Orchestrated Assurance: What is it and why do I need it?

Service Providers aim to deliver network services faster with assured customer quality.  But, as networks are becoming increasingly software-defined and programmable, the rate at which they change is also rising, driven by network-on-demand offerings and self-service portals. In this dynamic environment, traditional test and assurance solutions just cannot keep up, and if they can, they bring unacceptable operational costs. These traditional hardware-bound solutions also hobble agility and innovation, and in today’s evolving networks, innovation is key to staying competitive.

Model-driven Orchestrated Assurance offers an approach to bridging the gap between service fulfillment and assurance. Software-based test agents, which are well suited to a dynamic network environment, perform end-to-end activation tests and active monitoring that are automated throughout the full service lifecycle in closed-feedback loops. This enables Service Providers to automatically validate SLAs, discover issues earlier, and resolve problems faster.

Cisco has a solution to this challenge!  We are pleased to announce the availability of Cisco Orchestrated Assurance powered by Netrounds.  Netrounds, a leading provider of active, programmable test and service monitoring solutions for communications service providers (CSPs), has become an official member of the Cisco SolutionsPlus Program. This means that CSPs worldwide are able to approach Cisco and approved Cisco partners to purchase Netrounds as a validated solution and addition to Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO). This allows CSPs to incorporate automated activation testing as an integral part of the NSO Service Activation process and subsequently monitor services in an active manner following successful activation for improved customer experience.

Through the integration of Netrounds and Cisco NSO, telecoms operators and CSPs are able to:

Actively verify that services work once provisioned by Cisco NSO – by generating real world traffic to ensure services are delivered correctly before end users are exposed to a service and delivering birth certificates to key stakeholders.

Ensure that provisioned services continue to work over their lifetime – using active measurements for enhanced service quality insights from the end users’ view.

Resolve problems faster – utilize remote testing capabilities to automate advanced test scenarios through Cisco NSO and to test across layers, services, and domains.

Minimize manual and field test efforts – by automating test sequences and by using remote troubleshooting to reduce manual field efforts, dispatching technicians to fix problems, not to find them.

“This proven integration between Netrounds and Cisco NSO allows our customers to introduce automated assurance into their networks with confidence and ease,” said Mats Nordlund, CEO and co-founder of Netrounds. “Adding Netrounds to the Cisco SolutionPlus Program and enabling our customers to purchase Netrounds directly from the Cisco price list further adds to that ease of deployment.”

Mats Nordlund, Netrounds CEO and co-founder

“Partnering with Netrounds will allow our customers to achieve greater automation and assured agility of network services, allowing them to drive revenue growth and reduce operational concerns when deploying new services,” said Charles Stucki, vice president and general manager of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Business Unit, Cisco. “Cisco’s NSO technology is a key NFV solution that can help enable faster and more flexible delivery of existing and new services.  By combining Netrounds with NSO, customers can manage and assure these services throughout the entire service lifecycle in a completely automated way.”

Charles Stucki, VP & general manager of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Business Unit, Cisco

Register to view our special Cisco Knowledge Network webinar (available for viewing on demand now) here featuring Netrounds’ Dr. Stefan Vallin and Cisco’s NSO Technology Director, Carl Moberg. We explain how the proven integration between the market-leading Cisco NSO and Netrounds’ Orchestrated Assurance solutions enables customers to introduce automated assurance into their networks with confidence and ease.  We additionally share real-life use case examples of the business benefits that can be yielded through network orchestration and automation.

View our recent press release: “Netrounds Added to the Cisco SolutionsPlus Program to Expedite Deployment of Automated Network Assurance” here

To find out more about what Cisco Orchestrated Assurance powered by Netrounds can do for your business view our Solution At a Glance here.

To learn what Cisco Network Services Orchestrator can do for your business, visit www.cisco.com/go/nso.

In addition, if you are joining us in Las Vegas for Cisco Live US on June 25 -29, 2017, visit the Cisco booth, which will feature demos of Cisco® Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and Cisco Orchestrated Assurance powered by Netrounds.