Working with HUGE Data Volumes

With the advent of high speed mobile broadband, comes the intricate problem of handling very high volume of data to be used for network management and optimisation. It is common to have 20 TB of network or probe recordings everyday, the question is how do you process and analyze this large volumes of data to be useful? It is a known fact that even the vendors of test and measurement equipment that supplies the systems to capture and gather this data cannot cope with the volumes in terms of processing, analysis and reporting. Now considering that you add to that all other data sources that can be used for network management and optimization such as drive testing, call records, event records, performance counters, probes, provisioning, customer support and complaints… how do you handle all this to make the most out of it?

It’s simple really, we have the answer and have proven that it is possible to handle such a high volume of data easily and very fast, it is forgetting about schema’s and tables. When we design a solution we do not think of reformatting data instead we simply keep the same formats as they were in their original form, so we end up with several data formats being loaded into our systems. Why is this effective and efficient, firstly we do not need to convert and store the data in its new format. Secondly the original format where it was created is probably the best for this data since the vendor would have spent several man years to get it right for their equipment. And lastly, we simply have clever solutions...

OK the last part was pushing it too much as a sales pitch, however it is fair to say we think differently than most companies in our field and industry and we have proven that it works well.

WANTED: Data Management Experts

With the growing adoption of our technologies in the telecoms market comes the need of delivering excellent customer service. In this regards customer trials of our solutions are as abundant as feathers in an eagle. There are more field trial request than the existing deployment team can handle, this is a very good thing! Like in any product implementation the first impression always counts, hence make it right the first time.

Rapid prototyping and fast proof of concept delivery coupled with good quality are our trade mark. Maintaining that is a challenge given the same challenge in finding the right resources fits into our culture. Like any growing company, we have had our successes and failures, lots of failures that are encourage and ultimately made the product as robust, powerful, flexible and highly scalable as it is today. In most cases making converts out of skeptics is as easy as showing a demo. One example is in the desktop solution where we load, correlate, generate reports and analysis of 6000 physical sectors, 2 GB of configuration dump and 300 GB of recordings takes around 10 minutes for the entire process to complete (from loading all data from scratch to correlation to generation of reports and analysis), just imagine what you can do with continuous monitoring using the server solution where it can support 100 Billion primitives per sever instance. It gives the engineer almost unlimited capabilities….

With such impressive demo, it’s impossible to avoid requests for custom capabilities using ideas that customer have only dreamed of before and now they can grasp that it can be done. One good example is 4 dimensional analysis or even more. Some of the trials we are involved in sometimes seems impossible to most people like proving scalability by running trials on more than 10 TB of data. Herein lies the challenge of recruiting the right people with the right skills and the right mindset… Are you up to the challenge?

Expansion Pains

Two months into completion of the merger with DingLi things are moving fast forward in AmanziTel. More opportunities have presented themselves and the vision of having a DingLi unified platform is getting closer to its first deployment. Like in a new merger there are of course teething issues, dominated by lack of resources to support an exponential growth both in customer deployment and product development. The challenge is finding the right resource who embraces the product concept, adopts to the company’s culture and exemplify the AmanziTel ideologies.

There are of course a lot of talented individuals out there, but why is this such a challenge? The answer lies in the fact that what we do in AmanziTel are very innovative, ground breaking, and game changing. We deploy technologies that were never used before in telecoms that allows us to ensure higher scalability and performance than what are available today. This also enables the possibility to create a truly unified platform that can support all types of data sources within the telecoms domain. Of particular peculiarity, our solutions are also being deployed in security and defense giving us limitations on how and where we recruit resources.

Working with AmanziTel is not only about the excellent social benefits found in most Swedish companies but more importantly being part of AmanziTel is becoming a part of something magnificent, something that will change the way we deal with network performance and management. Who is up for the challenge and rewards that goes with it?