Ciena's Blue Planet Analytics aims to aid service provider decision-making, network monitoring

Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) has unveiled Blue Planet Analytics, an extension of the Blue Planet environment designed to enable service providers to apply data analytics capabilities to identify and predict trends in network use and performance. As a result, operators can benefit from improved network monitoring, customer management, and new services development, Ciena says.

Blue Planet Analytics pairs with applications to apply machine learning to collected data to help deliver insights within various domains. For example, Ciena has introduced the Network Health Predictor (NHP) app, which leverages Blue Planet Analytics to notify a network operator if an element is in danger of failing, which enables the operator to take action before failure occurs.

Ciena says that Blue Planet Analytics provides the framework to collect and analyze data from a variety of sources. Such sources can include big data cluster systems such as Hadoop, Cloudera, and Hortonworks. It can feed that data to upper layer analytics applications such as NHP as well as apps from other vendors.

"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," commented Dana Cooperson, research director at Analysys Mason, via a Ciena press release. "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."

Ciena says it will make Blue Planet Analytics and the NHP app available next month. The company also will make Blue Planet Analytics capabilities available as a service through its Ciena Specialist Services arm.

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