data collection and mediation, which reduces duplication and improves data integrity.

4 Shared KPIs to ensure that all users have access to the same, consistent data.

4 Root-cause analysis for drill down from SQM to PM applications.

4 A common, industry-standard Oracle database to reduce database maintenance overhead.

4 Lower cost of ownership through guaranteed interoperability, upgrades and lifecycle management of PM and SQM systems.

NetworkAssure Key Features

One System For All Performance Management Needs

NetworkAssure offers a full set of capabilities to address the needs of emerging service providers and growing mid-sized operators, as well as the largest carriers in the world. In fact, Vallent has over 300 PM deployments worldwide.

NetworkAssure features include:

Features Description

Flexible Reporting

4 Visualization capabilities and graphical representations are confi gurable and provide the following advantages over SQL query-driven solutions:

· User defi ned KPIs.

· User defi ned reports.

· Near real-time reporting.

· Ad-hoc queries and reports.

· Powerful, wireless-specifi c report capability.

· Large library of pre-confi gured calculations and KPIs.

· Multi-vendor technology-specifi c report packages.

· Flexible report scheduling.

Windows-Style, Customizable, Web-Based GUI

4 Standard and customized reporting with pre-built scenarios, templates and reports.

4 Highlight, right-click and drag-and-drop to customize and create reports.

4 Generate enterprise KPIs for tracking of operational performance.

4 Tailor data to a user group, i.e., high-level reporting for executives or granular detail for network operations and field personnel.

4 Create report folders for enterprise-wide access by confi gurable groups of users; accessible via any secure Internet connection.

Alarm and Reporting Management

4 Performance-based alarms are fully confi gurable to provide notifi cation for any measured

or calculated parameter.

4 User-defi ned thresholds can be applied against report data and proactively generate alarms;

automatic e-mail alerts delivered to any mobile device.

4 Alarms can be routed via SNMP traps to FM systems or any other target system.

Interactive Data Reporting

4 Reports export easily into Excel with macros for enhanced manipulation of data.

4 Export to any reporting tool or database.

4 Diverse graphical views display reports and graphs in a common, web-based interface.

Software-Driven Platform

4 Open architecture runs on Windows or a web browser using an Oracle database.

4 The architecture scales to handle time-series event and metrics information.

4 Reliable communication with multiple clients, open interfaces and cross-technology, cross-vendor support.