We live in an age where everything we do is based on instant communications - starting with the simple hello over email and phone to watching videos or finding our way around town on a GPS system. People expect information at their fingertips and have little tolerance when there is any interruption. This expectation has been set by companies today and their networks have to deliver performance at the touch of a button. Companies that fall short of delivering that promise quickly become last month’s provider as subscribers seek out a new one.

No company can afford to lose a customer. One customer turns into two, two turns into four and it grows exponentially as word of mouth spreads. This is the nightmare that companies fear and should do whatever it takes to prevent.

Avoid the Worse Case Scenario…

How does a company keep customers happy? Simple -- design and implement a “modern” network that has the capability to expand as new services are deployed. The modern network is about enabling the delivery of compelling new applications and services reliably while delivering the promised subscriber Quality of Experience (QoE). Today’s expectation about service quality, especially IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) and VoIP (Voice over IP) are approaching 100% reliability. Right or wrong it doesn’t matter -”perception is reality” and the customer is king.

However, the reality is that the scope and complexity of next generation network rollouts coupled with the high expectations that wireless networks deliver, presents new and in some cases unexpected issues. Furthermore, the low tolerance by subscribers for faulty service means that network managers – whether within an enterprise or a carrier -- need to get it right the first time.

The crisis in the global economy makes it even more critical to protect revenue streams while upgrading networks. In the recent weeks technology giants such as AT&T, Verizon, Cisco, Nortel, and Microsoft have announced job cuts and warned of tightening budgets. Nevertheless, all of them have promised continued innovation and differentiated services to drive revenue growth. So how does a company innovate with limited resources – both human and capital?

As a technologist, the technical challenges presented by next generation networks are interesting and exciting to me. But to a management executive trying to balance it all within a tightening budget they can be daunting.

Getting Real – In a New Way…

Achieving business efficiency and driving revenues per subscriber are serious issues. And while little can be done at the present time about the difficult economy, CEOs, CFOs and CIOs of companies must look to optimize their networks while managing capital investments to meet the needs of tomorrow. One of the most critical steps in ensuring this is thorough testing and validation. Not the old testing of the past where packet blasting was the key focus but testing where subscriber realism and quality of experience (QoE) are the goals.

Too often people fall back on “how things are done” testing approach and that’s just not good enough today. Networks of tomorrow demand innovative testing and validation approaches with capabilities that were not available six months ago. Test capabilities are needed that push the envelope to the point where each subscriber is emulated with specific behaviors or profiles.

Networks operators and system vendors have to realize that that one of the most critical ways to continue delivering innovative systems and differentiating services in a difficult economy is to re-think the testing process in the product and service development life cycle. Testing can no longer be a routine task, but a strategic imperative that directly addresses return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics.

Industry analysts agree:

“With the evolution to intelligent content aware networks, service providers and network equipment manufacturers need to furnish tools and functions to plan, measure, monitor, and assure evolving traffic patterns, new services, and optimized application performance,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. “This is not an easy task—it means that increasing port density or adding new protocols is necessary but clearly not sufficient for test engineers. What’s required are realistic network environments representing the end-to-end complex conditions of next-gen IP networks including aspects such as scalability and performance.”

Testing For Today and Tomorrow…

Instead of looking at testing and product validation in silos, which is typical of today’s testing processes, the product and services development team needs to test across multiple dimensions of Realism with Scalability and Performance. Testing has to be flexible where resources can be reallocated based on the test to maximize realism as the services and applications evolve. Test products have to be able to consolidate on a single port if necessary to achieve the metrics and not have a static design preventing growth. And although full scale tests are important, it is not nearly as important as the ability to identify, isolate and address QoE issues.

At the end of the day, network managers and test engineers need a testing platform that:

o addresses realistic tests with a single solution the multi-play traffic that traverses the modern networks;

o goes beyond just quality of service testing to deliver subscriber quality of experience; and

o optimizes testing resource to maximize capital and operational savings.

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