AmanziTel in CommunicAsia 2011

AmanziTel is participating in the CommunicAsia exhibition under the banner of its majority shareholder DingLi Communications. The exhibition will run for 4 days participated by the active companies in the region. AmanziTel is joining the DingLi team for the exhibition showcasing AmanziTel’s existing solutions for network performance management and optimization.

DingLi’s booth showcase its Chinese heritage and western expansion with a very distinct Chinese design, authentic music and presence of its European directors. DingLi’s portfolio of products and solutions are currently deployed in the world’s largest networks and services more than a billion mobile subscribers everyday.

End-to-end network management using a unified Platform

Now that AmanziTel is part of DingLi, our valued customers asks several question that are actually valid for all of our customers.
- Will AmanziTel only support DingLi products from now on?
- Is the open source version of the Wireless Explorer going to be terminated?
- What will be the new direction that AmanziTel will be taking?
- Is AmanziTel’s approach to end-to-end performance management going to change?

I would like to address those questions on this blog. First off AmanziTel will continue to support other products from drive test tools to probes to network recordings to performance statistics to actual customer experiences. DingLi’s product like any other products that captures and records network performance will be supported as an input to the Wireless Explorer. It actually enables the Wireless Explorer solution to provide a true unified platform to our customers since now we can offer collection and diagnostic tools on top of our solution. This put us in a different league compared to our peers especially in customer experience management with the capability to correlate actual subscriber experience directly from their mobile to the network captured experience to independent probes on various interfaces.

The open source version of the Wireless Explorer shall remain open source (EPL) and will be enhanced further with capabilities and features we can take from our commercial versions and make them open source from time to time. Customer processes, custom analysis and related customer specific requirements will always be specific to a particular customer and will never leak to the open source version, this approach will always be AmanziTel’s basic approach in its deployment. Providing constant update to the open source releases is a way for us to say thank you to our contributors and customers.

The Wireless Explorer started with the concept that is employed in the Windows Explorer, whereas it is able to open and process any data source as long as that data source is readable to the Wireless Explorer no matter what format it is on. The Wireless Explorer will become richer in features in capabilities, specifically incorporating a lot of the cool features in DingLi toolsets that are not available from their competitors in the market. These capabilities are evident in the Unified Platform Solution where it can support and correlate almost any type of data that has the following structure (1)Event (2)Tree/Configuration (3)Statistics (4)Locations. Most data generated in telecom systems are event based, meaning it has a time stamp. Support for any data formats containing of the information mentioned makes the Wireless Explorer very powerful and flexible. It enables support not only for telecom data but for any type of data with the same characteristics.

The man goal is provide our customers with a true end-to-end network management solution that process and correlates data from any source that is vendor independent and technology agnostic.

DSS or SON. Which one is better in today's world?

In the past two years we have seen several companies claiming they have solutions for Self Organizing Networks (SON) which is supposedly a fully automated network optimization system. With this claims around I have not heard of any network that truly implemented a full SON. The most successful trials I heard so far are on automated neighbor list optimization, although this particular solution has been around for ages. So what's new? Has SON really arrived?

In the other hand there are existing Decision Support Solutions out there that can do neighbor list optimization, parameter optimization, configuration optimization and configuration management. Some of these solutions work and most works well on small networks. What about in big networks? Which is better today SON or DSS?

SON promoters claim 40% savings on OPEX, is this really true? Is it achievable? In SON, the idea is to minimize the lifecycle cost of running a network by eliminating manual configuration of equipment at the time of deployment, right through to dynamically optimizing radio network performance during operation. The idea is good but if the implementation so far only achieves neighbor optimization then the savings is virtually nil, zero, none, nada.... Why is that? Well neighbor optimization is available in most tools today and can be easily performed even in a non-automated environment by a skilled and experience engineer.

How about DSS? Is it any better? The answer lies on what the DSS solution is capable of doing. Is it capable of optimizing parameters, configurations, neighbor relationships, etc. If it is then there are savings to be had in terms of reducing the amount of human reliance and error while performing optimization tasks. However where is the greatest savings achieved?

My take is the greatest saving and impact is achieved by employing an end-to-end solution for monitoring, management and optimization. This can be done by using and correlating all performance sources in the network from radio to transmission to core. But how can this be done? There are several solutions in the market today and each has very different approaches. Some are solutions using single platform such as ActixONE (even claims full SON) or the Wireless Explorer. Some are piece meal solutions like the ones from NetCracker or PiWorks (no idea if it is). Each of this has their own ideas on how to reduce cost however it begs the question of whether it is a real cost savings or simply the same cost dressed differently.

When I say cost reductions I meant on all fronts from human resources to computing resources to management resources. How can this be achieved? I have fairly sound idea on how it can and if you would like me to share please drop me a line at ian.q@telia.com or follow my blog http://ianvernon.blogspot.com

Now do you know any solution out there that truly reduces the cost of operations? If there are let’s explore it and see if it stands the test of time.

Which has a better RoI, direct or broad marketing?

In the consumer world, marketing to a wide audience usually has the most impact, thus companies broadcast or advertise in various media (print, tv, mobile, etc). The return on investment in such marketing campaigns are huge since it can sway a whole new generation of customers. Is the same in B2B?

In the business world it is possible to broadcast in print media, visual advertising and various exhibitions. None of them comes without a cost, the question to me is if is justified with a good return on investment. Exhibitions in particular where costs are around 20,000€ to 100,000€ if you factor in all the cost involved (logistics, resources, etc) are very expensive (not if you are an industry giant) for SMEs. Of course you get that marketing presence but is it really worth it? Just consider that at 100,000€ that’s the annual cost of a good sales person who might be able to reach the same companies you target to get your presence known in an exhibition.

There are advantages of course in broadcasting to business clients such as when launching a new product or entering a completely new market… you announce your presence and increases brand awareness and recognition. Having said that, what is the most cost effective way of achieving a wide brand awareness and product recognition? Is it through various exhibitions or print media or visual advertising or direct marketing? In my humble opinion exhibitions are great if you have a captive audience, such as being a speaker on a hot topic or launching a revolutionary product that everyone is interested in or scheduling meetings in advance with potential customers who are attending the exhibition (saving you the travel cost later on).

With direct marketing you are able to reach your intended audience first hand (if you know who they are and if your marketing message is not considered as a spam). For it to be effective it has to captivating and concise since most readers only has a few seconds to digest your message. The question is how can you design your direct marketing campaign to have the right effect?