VPIsystems Exec, Russ Green Discusses ITEXPO West with TMCnet

Launched in 1997 to provide solutions to the telecommunication industry, VPIsystems offers design and planning applications to network operations all over the globe. The company’s software helps organizations to leverage these solutions in order to measure up to large bandwidth requirements needed within backhaul and core networks. 

 “Our market has grown significantly with the demand for mobile data.   In the last year, service providers of all sizes in all geographies had to deal with network capacity and congestion issues driven by the uptake of smartphones and connected tablets. As one of our customers put it, ‘it’s during times of rapid change that you need good analysis and planning’. The change in data demands have driven change throughout the network – requiring reconfiguration and optimization of the RAN and backhaul networks through careful dimensioning of the core – while ensuring that all of this is done with a consistent, accurate view of the forecast demands,” Green said.

In just shy of a week’s time, VPIsystems will be sponsoring and speaking at ITEXPO West 2011, an annual event that brings together thought leaders and decision makers from the communications and technology communities to share experiences, knowledge and best practices that can help their business to expand.

Recently, Russ Green, senior vice president of marketing and product management at VPIsystems spoke to TMC’s CEO Rich Tehrani about what he is currently seeing in the industry, how the cloud model has changed the company’s processes and where he sees the future of bandwidth traffic headed.

What do you see as the next disruptive force in technology and how will it impact your market or business?

Media rich services on powerful devices will continue to fuel data demands and our market. Businesses are starting to make use of these devices, from large corporations like airlines using tablets for paperless flight decks to street vendors using mobile payment applications. Once significant data demands move from asynchronous loads like email and file transfer to real-time multi-media, service providers will have to manage data network capacity and availability at a much higher level than required today. 

In contrast to the well understood voice network quality characterization which uses call blocking, there is no equivalent for data networks. This will change soon and enforce more rigorous capacity management. VPI’s network and congestion modeling systems directly address these needs. We expect to see this play out for the next 2-3 years.

How has the acceptance and adoption of the cloud model influenced your development cycle and process?

The introduction of cloud environments has contributed to the growth of internet traffic, increasingly in the mobile domain. This has indirectly contributed to the need for modeling different types of services and has increased the challenges that some of our customers face. For example, with mobile operators providing access to the cloud, the cloud creates more demand for wireless data transmission on mobile and landline networks, which fuels demand for our network analytics tools for capacity planning and management. We see cloud services increasing internet traffic for business services as well as consumer services.

Besides phone calls, mobile is now sharing bandwidth with video and machines. What do you predict will be the mix of traffic in the future?

We defer to the figures put forth by Cisco within their Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2010–2015. According to the study, global mobile data traffic grew 2.6 percent in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row. The 2010 mobile data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated. Last year's forecast projected that the growth rate would be 149 percent. This year's estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 159 percent in 2010. The study states that Mobile video traffic will exceed 50 percent for the first time in 2011. Mobile video traffic was 49.8 percent of total mobile data traffic at the end of 2010, and will account for 52.8 percent of traffic by the end of 2011.

Their study also found that:

•              Global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 92 percent from 2010 to 2015, reaching 6.3 exabytes per month by 2015.

•              Two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2015. Mobile video will more than double every year between 2010 and 2015. Mobile video has the highest growth rate of any application category measured within the Cisco VNI forecast at this time.

What are you most looking forward to at ITEXPO West in Austin? What do you see as being the biggest trends at the show?

We look forward to attending sessions discussing the challenges that operators face in effectively bringing 4G technologies to the consumer and that address the growing demand for new broadband applications and services. We look forward to hearing their plans for evolution to LTE and for managing congestion in their networks.

What issues will you be addressing during your ITEXPO session and why should attendees be sure to attend?

While there are products on the market that measure performance metrics after the fact, we will be speaking about how operators can proactively manage and understand their end to end network capacity. In particular, we will be addressing the very short term issues of RAN congestion management and what can be done about it.

The 4G Wireless Evolution Conference will be collocated with ITEXPO West, the world’s premier IP communications event, to be held Sept. 13-15  at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX. Now in its third year, 4GWE has become the industry's premier gathering place for Mobile Network Operators, fixed carriers, handset manufacturers, mobile internet device manufacturers, application providers, the enterprise, and venture capitalists.  Don’t wait. Register now. 

Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO… follow us on Twitter