Nokia Adds Assurance to Network Services Platform

Nokia (News - Alert) has developed its Network Services Platform (NSP) software so operators can make the most of their networks that include multiple layers, a combination of physical and virtual infrastructure, and equipment from more than one vendor.

Nokia announced this week that NSP now comes with assurance capabilities so operators can see how their future plans for network expansion will affect its availability and security. Sasa Nijemcevic, the general manager of network and service management at Nokia, commented on this development and spoke about how providing assurance features such as key performance indicators (KPIs) and analytics can help businesses automate their development.

“We are not only addressing the need for assurance, but also providing additional value by leveraging our investment in policy-based SDN control to automate assurance processes,” Nijemcevic said. “As a result, operators will maintain the highest levels of customer satisfaction while optimizing their network assets to move confidently into the next era of carrier SDN.”

Nijemcevic’s company rightly notes that the expansion of networks can cause headaches for operators. Even when current setups work well for the services companies want to provide, their creation of new services can first outpace their ability to deliver such services. Therefore, they scramble to compensate by adding new physical networking equipment and trying new networking standards such as software-defined networking.

These components of a changing network do not always work well together. They may route traffic in an inefficient manner because each component has a different idea of how to move data from one node to another. As a result, operators may spend more bandwidth than they need to perform simple tasks.

Nokia tries to make this process of expansion much easier by showing network development teams how their routing of traffic between data centers will take shape. It then shows how alternate paths can smooth the movement of data from one center to the next. Operators can optimize their flows of traffic by having NSP automatically correct for changes in network demand once services are live.

The manner in which Nokia now makes network optimization possible is, first, through assurance and then, second, through automation. As the company’s announcement suggests, it is assurance (by way of KPIs and analytics) that can give operators the necessary information to construct large-scale software-defined networking projects. Then automation and self-healing of networks keeps those projects running well from the first day of launch.