Anritsu Service Assurance
Anritsu transformed service assurance with the OpenText™ Vertica™ Analytics Platform's AI-driven insights, optimizing network performance globally
About Anritsu Service Assurance
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Global presence:Operates in over 90 countries
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Serving:Over 60 network operators worldwide
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Processing:Over 80 billion data rows daily
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Product range:1000+ test and measurement solutions
Summary
Challenges
- Scaling for one billion subscribers' network analysis.
- Expanding data storage for advanced analytics.
- Limited scalability for cost-effective growth.
Solution
- Implemented advanced analytics to increase scalability and efficiency.
- Leveraged AI-driven insights for issue resolution.
Results
Achieved 351% ROI while delivering improved service
Reduced storage requirements by 50 percent
Challenges
- Managing in-depth network data analysis for one billion subscribers
- Addressing exponential growth in data storage needs for advanced analytics
- Facing limitations in the existing architecture's scalability for affordable expansion
Innovation ambition requires advanced analytics platform
Traditional service assurance solutions only provide basic near real-time network monitoring to alert the Network Operations Department within the service provider when a malfunction is detected. This has limited ability to drive insights on causes. About a decade ago, Anritsu saw the potential to be much more ambitious and forward-thinking than this. It wanted to extend the focus of its service assurance business unit to offer more sophisticated big data analytics solutions to the market. This would enable clients to automate the most complex data correlations and investigations, thanks to more in-depth and varied network data analysis.
However, this innovative leap posed some challenges with Anritsu’s existing architecture, as Brian Murray, senior product manager at Anritsu, recalled, “We have a presence with more than 60 network operators worldwide and provide service assurance to an estimated one billion subscribers. We could see how delivering advanced analytics would provide great value-add, but it would also increase our data storage requirements exponentially. The platform we had in place at this point would not support the kind of scalability we needed at an affordable cost. Having explored the market for alternatives, we decided on a 2-month proof-of-concept with the Vertica platform using a purpose-built database designed to manage rapidly growing volumes of data and deliver insights faster. This was a starting point for a 10-year long OEM partnership, still going strong today, based on clear product roadmap alignment and a close relationship between R&D and product management.”
This all resulted in great return on investment (ROI) and a competitive advantage for us. Vertica’s modularity has given us strong scalability and reduced operating costs. We recorded an ROI of 351 percent, with a payback time of only four months.
Solution
Vertica™ by OpenText transformed Anritsu's service assurance, employing AI-powered Anritsu eoSight to streamline network analysis, automate root-cause resolution, and empower operators for enhanced service quality across a billion subscribers.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ Vertica™ Analytics Platform
Vertica is the market-leading analytical database, delivering the best value for the highest performance. Any data analytics, at any scale, anywhere
Implemented advanced analytics to increase scalability and efficiency
The decision for Vertica by OpenText was based on its anticipated scalability and costs, as the Vertica platform could run on a much wider and more cost-effective range of servers, realizing an immediate hardware cost saving. Vertica also offered an accelerated deployment timeline which compared very favorably against upgrading the existing environment. The transition was smooth, and the team soon started reaping the benefits.
Leveraged AI-driven insights for issue resolution
“We introduced new analytics offerings for our clients, which were very cutting-edge at the time, and vastly improved the customer experience,” said Davide Motta, senior product manager. “Under the banner Anritsu eoSight, Vertica by OpenText gave our clients a highly AI-driven sophisticated dashboarding system that they can leverage to get answers about the in-depth network functioning and service delivery. We also implemented a data visualization front-end, allowing self-service network operation analytic capabilities, with ability to drill down on data even in a challenging context. Lastly, we enabled our clients to automate complex root-cause analysis and obtain information on the real impact on the service quality received by end users. This prioritizes complex resolution interventions, based on criticality and revenue impact, within minutes of the failure.”
Before the introduction of Vertica, the team would have to perform multiple manual drill-downs on often already aggregated data that did not always contain the necessary details and correlations to other business functions, such as revenue of impacted services. The real-time machine-learning analytics now introduced bring important insights and extremely valuable information for other business functions. For instance, the planning network department can leverage this for better network development, while network engineering and marketing departments can better plan and sell based on actual service quality and customer satisfaction levels of the subscribers.
Our continued partnership with OpenText increases our ability to bring clients the best possible solutions for managing their needs and the complexities of 5G more quickly. Vertica by OpenText’s powerful database technology will continue to be a valuable asset as we help service providers deliver the highest levels of service to their customers.
Results
Vertica's adoption accelerated issue resolution through AI-driven analytics and significantly improved customer experience and service quality insights, revolutionizing Anritsu's operational landscape.
Achieved a 351% ROI and a clear understanding of the subscriber experience
“This all resulted in great return on investment (ROI) and a competitive advantage for us,” commented Murray. “Vertica’s modularity has given us strong scalability and reduced operating cost. We recorded an ROI of 351 percent, with a payback time of only four months. More importantly though, Vertica set us on the path of transforming our business model through AI-driven analytics and helping our customers unleash the hidden power of data. As time went on, and 5G came on the horizon, the decision for Vertica really paid dividends.”
Over the years, Anritsu eoSight has gone from strength to strength and is today used to help operators understand the real-time state of their network, the experience subscribers are achieving, and whether operators are meeting the service level agreements (SLAs) they have in place with their B2B customers. Anritsu works with clients who produce over 80 billion rows of data each day, equating to one million records per second. With these volumes it is imperative that the right data is available for predictive planning exercises, for instance to determine where operators should invest next.
With the 360° view available in Anritsu eoSight, there are hundreds of daily use cases within network operations, service operations, marketing, planning, customer experience, device experience, and customer care. Massive and unending streams of raw data are converted into usable tokens, called data records. A transformation layer is then applied on top of these which produces the actionable insight that clients can access in high performance Vertica by OpenText-driven data models.
Brought Anritsu eoSight to the cloud and realized 50% storage savings with Vertica Eon Mode
So far so good, but the advent of 5G is changing the game once more, according to Murray, “5G was built with the cloud in mind, so as our clients started to strategize their future, they were doing so with the cloud firmly on the horizon. Though each operator had different cloud ambitions, it became clear that our service assurance solutions needed to be cloud-native. And it just so happens that our Anritsu eoSight roadmap perfectly aligned with Vertica Eon Mode, is for the cloud and beyond.”
The ability to separate compute and storage, as well as the unique ability to support micro services and Kubernetes is important for a resource-heavy solution like Anritsu eoSight. Before Vertica Eon Mode, each time a client needed more storage, a server would need to be sized and purchased in advance. By leveraging Eon Mode, Anritsu clients can easily meet the demands associated with data-intensive workloads and fast data transaction requirements in the cloud. It delivers flexible scalability, so clients only use, and pay for the cloud capacity they need at any given time.
“Moving Anritsu eoSight from on-premise to the cloud is a gamechanger for us,” said Murray. “For one of our largest European clients, we estimate that the move to Eon Mode will deliver close to 50 percent cost savings. Our relationship with OpenText is extremely important to us, and our Innovation team is regularly engaged with OpenText engineers to understand how best to use the solution and to introduce new use cases for our clients to deliver unique data insights for them, based on actual subscriber experiences. This enables them to much better target new offers and optimize network development.”
Ralf Iding, CEO of Anritsu Service Assurance, concluded, “The fast-paced evolution of 5G networks means service providers need to balance the network and operational demands at scale, while ensuring their customers’ experience. Our continued partnership with OpenText increases our ability to bring clients the best possible solutions for managing their needs and the complexities of 5G more quickly. Vertica by OpenText’s powerful database technology will continue to a valuable asset as we help service providers deliver the highest levels of service to their customers.”
