“NFV, SDN will change RoI model for new services for operators”

At a time when telecom operators are looking at NFV and SDN to achieve more out of their existing networks – Procera Networks is looking forward to becoming a catalyst in facilitating this network transformation for the operators. As Procera has always been a software driven company, the move to embrace NFV and SDN fabric comes as a natural evolution for Procera.

Cam Cullen, Vice President, Global Marketing, Procera Networks, Inc. speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the company’s current priorities and its future plans.

What are the key priorities for Procera today?

Our priority is to help network operators transform their business by giving them the right data to understand how their subscriber’s usage is evolving and how they can better invest in their network to maximize the subscriber experience and profitability at the same time.

How is the company aligning itself with the ongoing digital enablement trend being experienced by the operator community?

Procera has always been a software company, so the move to NFV and SDN is a natural evolution for Procera. We have been offering software-only virtualized solutions for over a year, and have deployed these with a number of customers. We have also adjusted our sales model to support a software subscription model for operators that want to shift to an OPEX model from a CAPEX intensive hardware model.

How can operators monetize on their network infrastructure in the best possible way? Where can Procera help in this regard?

The competitive advantage will be achieved by operators that can anticipate the applications and content that their subscribers value, and launch services that capitalize on that content. Procera’s solutions provide a more comprehensive view of a subscriber’s experience than other solutions available on the market.

How does the company look at the emerging technologies such as NFV and SDN- how are these likely to change the way operators look at monetization in future?

NFV and SDN will change the ROI model for new services for operators and enable niche services to be far more profitable than in the past. NFV will lower the cost of acquisition for solutions, and SDN will enable specific subscriber traffic to be sent through a service chain, which will minimize the amount of traffic that needs to be supported for the new services. Both technologies will help reduce time to launch for services as well, since a software defined network can implement new service offerings far quicker than a traditional hardware-driven service deployment.

What are the top geographies of focus for Procera and why?

Europe and North America have traditionally been strong for Procera from a revenue perspective, but we sell our solutions worldwide. We have been gaining very strong traction in Africa, Middle East, and Latin America over the past two years as well. Our solutions traditionally do well in markets that are mature and view network and subscriber intelligence as a path to competitive differentiation, but we also have a very strong traffic management value proposition for emerging markets that are growing their mobile or fixed broadband networks.

What kind of growth is the company looking forward to and where is this growth likely to come from?

Our goal is to grow faster than the market rate – which in the traditional Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) market is ~12-15%. We expect our growth to come from an expansion of our opportunities within the operator – we are expanding to selling from just the engineering team to the data, customer care, and marketing teams as well.

What are some of the big challenges in front of the industry today? how can these challenges be converted into opportunities of tomorrow?

The industry’s change to software defined network and NFV require not only network architecture changes, but also business model and organizational changes as well. Operators that re-engineer their business models and their network will be leaders and have a competitive advantage in the market. Moving to an agile network and business model will create new opportunities to monetize new trends in the market faster, and help define the winners in the next phase of broadband deployments.