ALTEN Calsoft Labs, a wholly owned subsidiary of ALTEN, a € 1.2 billion European engineering and technology consulting firm, has announced that it has become a member of the Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance), an industry organization created for collaboration among the Network Economy’s technology providers. Participation in the NI Alliance will help ALTEN Calsoft Labs to build and market innovative solutions for customers seeking to improve security, intelligence and user experience in services deployed on next-generation IP networks.
In today’s Network Economy—a world that now depends and runs on networks—accurate visibility and precise tracking of data crossing networks have become crucial to the availability, performance and security of applications and services. The growing complexity of IP transactions, the explosion of mobile applications, and the mainstream adoption of cloud computing surpass the capabilities of conventional tools to improve how networks operate, expand services and cope with cybersecurity.
Just like Business Intelligence solutions emerged to unlock information hidden in the enterprise, Network Intelligence technology is an emerging category of technology to reveal the critical details of the data locked inside network traffic and transactions.
The NI Alliance serves two purposes: first, as a forum for collaboration among technology providers whose solutions secure data in transit, ensure efficient data delivery, monetize data transactions or track real-time information.
Through the NI Alliance, members can better serve their customers. It also seeks to educate the market and the public on the role and value of Network Intelligence in protecting sensitive information; delivering value-added services, applications and information; and ensuring better performance of network-dependent solutions.
ALTEN Calsoft Labs leverages Network Intelligence to build innovative solutions in the areas of Application Delivery Optimization (ADO), Unified Threat Management (UTM) and Big Data Analytics that rely on real time network traffic analysis.
“Network Intelligence plays a crucial role in software-defined networks, especially in real-time traffic monitoring, applications performance, enterprise security and policy enforcement”, said Gerald Attia, Deputy CEO, ALTEN Group. “As a member of the NI Alliance, we add value to our clients’ R&D efforts in L4-L7 switching, application acceleration & optimization, security, content filtering, virtual appliance development & service assurance, where integration of Network Intelligence is critical”.
As pioneers in network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) markets, ALTEN Calsoft Labs helps Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs), Cloud Providers and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) architect, integrate and deploy Network Intelligence technology in their products, virtual appliances and SDN/NFV solutions.
“As NFV and SDN initiatives are influencing a new generation of architectures, Network Intelligence gathering and associated network traffic and data analysis, is becoming key to exploiting these new architectures, enabling scale, security and new applications,” said Narendra Dhara, Senior Vice President, Networking and Embedded, ALTEN Calsoft Labs.
“ALTEN Calsoft Labs is a valuable addition to the NI Alliance and we welcome their participation,” said Erik Larsson, Chairman of the NI Alliance. “It’s companies like Calsoft Labs joining with other vendors who play leadership role in their respective areas of expertise that will enable organizations to most effectively apply Network Intelligence to better manage, protect and profit from their data networks.”
Establishment of the NI Alliance was initiated by Qosmos, whose Network Intelligence technology components provide the crucial first step in understanding what’s passing through networks. Qosmos’ hardware and software components extract and interpret real-time traffic—translating a data stream’s 1s and 0s into their respective communications protocols, metadata and content for use by third-party applications.