Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) had added an analytics capability to its Blue Planet network management portfolio. Blue Planet Analytics is designed to use big data to help network operators make smarter, data-driven business decisions. The new capability and related applications are intended to let operators 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 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 in advance if a network element has the potential to fail and requires attention.
Built on Blue Planet's open design and extensible micro-services-based architecture, Blue Planet Analytics is designed to support 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.
NHP is a new application designed to work with Blue Planet Analytics to provide proactive network assurance and visualization, 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.
Blue Planet Analytics are also available "as a service" through Ciena Specialist Services. Blue Planet Analytics and the NHP are expected to be available in February.