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gen-E expands OpsCenter portfolio
with search-driven advanced analytics

InterComms talks to Kate Patterson, Vice President of Marketing, gen-E

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Daria Batrakova, Senior Consultant at FNT Software

Q: Could we go back over OpsCenter and its primary use for ISPs and Telcos?
A: OpsCenter is primarily used to enhance an ISP or Telco's current use of IBM Netcool, the industry's premier event and fault management system. OpsCenter gathers all relevant data from other systems, and then allows correlation and analysis.

Q: gen-E have upgraded OpsCenter to search-driven analytics, why did you feel the need to include this feature?
A: We believe that adding search-based analytics now (and AI shortly) allows customers to extend the useful life span of Netcool by adding capabilities customers are asking for. It means that customers do not have to rip out and replace Netcool, but can use OpsCenter to add powerful additional capabilities to it.

Q: How is OpsCenter enabling companies to maximise investment in existing systems?
A: By not having to replace tools such as Netcool, customers are able to continue to maximize returns on the investment they made. In addition, the largest part of the investment is often in the training and education of staff - by extending the use of the tool, customers can avoid costly re-education and continue to gain insights from their staff's experience.

Daria Batrakova, Senior Consultant at FNT Software

Q: Can we look at who is using the product and how it has helped them with real-time problems?
A: Yes, please see below for a rough write-up of how Consolidated Communications is using OpsCenter.
Typical fault management is a binary exercise – you have a fault or you don’t. A technician watches a screen of alarms and they respond to them. Consolidated has thousands and thousands of alarms, and can’t see root cause or anything outside of the red screen. So much noise, but can’t find the signal in all that noise. OpsCenter helps them find the signal that would be overlooked by the tech.

For example, they expect to have x numbers of events at any given time of day. 50 BGP alarms in this 15 minute period. At this same interval tomorrow, we have 500 instead of 50. Technicians can’t necessary tell this, but because OpsCenter sees that it is outside of the normal threshold, it notifies the technician of the anomaly.
Danny is looking for threshold-exceeding scenarios. Netcool will tell you how many events happen of this type, but not the threshold piece. Netcool can suppress them, but they can’t let you know that there is a deviation from the threshold.

Q: What is next for gen-E?
A: Without pre-announcing, we have stated our next product evolution will be the introduction of an AI tool in early 2019, to be named OpsCenter Decide. This tool will be able to ingest the analytics provided by our OpsCenter Analyze, and provide best-practice solutions and recommendations.

gen-E | www.gen-e.com

gen-E provides IT and network management software and services, leveraging industry-leading solutions from IBM and others, to companies with mission-critical operations. gen-E enables clients to dramatically reduce costs, improve efficiency and deliver higher quality service by providing greater visibility, control and automation of their operational systems. As an IBM Gold Partner, gen-E has deep industry knowledge and extensive experience servicing regional and Fortune 500 companies.

gen-E’s OpsCenter™ empowers organizations to leverage and enhance their investment in IBM software to predict, analyse and resolve network problems while cutting redundant costs. It provides a lean and agile cost model to maximize capacity and monetize a new generation of network-based services while delivering a consistently high-quality customer experience.

“We are honoured to have been recognized by CIOReview as one of the Top 50 Most Promising IBM Solution Providers,” said Mike Henderson, Interim CEO, gen-E. “We designed OpsCenter™ to build upon the powerful capabilities of IBM’s IT Service Management portfolio, going well beyond today’s IT and network management capabilities to help companies support new standards and technologies while adding a never-before- available layer of predictive analytics,” added Henderson.

FNT is a leading provider of standard software solutions that enable CSPs to accelerate their digital transformation by holistically managing the hybrid resources in today’s complex networks. The core of the solution is a comprehensive data model for all assets and resources in the telecoms, IT and data center infrastructure – both core and edge. This central system of record holistically manages the hybrid network and service resources of wireline and wireless networks across all layers, and lays the foundation for all planning, fulfillment and assurance processes across all technologies. The result of this unified resource management is much-needed visibility into all physical, logical and virtual resources, which is critical for managing today’s converging technologies.

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www.gen-e.com

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