Network Diagramming Channel Feature

Network Diagramming Solutions Provider OPNET Makes Big Splash in Europe

By Carrie Schmelkin
TMCnet Web Editor

From attending Cisco (News - Alert) Live in London at the end of January to participating at MPLS & Ethernet World Congress earlier this month, network diagramming solutions provider OPNET Technologies (News - Alert) is certainly making its name known in the European market.

And for OPNET, a company that offers a variety of service provider offerings, the company couldn’t pass up the chance to attend the service provider dominated 14th annual MPLS & Ethernet World Congress event, which took place in Paris from Feb. 7-10.

“The MPLS conference offers several opportunities for us,” Pradeep Singh, senior vice president of engineering at OPNET, told TMCnet. “In general, we were trying to figure out what are the challenges of cloud computing as it relates to the service providers. So many people are evangelizing the cloud and they expect the network to work but there are networking aspects that are important for them to analyze. We were trying to figure out how is our software currently supporting their needs and as they embrace newer technologies are we helping them out in that front or not.”

OPNET, a company that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, offers solutions that address application performance management, network performance management and network R&D. While at MPLS & Ethernet World Congress, the company was eager to showcase SP Guru Network Planner, which automates analysis and design of large-scale multi-vendor IP/MPLS networks, supporting cost-effective and risk-mitigated decision making, and its SP Guru Transport Planner, which is an advanced network planning solution that enables service providers and network equipment manufacturers to design resilient, cost-effective optical and SONET networks.

In addition to highlighting these two products, OPNET was also hoping to spread the word of just how handy network management software can be, according to Singh.

“We are noticing there is a very nice tie-in to our network management solution and our application aware network management solutions,” he said. “We have two distinct classes of products: application performance management and traditional network management. OPNET has this unique vantage point where we can offer solutions that span across both of these areas application performance management and network management.”

At the show, one of the main trends that OPNET observed on the showroom floor is the drive towards cloud-based offerings and businesses’ desires to have their data centers successfully interconnected. Part of this means examining the role of MPLS in the traditional sense when compared with some of the new enhancements that have taken place, Singh said.

“People are a little cautious,” he added. “They don’t want to just embrace technology before they are able to asses that in a lab or more importantly in a network management modeling environment.”

“You have to design your network so that there is enough leeway to handle these peak loads,” he said. “There are opportunities to minimize cost of the network.”

As OPNET gets ready to gear up for Cisco Live!, Melbourne and Interop (News - Alert) Las Vegas in the coming months, it hopes MPLS & Ethernet World Congress participants were left with one important message about the network diagramming solutions provider.

“We wanted to spread the fact that our solutions are keeping up to date with the technologies that are out there and that we are even working on what’s going to be coming out,” Singh said. “We are viewed as a company that is not just relying on products that were developed and building slowly upon them, but we are being very aggressive in looking out for customer needs, talking to them and shaping our roadmap based on where the vendor industry is headed as well as where the customer challenges are.”