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Virtualization, Automation and Network Slicing Are Increasing Focus on Network Testing

Virtualization (78%), automation (70%) and network slicing (70%) are the top technology trends increasing the need for test, monitoring and assurance stated by communications service providers (CSPs) and according to The 2021 Network Test Survey, released by VIAVI Solutions.

The past year has been a proving ground for both wired and wireless networks worldwide, with hundreds of millions of people working remotely and educating their children from home. Despite substantial increases in network traffic, today’s networks in large part met the global challenges created by the pandemic.

Study findings include:

■ 85% of respondents in the survey stated that in-person network technician visits had been reduced or eliminated as a result of the pandemic, although 78% said that the change was temporary.

■ More than 55% of service providers report a transition from instrument-based testing to remote, virtualized testing, with 7% saying the change is permanent.

■ In order to maintain quality of experience during the pandemic, at least 30% of service providers increased reliance on contractors for network quality assurance.

■ More than two-thirds (70%) of CSPs identify access network performance as the primary factor that most impacts subscriber experience, with transport network performance (41%) and core network performance (37%) also of concern.

■ An overwhelming majority of 93% in the study believe that testing improves customer satisfaction and reduces churn.

■ Despite challenges presented by COVID-19, only 22% of CSPs temporarily reduced the number of test cases performed, demonstrating the value placed on test and assurance

■ Nearly 80% of service providers agree that testing on the front end reduces the amount of operational expenditures needed to correct issues later

■ When asked about sources of test, measurement and assurance solutions, 89% of respondents agreed that vendors specializing in this area were essential to performance of the network

■ 78% strongly agree that network monitoring and assurance using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are necessary to optimize networks.

“Prior to the pandemic, service providers had begun turning to technologies like automation, AI and virtualization to control costs while improving the customer experience. The current situation has only accelerated the adoption of these advanced technologies,” said Kevin Oliver, VP and GM, Converged Instruments and Virtual Test, VIAVI. “To ensure performance of more complex, next-generation networks, service providers need advanced test and assurance solutions and automated workflows, particularly when they are increasingly relying on contractors for crucial field testing.”

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Virtualization, Automation and Network Slicing Are Increasing Focus on Network Testing

Virtualization (78%), automation (70%) and network slicing (70%) are the top technology trends increasing the need for test, monitoring and assurance stated by communications service providers (CSPs) and according to The 2021 Network Test Survey, released by VIAVI Solutions.

The past year has been a proving ground for both wired and wireless networks worldwide, with hundreds of millions of people working remotely and educating their children from home. Despite substantial increases in network traffic, today’s networks in large part met the global challenges created by the pandemic.

Study findings include:

■ 85% of respondents in the survey stated that in-person network technician visits had been reduced or eliminated as a result of the pandemic, although 78% said that the change was temporary.

■ More than 55% of service providers report a transition from instrument-based testing to remote, virtualized testing, with 7% saying the change is permanent.

■ In order to maintain quality of experience during the pandemic, at least 30% of service providers increased reliance on contractors for network quality assurance.

■ More than two-thirds (70%) of CSPs identify access network performance as the primary factor that most impacts subscriber experience, with transport network performance (41%) and core network performance (37%) also of concern.

■ An overwhelming majority of 93% in the study believe that testing improves customer satisfaction and reduces churn.

■ Despite challenges presented by COVID-19, only 22% of CSPs temporarily reduced the number of test cases performed, demonstrating the value placed on test and assurance

■ Nearly 80% of service providers agree that testing on the front end reduces the amount of operational expenditures needed to correct issues later

■ When asked about sources of test, measurement and assurance solutions, 89% of respondents agreed that vendors specializing in this area were essential to performance of the network

■ 78% strongly agree that network monitoring and assurance using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are necessary to optimize networks.

“Prior to the pandemic, service providers had begun turning to technologies like automation, AI and virtualization to control costs while improving the customer experience. The current situation has only accelerated the adoption of these advanced technologies,” said Kevin Oliver, VP and GM, Converged Instruments and Virtual Test, VIAVI. “To ensure performance of more complex, next-generation networks, service providers need advanced test and assurance solutions and automated workflows, particularly when they are increasingly relying on contractors for crucial field testing.”

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Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

For decades, trust in the digital workplace rested on familiar signals. We trusted faces on video calls, voices on the phone, and emails that appeared to come from people we knew. These cues felt human and intuitive. They anchored how decisions were made, approvals were granted, and access was authorized. AI-powered deepfakes have quietly broken that model ...

Cloud migration was supposed to be a one-way door. For most enterprises, it turns out it isn't. Cloud data repatriation is a real and growing trend. A new survey ... finds that 89% of organizations plan to expand their on-premises infrastructure footprint over the next two years — and 75% have already moved at least some workloads back from public cloud in the past 24 months. The findings point to a broad rethinking of where data belongs ...

Over the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the software industry. Given their ability to excel at multi-step reasoning, LLMs have helped enterprises streamline workflows and adapt to the unknown. However, employing such models comes with sky-high costs, latency issues, and limited flexibility. In the realm of IT operations, it is generally wiser to employ smaller, domain-specific models instead ...

For years, DevOps teams operated under a simple assumption: collect enough telemetry, and you can find and fix any problem. That assumption is breaking down. Modern enterprises now operate across microservices, hybrid cloud environments, APIs, Kubernetes, and highly automated delivery pipelines. Releases happen continuously, dependencies shift constantly, and failures spread faster than teams can diagnose them ...

New Relic surveyed IT and engineering leaders from the media and entertainment (M&E) sector to understand what's working — and where challenges persist with their observability practices. The findings reveal how M&E organizations are navigating rising platform complexity, audience expectations, and AI-driven change. Below are five takeaways that stand out ...

Let me start with something I've seen play out more times than I can count. A team hits a wall with the cloud. Costs creep up, then spike. Performance starts to feel inconsistent. Someone in finance asks a simple question like "why did this double?" and nobody has a clean answer ... Maybe this isn't the right place for everything. That realization feels like a breakthrough, like you've identified the problem. In reality, you've just identified the starting line ...

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 24, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses network observability tool sprawl ... 

In cloud-native systems, scaling is often as simple as moving a slider. For on-premise databases, the stakes are different. Over-provisioning hardware is expensive. Under-provisioning leads to performance bottlenecks that are difficult to fix once the equipment is in the rack ...

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