Harnessing Wireless Performance Management

I had the opportunity to speak with Kieran Moynihan, former CTO of Vallent (acquired by IBM earlier this year) and current VP and CTO of telecoms for IBM Tivoli Software. We discussed the future vision for Vallent and performance management for communication service providers. Vallent has been providing performance management solutions for wireless communication services providers for years and recently has been pushing the envelope in customer experience management in both wireless and fixed-line environments. This capability is important as more applications rely on robust infrastructure and place much higher demands on the network to provide high-quality voice, video and other converged content to wireless users.

Without a product like Vallent, Moynihan advocates, organizations will struggle. They must rely on element management tools from wireless hardware vendors or network-centric performance management software that have a hard time pulling everything together in a telecom environment. Since all communication service providers utilize a number of equipment manufacturers, there is no way to provide a central picture of the overall performance and more importantly the custom experience without a tool like Vallent, argues Moynihan.

Vallent will converge with IBM Tivoli|Netcool's product Proviso to offer communication service provider customers a range of options to manage the user experience, SLAs and performance management. Vallent also has invested heavily in the development of Technology Packs that help organizations understand what metrics are important to measure for each equipment vendors. While integration is a big focus for future development, Moynihan also sees helping customers meet the challenge of managing next generation networks as a key focus area for IBM Tivoli's Telcom group.