Ciena Adds Analytics to Blue Planet, Driving Business Intelligence into Customer Network Transformation Efforts

As the newest capability in Ciena’s^® (NYSE: CIEN) Blue Planet portfolio, Blue Planet Analytics generates deep network insights through big data to help network operators make smarter, data-driven business decisions. As part of the overall strategy to enable fully autonomous networking via Blue Planet, the new capability and related applications gives operators the ability to visualize and identify trends in order to create more profitable services, better predict capacity requirements, and anticipate potential network and service disruptions before they take place.

Blue Planet Analytics combines analytics with orchestration and policy. It utilizes machine learning on data collected from multiple sources in order to improve the end user experience and simplify network operations. For example, Blue Planet Analytics and the related Network Health Predictor (NHP) application will notify a network operator well in advance if a network element has the potential to fail and requires attention. With Blue Planet Analytics and NHP, the network operator not only avoids costly network downtime and decreases repair or maintenance costs, it continues to provide a positive, uninterrupted user experience for customers.

Key Facts:

• Integrating network analytics with orchestration and policy systems, Blue Planet Analytics helps operators to continue on the path to a more autonomous network and is a strategic evolution of Ciena’s Blue Planet software suite.

• Built on Blue Planet’s open design and extensible micro-services-based architecture, Blue Planet Analytics supports data collection from any source, including multiple network vendors, layers and physical or virtual domains. It can also take advantage of third party big data cluster systems such as Hadoop, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

• Ciena is bringing two powerful new capabilities to market:
  • Blue Planet Analytics – a robust and flexible software framework for collecting and normalizing data from any source across the network, and integrating with upper-layer analytics applications available from Ciena or from third parties.
  • NHP – a new application designed to work with Blue Planet Analytics that provides proactive network assurance and advanced visualization, intelligently assessing the likelihood of failures across the optical, Ethernet, and IP layers before they impact end customers. NHP is the first in what will be a family of analytics applications for Blue Planet Analytics.

• The benefits of Blue Planet Analytics are also available “as a service” through Ciena Services. Analytics Services utilize Blue Planet Analytics and related applications to help operators quickly realize the benefits of big data, intelligent automation, and operations.

• Blue Planet Analytics and the NHP will be available in February 2017.

Executive Comments:

• “Real-time data analytics is fast becoming a priority for operators:  it is both a source of invaluable insights into network performance, trends and potential issues and an enabler for the improved automation that will allow them to truly gain the benefits of network virtualization and cloudification. Operators are signaling strong interest in open operational frameworks that can incorporate analytical applications from multiple vendors in support of intelligent network automation. Ciena’s Blue Planet Analytics leads a broader trend towards vendors incorporating microservices-based, policy-driven analytics into NFV/SDN orchestration and management platforms.”
  –         Dana Cooperson, Research Director, Analysys Mason

• “We’ve long anticipated how today’s emerging trends like 5G, IoT and virtualization would fundamentally change networks and drive new business models. A natural extension of our Blue Planet software suite, our new Analytics capability and NHP application give operators a powerful mechanism to improve network performance and speed our customer’s transition to a more intelligent, automated, and profitable network.”–         Nirav Modi, Vice President and General Manager, Blue Planet, Ciena

About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is a network strategy and technology company. We translate best-in-class technology into value through a high-touch, consultative business model – with a relentless drive to create exceptional experiences measured by outcomes. For updates on Ciena, follow us on Twitter @Ciena, LinkedIn, the Ciena Insights blog, or visit www.ciena.com.

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