ACG Research

ACG Research
We focus on the Why before the What

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

ACG HotSeat: Brocade on Mobile Analytics for Next Gen Networks

Ray Mota of ACG Research and Sanjay Munshi of Brocade Communications discuss the role of analytics as a key enabler in the evolution of mobile network architectures and business models. Watch Sanjay make the case for analytics architectures to evolve alongside mobile architectures, citing a few leading use cases that highlight the benefits of NFV, SDN and dynamic policy control.


For more information about ACG's HotSeat services, contact sales@acgcc.com.


Friday, January 9, 2015

Kick-Start Your Move to a Network-Centric Business with Managed Network Services

The benefits of a network-centric business go beyond just economics. With managed network services you can outsource day-to-day operations, freeing time, money and staff to concentrate on changing, growing and managing your business.

Businesses are always looking for opportunities to create a broad ecosystem of customers, partners and suppliers that accelerate their processes and innovation and give them the competitive edge. Managed network services (MNS) can provide you with that boost to move to a network-centric business. With managed network services you can immediately minimize the day-to-day network management issues that are robbing you of the time you need to initiate fundamental changes in your business. For example, managed router service (MRS) that is bundled with Ethernet service offers an end-to-end solution to support multi-location businesses. Other versions of the service are available to provide managed Internet and security service providing a reliable and secure solution for a centralized or single site Internet connection. But to make a successful transition you and your teams have to first rethink your business processes and develop strategies to minimize the risks that are intrinsically linked to the things that make a network-centric business so attractive.

Although a network centric business brings everyone together into a broad ecosystem, a word of caution is necessary: it also increases exposure to security risks, capacity management challenges and performance management issues; and always-on services place additional burdens on your staff. Midsize businesses also are being attacked and suffering outages. The consequence of these breaches is severe; within hours they can threaten or destroy the trust and goodwill that took you and your staff years to build. And let’s not forget the legal issues: in some industries government regulations also include the threat of criminal liability. Loss of the network and downtime will cripple a network-centric business and not addressing these issues is betting your business—with the odds against you. To find out why, click to down load the article.

For more information about ACG's business case analysis services, contact sales@acgcc.com.

mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch

Thursday, January 8, 2015

ACG Announces Managed Router Services TCO Calculator

Businesses are turning to managed router services to simplify network management, enhance performance, free-up resources and reduce costs.

What are the benefits of MRS for your business? Find out by running the numbers with the total cost of ownership calculator, developed by ACG in conjunction with Time Warner Cable Business Class. In just a few minutes you can determine:
  • Approximate TCO savings for an MRS Ethernet or Internet and security solution.
  • Key costs and staffing impact for deploying, managing and monitoring hardware, software, upgrades and providing training and support.
  • Important business and operational benefits associated with off-loading many day-to-day network management duties.

Try the MRS TCO Calculator today to stay ahead of the IT cost curve.

For more information about Michael Kennedy, click here. Click here for information about ACG’s business case analysis services.

For more information about the calculator project contact sales@acgcc.com.

mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

IoT Offers Opportunity for Service Providers and Vendors

The Internet of Things (IoT) market opportunity across the cellular network will be worth $138.4 billion by 2018 with a compound annual growth rate of 33.2 percent. The key service provider verticals are connected car, home, industrial IoT, utilities, and wearable technology. The market is very fragmented with many players from a wide range of industries; however, each has fundamental approaches. Industry standards bodies and consortiums, such as OneM2M, IEEE-SA, ITU-T and IIC, are working on setting a single set of core standards to guide the industry.

All equipment providers are striving to position themselves as key vendors though at present no one has a complete solution. Ericsson, Cisco, ALU and recently Intel have horizontal IoT platform solutions that address early and late SP adopters. Ericsson leads the EP platform sales with total 1Q14 and 2Q14 revenue of $26.7 billion.

Service providers are a key part of the IoT value chain. However, to be successful, ACG recommends that SPs continue building out their core infrastructures by focusing on the common service entity functions: BSS/OSS, provisioning management, policy management, reporting management, data management, security management/governance and diagnostics.

Use cases are the best way to validate IoT implementations. For SPs, use cases that yield the most value have the following attributes: highly managed, mission critical, life dependent, warrant high liability, and regulatory constraints.

Click for more information about Dennis Ward.

For more information about the forecast contact sales@acgcc.com.