Software-Enabled, Open Solutions Deliver an Agile, Scale-Out, and Disaggregated Architecture
Brocade today announced new Network Visibility solutions and a partner ecosystem to empower mobile 
network operators with critical insights into the traffic within their networks, while also transitioning their visibility infrastructures from being closed and monolithic to software-enabled, open, and disaggregated.
With an open and software-centric architecture—cornerstones of the New IP—Brocade is redefining visibility infrastructures found in mobile packet cores today, enabling mobile operators to accelerate their journey to an agile infrastructure that can support the explosive data growth and capacity demands of 4G/LTE and future 5G mobile networks.
Mobile network operators are under significant pressure as the declining Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) derived from voice services is not being sufficiently offset by the ARPU growth from mobile data. At the same time, customer adoption of Over-The-Top (OTT) services—such as video—is exploding, requiring even more network capacity and performance. This trend is driving the build-out of 4G/LTE networks and early planning for the upcoming deployment of 5G. In these transitions, mobile operators are increasingly relying on visibility and analytics to both control costs and enable new premium services and revenue streams. Unfortunately, traditional visibility infrastructures were not designed to support the latest generation of mobile networks.
Brocade’s innovative approach to building an open, software-enabled visibility infrastructure addresses this key challenge. The Brocade® Network Visibility product family includes:
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Brocade MLXe Packet Brokers and Brocade ICX® Packet Brokers: A comprehensive family of packet brokers to address the wide range of density, performance, and programmability needs of Tier-1 mobile operators
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Brocade Virtual Packet Broker: The industry’s first full-featured, virtual TAP/packet broker for vEPC environments
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Brocade Session Director: Software-based separation of mobile control flow processing in the visibility network to deliver maximum scalability, real-time programmability of packet brokers, and enhanced network intelligence
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Brocade Packet Probes: Software-based, scalable, wire-speed packet processing engines that decode and reduce mobile bearer and control traffic to extract and deliver essential metadata required by network monitoring and analytics solutions
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Brocade Visibility Manager: A single-pane-of-glass management application for the entire Brocade Network Visibility solution
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Open APIs: Application programming interfaces between Brocade and third-party components to help ensure freedom of choice at each layer of the visibility infrastructure
This combined solution transforms the mobile operator visibility infrastructure to unlock new levels of agility and choice. The software-driven approach also delivers real-time programmability of the packet brokers, and a dynamic, scale-out architecture that supports an unprecedented 100 million subscribers per packet core.
“Through the Brocade Network Visibility product family, Brocade is now empowering mobile network operators to optimize their visibility and analytics environments in ways they were unable to before,” said Jason Nolet, senior vice president, Switching, Routing, and Analytics Products Group, Brocade. “The network visibility approach we deliver alleviates the challenges of operating a diverse visibility environment, and brings a software-enabled infrastructure and open architecture to the forefront of mobile operator visibility networks.”
To accelerate adoption and foster innovation in network visibility and analytics solutions, Brocade is building a diverse partner ecosystem. Launching with Viavi Solutions, EMC, Guavus, and Avvasi, the Brocade Network Visibility partner ecosystem aims to provide greater choice and value for mobile operators through best-in-class solutions and third-party interoperability at every layer of the visibility infrastructure.
Product Features and Benefits
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Software-enabled
o A scale-out, dynamic architecture supporting up to 100 million subscribers per packet core
o Real-time programmability of network packet brokers to optimize traffic sent to probes and analytics applications
o SDN programmability of the packet network to influence network behavior based on improved visibility and analytics
o Virtual packet brokers and virtual packet probes to deliver capacity on demand
o Single-pane-of-glass management across physical and virtual visibility infrastructures
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Open
o Open APIs at each layer of the visibility infrastructure to support multivendor deployments
o A partner ecosystem to accelerate innovation, deliver best-in-class solutions, and help ensure third-party interoperability
Supporting Quotes
“Interoperability between the ecosystem of software-based solutions, multi-probe vendors and analytic options, enable customers with choice to deploy best-of-breed network visibility and analytics. EMC® Real Time Intelligence product suite is focused on helping telecom operators successfully build and deploy network analytics solutions with the performance, reliability and capabilities they need to make real-time decisions in their ever-demanding environments. We are excited to collaborate with Brocade to enable one of the first truly open and scalable network visibility solutions using Brocade Packet Brokers, Brocade Virtual Packet Brokers and Brocade Virtual Probes.” – David Hudson, General Manager, Telecom Transformation Business, EMC Corporation
“With video traffic already accounting for over half of all Internet traffic, Avvasi’s comprehensive video traffic measurement solution, Q-Vue, which is centered on subscriber QoE, is a natural fit within the Brocade Network Visibility portfolio. We are always looking to extend our leadership in streaming video analytics. For example, we recently introduced advanced machine-learning capabilities for measuring encrypted video QoE. Avvasi’s partnership with Brocade is another example. Using Q-Vue’s rich data and real-time programmability of the network packet broker infrastructure, we are enabling exciting new video analytics use cases for mobile network operators.” – Mate Prgin, President and CEO, Avvasi
“As networks become virtualized and software-defined networking become more prevalent, analytics will be the lynchpin that both proactively assures the performance of virtualized services as well as dynamically triggers intelligent orchestration into software defined systems. Our big data analytics applications integrated with Brocade’s Network Visibility platform will provide service providers and enterprises with an accelerated time to market for deploying smart programmable networks that deliver differentiated services, while improving operating efficiencies.” – Anukool Lakhina, CEO and Founder, Guavus
“To ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, mobile operators today need to actively monitor the network using visibility and analytics solutions. Through our participation in Brocade’s partner ecosystem with Viavi’s xSIGHT Customer Experience Assurance solution, we will enable mobile operators to dynamically optimize the visibility of networks in real time to respond to the needs of subscribers, applications, devices, and roamers—a critical requirement in today’s increasingly demanding mobile environment. This approach to proactively identify and resolve problems will ensure all mobile users on 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE and future 5G mobile networks continue to enjoy the highest quality subscriber experience at all times.” – Richard Piasentin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Network Visibility and Control, Viavi Solutions
“Mobile operators are in a unique position to effectively reduce business and technology friction in the mobile Internet ecosystem value chain that spans across multiple industry verticals. Furthermore, mobile network infrastructure driven by 4G/LTE and beyond is a critical lynchpin serving a rapidly growing mobile-first consumer behavior that relies on the smartphone for not just mobile services but almost all other lifestyle needs. In an effort to gain competitive differentiation, mobile operators will seek architectural solutions that leverage the power of NFV and SDN principles in tandem with intelligent analytics frameworks, while addressing the key challenges of scale, cost, and performance.” – Sathya Atreyam, Research Manager, Mobile Network Infrastructure, IDC
Price and Availability
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Brocade MLXe Packet Brokers are priced starting at $250,000 and are available today
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Brocade ICX Packet Brokers are priced starting at $33,000 and are available today
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Brocade Session Director is priced starting at $300,000 and is available today
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Brocade Visibility Manager is priced starting at $50,000 and is available today
Additional Resources
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Brocade Network Visibility and Analytics
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Brocade Network Visibility Platform
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Blog: The History and Evolution of Packet Brokers for the Network
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Blog: When IP Packets Need Their Own Broker
