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Power the Connected Business
Imagine targeting specific business verticals with a distinct set of value-added services that
are built into their Internet connection and require no additional equipment or IT expertise.
Do you think they’d be interested?
Businesses, enterprises, and other organizations are an important customer group for communications service providers (CSPs): they drive significant monthly revenue and consider their data connection to be a necessity.
But until now the reality of most business services has been that once a contract is up, the business seeks the lowest price from any supplier—it’s a classic race to zero. Differentiated services with value-added features break this cycle and give businesses a reason to stick with you.
Differentiated services offer a compelling value proposition to businesses because they make important solutions available in a manner that is affordable and doesn’t require IT expertise. Many businesses lack dedicated IT resources and the expertise to deploy and maintain focused technology products, but these same companies are interested in gaining visibility, controlling how they use their available bandwidth, and protecting their employees and information. Sandvine lets communications service providers (CSPs) target specific business and organization verticals with a compelling set of out-of-the-box services—and we do so in a manner that is incredibly efficient for you, the CSP.
Education Data Centers Dorms & Barracks WiFi P
roviders
Small Business Hospitality Health Care Public Sector Financial Services Fleet Management Consumer R
etail
Use Cases
View
Gain insight into customer usage to spot opportunities for new services and to proactively notify customers when a different service option might be
more suitable
Gain valuable visibility into Internet usage through vivid,
easy-to-understand real-time and historical reports
Real-time diagnostics tools to help quickly get to the root of any problem
Deliver real-time location information of mobile fleets or employees to
optimize service response times and manage business travel
Control
Increase brand awareness, and introduce third-party promotions in
real-time
Manage congestion and prioritize critical applications, including collaboration (e.g., video conferencing, voice-over-IP, etc.) and hosted
services
Manage a shared bucket of data usage between hundreds or even thousands
of devices
Monetize in-store WiFi offerings by bringing real-time advertisements and
promotions to customers at point-of-sale
Control access to non-business applications during business hours
Introduce comparison shopping detection and prevention programs
Protect
Deploy advanced security features that protect against DDoS attacks,
botnets, and other malicious behaviors
URL filtering to block inappropriate content
Secure transactions and documentation across the network to meet
regulatory compliance
Monitor bandwidth utilization to detect SIM fraud and other abnormalities These services and more are made possible by Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller—a virtualized policy control
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For schools and school boards, providing Internet connectivity to students, faculty, and administrators is an important part of creating a high-quality learning environment, especially as smartphones, tablets, and laptops become everyday education tools.
This Internet access must be safe and reliable, so that students and faculty alike can access the awesome learning and teaching potential of the Internet without being exposed to online threats and inappropriate content.
Traditionally, implementing URL filtering policies has required on-premise equipment and the IT expertise to install, update, and manage those specialized solutions. Alternatively, Internet providers could take care of these value-adds, but doing so still required cumbersome equipment and ongoing operations management.
But now, Internet providers can include compelling features as subscription-based add-ons to basic Internet
connectivity—without requiring additional equipment and the installation and management effort that this equipment demands.
Imagine offering your education customers: • URL filtering to block inappropriate content
• Protection against denial of service attacks, botnets, and other online threats
• Usage reports that can show them when they need to upgrade their service to a higher bandwidth • Control over how bandwidth is divided between faculty and students
• Prioritization of important education applications, and control over applications that make inappropriate use of the school’s bandwidth
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Owning and operating a profitable data center requires more than simply managing power and rack space. With businesses of all sizes offloading technology to the cloud, and hosting providers becoming more plentiful, data center operators must show competitive differentiation and service diversification to secure customers.
To do this effectively, data center operators require real-time visibility into network activity and granular control over traffic and usage. Only then can they truly understand how their services are being used and take action when it’s needed.
With Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller, data center operators can improve their own operations and achieve
market differentiation:
• Provide customers with usage reports, service summaries, and control over their own usage
• Deploy advanced security features that protect against DDoS attacks, botnets, and other malicious behaviors • Diagnose and troubleshoot potential network issues with real-time diagnostics
• Audit network behavior to deliver on and enforce advanced service level agreements
• Gain insight into customer usage to spot opportunities for new services and to proactively notify customers when a different service option might be more suitable
• Manage link congestion and determine where network quality improvements are required immediately across data center sites
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For many businesses, providing WiFi coverage for customers is a necessity—whether as a strategic investment or as a basic requirement or customer expectation.
Failing to ‘manage’ this WiFi service has a range of consequences—from missing out on customer engagement
opportunities to running afoul of public decency expectations—but most businesses lack the IT expertise, equipment, and time to actually perform monitoring or management activities.
Sandvine lets you build valuable add-on capabilities into your high speed Internet service, so businesses everywhere can make the most of their WiFi coverage without needing any extra equipment or specialty expertise.
Now you can differentiate your high speed Internet connectivity service by enabling your customers with WiFi hotspots to:
• Prioritize business applications over the public WiFi traffic
• Monetize their WiFi offering by bringing real-time advertisements and promotions to customers at point-of-sale • Filter objectionable content and prevent abuse
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For IT administrators at college and university dorms, army barracks, and other grouped environments, being able to offer a satisfying Internet experience to each individual is critical. But to do so, administrators must find effective solutions to two challenges:
• How to best divide a shared and finite Internet connection between dozens or hundreds of people
• How to be flexible enough to deliver a handful of service options, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach Policy control offers a solution to both of these challenges, as the technology provides administrators with powerful traffic management techniques to optimize the shared connection, while at the same time allowing administrators to define separate tiers of service.
Imagine offering your university, barrack, and similar customers:
• Easy-to-use traffic management capabilities to define exactly how they want their shared Internet connection to be used—for instance, the administrator could prioritize web browsing and real-time communications services ahead of bulk downloads
• Tools to quickly craft a range of service options that incorporate speed, volume, and time variables, so that they can offer their end users a choice of services
• Detailed usage reporting, to understand exactly how the services are being used and to spot opportunities for optimizations
• Real-time diagnostics tools to help quickly get to the root of any problems
• Built-in security capabilities to identify users infected with botnets, serving spam, or otherwise making malicious use of the connection
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For small and medium businesses, running a profitable, successful operation means wearing many hats. When it comes to having reliable, business-grade Internet access with minimal downtime, many of these businesses often do not have the resources for a dedicated IT team to manage on-premises IT solutions and infrastructure.
This reality presents an enormous opportunity for communications service providers: by building valuable IT solutions into the high speed Internet service, service providers can deliver exactly what small and medium businesses need, without needing the businesses to invest in equipment or expertise.
Imagine being able to quickly enable your small and medium business customers to:
• Gain valuable visibility into Internet usage through vivid, easy-to-understand real-time and historical reports • Manage a shared bucket of mobile data usage
• Control access to non-business applications during business hours
• Prioritize critical applications, including collaboration (e.g., video conferencing, voice-over-IP, etc.) and hosted services
• Effectively manage the inflow of personal and business mobile devices on the business network
• Gain peace of mind and protect critical information by deploying network-based security solutions across the business
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From room service to dry cleaning and concierge to daycare services, the hospitality industry has evolved to become your true home-away-from-home…with one exception: Internet access continues to be a major guest complaint on hotel rating sites.
Many businesses in the hospitality industry resell Internet access to their guests using their in-hotel WiFi. The trouble is that the access they provide is perceived to be poor, inconsistent, and overpriced.
Obviously, the hotel doesn’t set out to deliver a poor service—but they often lack the knowledge and equipment to do any better.
You can help them by providing network-based solutions to their common problems, including effectively and fairly managing the shared bandwidth, and offering a range of service options rather than a one-size-fits-all per day or per stay package.
Imagine offering your hospitality customers built-in capabilities to:
• Effectively share bandwidth between guests and manage any congestion that occurs
• Deliver maximum quality of experience by prioritizing high-value applications like Skype, Netflix, YouTube, etc. • Offer differentiated Internet access (e.g., based on speed, volume, or time) and a personalized experience that’s
completely customizable by the hotel guest
• Use captive portals and advertising to monetize the network with real-time offers and promotions • Gain real-time insight and reporting into usage to more accurately and effectively segment hotel guests
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The Internet has provided the health care industry with a fantastic resource that allows the exchange of information, inter-site collaboration, and a host of other useful services.
But to make the most of this connectivity, IT administrators have to grapple with security threats, privacy concerns, and other complications. Traditionally, they have been forced to install and manage complex hardware solutions, but now there is an alternative.
By building valuable tools and capabilities into your high speed Internet service, you can help health care providers to spend less time managing their network infrastructure, and more time directing efforts towards patient care.
Health care institutions can rely on your differentiated business Internet services to: • Manage visitor WiFi services
• Give interactive priority to critical telemedicine applications
• Deliver reliable, high definition video conferencing between hospital personnel across sites • Securely and efficiently share and transfer patient documents between health care providers
• Manage congestion, improve quality, and understand where network quality improvements are required immediately for the health care provider’s network
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Government and public sector agencies are transforming as the Internet enables seamless collaboration and rapid exchange of information.
Most government and public sector locations include a handful of specialized technology solutions that are managed by an understaffed IT organization. You can provide vital assistance to this group by replacing many of these hardware solutions with services built into your high speed Internet offering.
Instead of needing to install and operate a number of complex hardware solutions, the IT staff can now fulfill the same use cases by logging into your business portal and toggling variables and on/off settings.
Government and public sector agencies can now use your Internet service’s built-in capabilities to: • Manage a shared bucket of mobile data usage
• Gain valuable insight into network utilization and changing employee needs
• Manage congestion and prioritize business applications, including teleconferencing and hosted services • Prevent abuse of network resources and defend against threats including botnets
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To excel in the face of change, heightened customer expectations, emerging technologies, and the demand for greater productivity, financial services providers require low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity between sites to communicate quickly with financial exchanges and drive ultimate return on value for their clients.
Additionally, the employees of these companies need reliable Internet service to access online resources and hosted applications—just like any other modern office worker.
In addition to the high speed connectivity that they need, Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller lets you enable
financial services providers to:
• Understand their network needs by studying actual employee usage patterns
• Manage congestion and understand where network quality improvements and service upgrades are required • Protect the financial services network from online threats and identify employee equipment and workstations
infected with malware
• Detect and prevent data loss and sensitive document leakage
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Many businesses rely on fleets and connected remote equipment—from taxis and couriers to ATM providers and utility meter operators—to deliver vital operational metrics such as telemetry data, usage information, and vehicle location. The Internet needs, whether through fixed access or mobile networks, of these businesses are quite different from most other organizations. Instead of a relatively small number of high-bandwidth employees using a diverse array of applications, these businesses are characterized by hundreds or even thousands of automated components that need very little bandwidth and only use a tiny handful of protocols.
The unique characteristics of fleets and connected machines present an opportunity for service providers to offer tailored Internet services that allow these organizations to:
• Manage a shared bucket of data usage between hundreds or even thousands of devices • Monitor bandwidth utilization to detect SIM fraud and other abnormalities
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Shifts in consumer purchasing behaviors are driving immense change to the brick-and-mortar retail experience. Through ubiquitous Internet connectivity, mobile technologies, and new ways to pay for items, consumers are now more savvy and informed than ever before. Comparison shopping, competitive price searches, and accessing peer recommendations from a mobile device are the new norm and can happen in-store, or well in advance of a consumer ever setting foot in a retail location.
These shifts present an opportunity for business Internet providers to deliver a variety of value-added services to address the unique needs of the consumer retail industry.
Your advanced business Internet service will allow retailers to:
• Monetize their in-store WiFi offering by bringing real-time advertisements and promotions to customers at point-of-sale
• Gain access to retail analytics to segment their in-store shoppers through an understanding of search behaviors and interests
• Introduce comparison shopping detection and prevention programs
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The Cloud Services Policy Controller
Supporting industry and open standards, the Cloud Services Policy Controller enables CSPs
to stand out in the market, increase loyalty, and grow revenue by powering differentiated
policy control-based services.
The cloud services market is incredibly competitive, and many types of communications service providers (CSPs) are embracing this new delivery model. Sandvine’s Cloud Services Policy Controller is a platform that lets you stand apart
from the crowd by enabling superior visibility, control, and protection use cases.
Achieve Service Differentiation
The Cloud Services Policy Controller lets you efficiently address many business verticals with out-of-the-box use cases
across three main service propositions:
Leverage a Virtualized Platform
The Cloud Services Policy Controller is a completely virtualized platform, built upon the foundation of
software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) standards—both of which apply proven IT methodologies to enable efficient deployment. For your IT teams, this means on-demand, elastic provisioning for maximally efficient use of your cloud and data center resources.
Benefit from Simple Configuration
The Cloud Services Policy Controller ensures simple configuration by providing integration APIs for the service provider
and a self-serve web interface for the end user or organization; these interfaces abstract the advanced network policy control technology at the heart of the system. To further ensure interoperability, the platform integrates to provisioning systems, customer-premises equipment (CPE) devices, and other Ethernet access devices (EADs).
View use cases give business
customers access to reports and SLA verification; these can be offered
as a freemium addition to your regular connectivity services
Control use cases move beyond
connectivity by providing business customers with control over their traffic, productivity controls, and
SLA assurance
Protect use cases deliver
advanced network protection features to address more complex
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What Do Your Business Customers See?
Your business services gain access to an informative portal that shows a diagnostic dashboard and historical reports and lets them simply manage their policies by toggling on or off settings.
Usability
Cloud services provider:
• APIs for system configuration and provisioning • Instance health and KPI monitoring
Cloud services client:
• Policy toggles (e.g., on/off, time-of-day, etc.) for easy configuration • Self-service management web portal, reference GUI
• Web portal skinning
Virtualization/Cloud
Dedicated virtual instance per client; secure multi-tenancy OpenStack
Hypervisors: VirtualBox, KVM, ESXi
IT Integration
Ethernet access device (EAD) integration: • RAD NID support
• IPFix reporting and policy control • IP fragmentation support
• NETCONF, XMPP, OpenFlow
• Service discovery for registration and keep-alive
Control portal: users can easily toggle policy control services
