NetScout Systems has extended its service provider market presence to address the service delivery management needs of Cable/MSOs (Multiple System Operators) globally.

NetScout provides MSOs with real-time, end-to-end visibility into the IP infrastructure that facilitates the delivery of next-generation business and consumer services.

Building on its momentum in the mobile operator segment, NetScout has achieved deployment of the nGenius Service Assurance Solution with five top-tier MSOs in North America, Europe and Asia. The nGenius solution helps cable operators implement a unified service delivery management framework that enables operational teams to optimize the availability and performance of the network operating environment and delivered services, identify and preempt emerging service quality and performance issues and simplify and unify their approach to managing service delivery. The adoption of a proactive service delivery management strategy directly supports strategic cable operator initiatives designed to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) and reduce customer churn.

Growing competitive pressures, coupled with dramatic changes in technology and user demands, have significantly impacted the cable market. Cable/MSOs are under pressure to increase subscribers while strengthening loyalty from existing customers. As has been witnessed across the broader service provider community, MSOs are leveraging the power of IP technology to accelerate innovation of new service offerings. WiFi Hotspots and TV Everywhere, and an aggressive migration to voice-over-IP (VoIP) services, are designed to create a seamless experience for customers at anytime, in any place, and with any device. In today’s competitive climate, users demand the highest performance levels with a consistent experience regardless of where they are connecting. The challenge for Cable/MSOs is that while these new services are compelling for customers, they increase the strain on underlying IP networks, and exacerbate the management challenge of orchestrating the service delivery environment.

“As cable operators add rich new services to retain customers and keep their competitive edge, they will need to make strategic investments to assure service quality, improve the user experience, and speed the deployment of IP-enabled service delivery management technologies,” said Alan Breznick, senior cable analyst for Heavy Reading. “MSOs must maximize service availability and performance across their IP infrastructure while minimizing the impact of any performance issues. To do this, they should focus on optimizing service orchestration, rapidly identifying and resolving service performance issues, and creating a model that enables multiple operations teams to work together.”

NetScout has established a strong global presence in service provider production networks, with more than 148 service provider deployments in 47 countries, including more than nine top-tier providers with multi-country presence. The nGenius Service Assurance Solution offers trusted and proven scalability and performance with pervasive, always-on visibility into layer 3-7 of the IP service delivery environment, enabling operators to understand critical interactions and latency between networks and services.

For Cable/MSO environments, the nGenius solution combines actionable and granular visibility into subscribers, services and traffic from the data center, through the delivery network, to the customer’s set-top box with IP-optimized and simplified service-centric workflows. In addition to providing extensive operational and business intelligence, this enables Cable/MSOs to address challenges created by new progressive service offerings and the resulting explosion in network traffic from these new multimedia services. The nGenius solution analyzes both data plane and control plane traffic to reveal how network, application and critical service enablers such as DNS, DHCP, user authentication and billing interconnects affect overall service performance.

With the nGenius solution, the task of managing complex service delivery environments is dramatically simplified and automated, empowering first-level staff to proactively identify, triage and identify root cause, to resolve more issues independently, and when required, make rapid, more-effective next step decisions to forward or escalate the incident.

“MSOs are operating in a hyper-competitive world that has led to a service revolution. The growing range of anytime, anyplace, any device broadband access has forever changed the way in which the average user accesses information and entertainment” said Steven Shalita, vice president of marketing, NetScout. “New offerings such as TV Everywhere and the explosion of WiFi hotspots will drive customer loyalty. Unfortunately, the resulting rich media content traffic creates constant service delivery challenges for MSOs that are stretching the limits of operations staff and cable networks. In order to successfully keep networks operating at optimal performance levels and deliver a compelling user experience, MSOs need to adopt a proactive approach to managing the delivery of services. NetScout is focused on helping operators achieve a unified perspective of service delivery to optimize their next-generation IP network infrastructure, reduce service delivery management complexity, accelerate delivery of new innovative offerings and assure the subscriber experience. Ultimately this is good for business as it supports the drive for increased ARPU and enables better customer loyalty.”