This acquisition augments VIAVI’s existing network assurance portfolio with a cloud-native virtualised solution offering, in alignment with virtualisation initiatives at Tier-1 service providers.
The undisclosed deal, supports the need to manage operations and customer experience across generations of technology, between wireless and wireline networks, and into new domains such as IoT and V2X, carriers are moving away from proprietary hardware to software-defined services running on off-the-shelf servers.
As a result, network itself becomes disaggregated, no longer a topology of discrete nodes, but a more dynamic and shapeable environment which can adapt to rapidly changing demand. The entire ecosystem supporting the network must evolve accordingly, replacing hardware-based solutions with containerised virtual machines which can respond dynamically as the network shifts.
“Our major service provider customers are reporting that up to 75% of their networks have already been virtualised, and they are expecting their vendors to deliver products that will fit into the new fully virtualised 5G SA architecture,” said Sameh Yamany (pictured), chief technology officer at VIAVI.
“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, virtualised visibility for real intelligence and insight to support even the most aggressive virtualisation initiatives.”
As VIAVI continues to virtualise its NITRO Mobile portfolio of core and RAN assurance solutions, its acquisition of Expandium adds cloud-native, microservices-based, and 5G-ready mobile core assurance technologies.
Specifically, Expandium uses advanced techniques such as machine learning, stream processing and pattern detection within a platform that is vendor-neutral and can connect to data sources, offering analytics and insights for network monitoring, troubleshooting, fraud detection, and more.
In addition to its solutions for mobile network operators, Expandium also delivers monitoring platforms for railway mobile services, including GSM-R and migration to LTE-R and FRMCS.
