Viavi says its customers have virtualized up to 75% of their networks already
Viavi Solutions has acquired French network monitoring and assurance company Expandium for an undisclosed sum, bolstering its portfolio of virtualized solutions.
Viavi said in a release that the deal “adds cloud-native, microservices-based, and 5G-ready mobile core assurance technologies” and augments Viavi’s existing network assurance portfolio “in alignment with virtualization initiatives at Tier-1 service providers worldwide.”
As operators shift toward virtualized network environments, Viavi added, “the entire ecosystem supporting the network must evolve accordingly, replacing hardware-based solutions with containerized virtual machines which can respond dynamically as the network shifts.”
“Our major service provider customers are reporting that up to 75 percent of their networks
have already been virtualized, and they are expecting their vendors to deliver products that will
fit into the new fully virtualized 5G SA architecture,” said Viavi CTO Sameh Yamany. “Through our close collaboration with these customers, we have evolved our assurance technologies to seamlessly bridge the physical, virtual and disaggregated core and RAN. The combination of VIAVI and Expandium will enable us to deliver innovative 5G solutions that offer seamless, virtualized visibility for real intelligence and insight to support even the most aggressive virtualization initiatives.”
Viavi noted that it is also virtualizing its Nitro Mobile core and Radio Access Network assurance offerings as well. Expandium’s solutions, it said, bring machine learning, stream processing and pattern detection capabilities within a “vendor-independent platform” that can connect to various, heterogeneous data sources and provide insights on network monitoring, troubleshooting and fraud detection, among other possible applications of the data.
Expandium, based in St. Herblain, France, was founded in 2005 and has about 70 employees. It serves both mobile operators and railway operators with network intelligence. The company says that it monitors nearly 60,000 railway tracks. Viavi said that it will continue to support Expandium in that market, which includes GSM-R and migration to LTE-R, the specific LTE standard for providing high-speed wireless voice and data connectivity for railway trains, and to the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) standard for railway communications, which is expected to be supported by 5G.
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