netscout award write up

2017 Global Stratecast Communications Business Assurance Competitive

Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan 2017 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents

Background and Company Performance ..................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................... 3

Industry Challenges .......................................................................................... 3

NetScout Profile ............................................................................................... 6

Strategy Innovation and Customer Impact of NetScout .......................................... 7

Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 11

Significance of Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership ................................. 12

Understanding Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership ........................... 12

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 13

Strategy Innovation ........................................................................................ 13

Customer Impact ........................................................................................... 13

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ............................................................................................................. 14

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards .................. 15

Research Methodology .................................................................................... 15

About ODAM ........................................................................................................ 16

About Stratecast .................................................................................................. 16

About Frost & Sullivan .......................................................................................... 16



Background and Company Performance

Introduction

For one of telecom operations’ most long-standing and accomplished skills—assuring the

quality of high-speed, multi-technology, multi-service networks—the practice of service

assurance continues to evolve, improve, and meet new challenges. The last several years

has seen significant consolidation among suppliers of network and service management

solutions, assurance solutions, and test & measurement solutions. In addition, there has

been significant integration within the industry of single-function products turned to

comprehensive assurance portfolios. However, as virtual and software-driven network

architectures have emerged, and multi-domain services cross carrier and enterprise

boundaries, the end-game objectives keep moving pertaining to the limits of what needs

to be monitored and analyzed. Assurance solutions are also faced with new scalability

demands, as networks grow faster and more voluminous with traffic data.

Recently, a new wrinkle has been added to the assurance challenge. With the great

speeds and high volumes of data now in play, combined with the myriad of devices,

protocols and openness of the network, comes sophisticated threats to cybersecurity.

Networks, services that run on a network, and the businesses that operate networks,

cannot be fully assured and protected without the added component of security assurance.

Some network equipment manufacturers are reacting to this threat by including

cybersecurity solutions as part of their network assurance capability offerings. However, it

will be up to more comprehensive service assurance suppliers such as NetScout to bring

the necessary tools together for securing the entire business. It is NetScout’s approach to

this new comprehensive approach to assurance and the acquisitive strategy it has followed

to assemble it, which are the major factors for why Stratecast recognizes the company for

this award.

Industry Challenges

Performance in Context

Knowing that a call dropped at what time of day is one thing. Knowing what kind of device

originated the call, how many attempts that device made, what system that device was

communicating with, how many times those devices have tried to communicate and failed,

and what other facilities and devices were experiencing similar results, or not, is quite

another thing. It is called context.

There are many more levels of context: identity of the customer, value of the customer,

environmental conditions at the time and location of the trouble, the criticality of that

communication, the amount of traffic or congestion on that part of the network, what

other facilities might be available, and finally, what policies were in place at the time for

both the customer and the network. The list goes on.



When vulnerabilities to cyber threats are added to the equation, even more context is

needed. The discovery of patterns of malicious intent complements solutions that protect

the network and services against natural service degradations and failures.

However, these bits of information do not form a complete picture alone. Analytics, to this

point has been good at spotting trends and forecasting when action will be required.

Analytics has not yet mastered the ability to put performance into sharply focused

context, especially for network and security assurance. This capability is required for

operations support systems to begin closing the loop on automated network and service

management along with overall business assurance.

Unified Assurance

Creating a picture of network and/or service performance at any point in time is like an

artist trying to paint a portrait of a four-year-old that won’t sit still. The more reactive and

automated networks become—especially with virtual network elements that can

theoretically be spun up and down dynamically in different locations—the more the frame

of reference for creating a performance snapshot changes.

CSPs are also shifting to a customer-centric view of performance rather than a network

view. This means CSPs need the ability to paint a picture of a customer’s experience

across services. To do this, assurance systems need to bring data together from many

disparate networks. Where each network technology stack once had its own assurance

platform, in many cases now, CSPs want a single platform.

So whether it is the convergence of network technologies, the mix of architectures, or the

myriad points of view from which a CSP sees performance at any given time, a

comprehensive view of the business is required. Such flexible viewing options are difficult

to build with a single set of solutions from a single supplier. This means service assurance

suppliers need to apply insights where they can, and partner with other innovators where

they cannot apply insights.

Looking for new partners may mean establishing relationships with non-traditional solution

suppliers as well. To this end, NetScout recently began delivering its nGenius PFS 5000

network packet broker on off-the-shelf Open Compute platforms.

Assurance for NFV and Hybrid Networks

The biggest challenge in providing multi-technology assurance today stems from the

multiple technologies within a single service. The service may traverse many transport

technologies, but also both physical and virtual networks. Following service performance

across this divide is a challenge that needs to be overcome if CSPs are to have a

successful transformation from the former to the latter.



The industry’s efforts to advance NFV and SDN, and the pressure from Internet-based

competitors to adopt cloud and next-generation data center technologies have left CSPs

with a bifurcated management solution for end-to-end network and service management.

This bifurcation has resulted in the hybrid network. Enabling visibility across the hybrid

network remains a challenge.

On one side of the bifurcation is a virtual network infrastructure supported by the new

management framework from ETSI, known as Management and Orchestration (MANO). In

addition, there are software-driven SDN control solutions coming from the OpenDaylight

initiative, independent suppliers, and cloud management systems. On the other side are

the fixed, traditional, singularly-purposed OSS systems.

Source: Stratecast

The way forward for OSS/BSS is to support virtualized operations, but the traditional

configuration on the left hand side of this image will be in play for many years to come

and will need continued development as well, if it is to be an enabler rather than an

impediment to transformation.



NetScout Profile

NetScout was founded in 1984 as Frontier Software. The company has evolved from a

software consulting business to a service assurance solutions provider. Today, NetScout

has installed more than one million products at more than 20,000 enterprises, including

165 CSPs, in 48 countries.

NetScout is based in Westford, Massachusetts, and has offices in the Americas, Europe

and Asia Pacific regions, including offices in the United States, India, United Kingdom,

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore,

Japan, Australia, and more. The company has more than 3,000 employees.

The goal for NetScout is keeping a complex array of applications, services, software, and

hardware running in harmony and without interruption. NetScout’s application, network,

and service intelligence offerings provide comprehensive insight into the dynamic and

real-time nature of critical data, video and voice services running across modern

technology infrastructures. Capturing and analyzing network traffic at the packet level,

NetScout’s nGeniusONE platform helps shorten the time required to solve network and

application performance issues. It provides one common set of metadata for service

visibility across application tiers, network components, and diverse user devices.

NetScout also has a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) engine, powered by its Adaptive Service

Intelligence (ASI) technology, which provides real-time, contextual analysis of service,

network, and application performance.

In 2013, NetScout received a patent for Adaptive Service Intelligence (ASI) solution. In

addition to providing network and application performance management—ASI is the basis

for building and discovering new insights into operations, including security and system

planning―NetScout has products and solutions for both enterprise and CSP users. In

addition to the nGeniusONE platform and ASI technology mentioned above, the company

offers the following solutions and more:

nGeniusONE Service Assurance Platform – Provides critical insights into

network and service performance, availability and usage. It is a real-time, scalable

service assurance solution that uses ASI technology provide a carrier-grade, highly

scalable, distributed service assurance solution.

nGenius Business Analytics – NETSCOUT’s nGenius Business Analytics tool combines

real-time, smart data with powerful business analytics for the most complete picture of

service performance and customer experience, usage and behavior. It offers insights and

predictive analytics that improve customer experience and drive efficiency and productivity..

nGenius Business Analytics is built on an open framework that uses KAFKA and

REST, industry-standard APIs, to export valuable subscriber and service-level

intelligence into data lakes and business analytics platforms.



ISNG – Mines traffic in real-time to deliver actionable data for service assurance,

cybersecurity and business intelligence applications. Provides real-time views of the

user and control planes with full visibility across physical and virtual network

environments.

Infinistream – Performs deep packet capture and analysis for real-time insights

into the performance of applications and services that flow across the IP network.

Infinistream also provides always-on monitoring of all voice, data and video traffic,

to deliver the intelligence for effective service assurance, triage and post-incident

analysis.

IRIS/GeoProbe – Provides comprehensive network monitoring and data collection

across legacy and next-generation technologies for troubleshooting business

applications and intelligence layers. The distributed architecture is optimized to

handle high-volume IP traffic with native support for IPv4 and IPv6.

Roaming and Interconnect Assurance – Delivers insight into existing and

potential carrier partnerships to maximize roaming revenue for 2G, 3G and LTE

networks. The solution does this by providing a comprehensive view of the traffic

exchanged among networks, thereby addressing both roaming and

interworking/interconnect scenarios.

TrueCall RAN Geo-analytics – Diagnoses network and device problems in real-

time to better understand demand density and usage, study traffic patterns, and

geo-locate dropped calls. It does this while minimizing drive testing to gain an end-

to-end view from the radio network to the IMS.

AdvancedDDos and Arbor Networks Spectrum – Provides a comprehensive

suite of DDoS attack protection products and services for the Enterprise, Cloud /

Hosting and Service Provider markets.

Strategy Innovation and Customer Impact of NetScout

The 2017 Stratecast Global Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award in

Communications Business Assurance is judged based on ten criteria described later in this

document. The following details a selection of comparisons from the ten criteria.

Strategy Effectiveness

The NetScout technology strategy is focused on internally developing innovative

techniques for monitoring and gathering data on network and service performance such as

ASI. However, the company also had a strong acquisition strategy and spent

approximately $3 billion on the acquisition of complementary companies, including:

Tektronix, Newfield Wireless, Arantech, Arbor Networks, Fluke Networks, and the probe

business of Accanto Systems.



The ultimate goal was to provide the deepest, most comprehensive view of network and

service performance across any technology.

The company's strategy over the last several years was to integrate all of these assets

into a cohesive set of solutions, tied to ASI. Recently, NetScout succeeded in integrating

the Arbor Networks assets for cybersecurity into this mosaic of assurance capabilities.

Adding cybersecurity functionality signaled a rise in importance of protecting network and

services from attack and showed cyber vulnerability to be on par with the vulnerability of

poor performance. The security and assurance domains have, up to this point, been

separate. However, the synergies between service assurance and security solutions made

possible through analysis of large volumes of network traffic create new opportunities for

the two disciplines to work together to assure the availability, reliability and

responsiveness of the network and the business services.

Some competitors on the hardware side have begun incorporating cybersecurity

capabilities into their platforms; however, NetScout has positioned itself as a leader

among software suppliers by bringing security and assurance together and delivering

software centric instrumentation solutions.

Source: NetScout, Stratecast

Strategy Execution

NetScout has successfully integrated its next-generation, real-time information platform,

ISNG, and network threat analysis solution, Arbor Networks’ Spectrum. This integrated

solution allows NetScout to apply its patented ASI smart data technology to advanced

threat detection. Both systems will now use a common, shared data source for smoother

collaboration between the network and security teams.



Threat detection is faster when network and security teams have access to both real-time

and historical network traffic from a single dashboard.

The new solution helps NetScout enter the Advance Threat market with a unique solution

that combines ASI-based real-time pervasive visibility into the wire data that traverses the

intranet with Arbors’ Active Threat Level Analysis System (ATLAS). ATLAS global threat

intelligence data is compiled based on monitoring of more than one-third of all internet

traffic and providing near-real-time visibility into today’s emerging threats. Now, NetScout

customers can use Arbor Spectrum with ISNG to:

Leverage smart data generated by collecting, organizing and analyzing wire data that

traverses the common service delivery infrastructure in physical, virtual and cloud

environments. This smart data gives security teams pervasive visibility across users,

applications, protocols, and network flow data.

Provide security teams with superior intelligence based on the high-resolution wire

data using either dedicated or shared ISNG collectors.

Take advantage of smart data from the combined solution, across ASI and ATLAS, to

expose and extract the key potential threat activity across the network, reducing

mean time to resolution of critical security threats.

The integration of these tools demonstrated NetScout is successfully executing on its

acquisition strategy of leveraging the strengths of each company in combined NetScout

solutions.

Competitive Differentiation

NetScout’s competitors in service assurance have made important progress on similar

efforts to unite the various aspects of service assurance. None have done so while also

tightly integrating advanced cybersecurity capabilities.

NetScout’s Arbor Networks Spectrum threat analysis platform has entered the Advanced

Threat market, in large part by leveraging ISNG, the ASI-based common data platform

used by NetScout’s assurance and intelligence systems. This advancement could be the

first stage of bringing assurance and security teams and solutions much closer together. It

also will help NetScout maintain its leading role in business assurance.

Executive Team Alignment

Anil Singhal has led NetScout for 33 years. He founded the company in June 1984 and has

served as CEO since then, also becoming chairman in 2007. Since the beginning of the

company, Singhal has held to his vision of traffic-based, a.k.a wire data, instrumentation

as a core component of measuring business performance for those companies whose

network and network-based services are its business. Singhal’s executive team has an



average of 18 years of service with the company and has been together through most of

the company’s acquisitions, helping to align and integrate the capabilities of the various

properties as well as internal development. The team is aligned on the goal of integrating

solutions to become a provider of Business Assurance.

Source: NetScout

Stakeholder Integration

When it comes to assured and secured networks, every network operator, technology

partner and channel partner is a stakeholder. The industry has a collective interest in

keeping networks secure and resilient. Network operators in particular depend on the

innovations and interoperability of NetScout solutions. They also have an interest in the

longevity and vitality of the company as the performance of their most critical

infrastructure depends on it. As for having a stake in the financial and technological

success of NetScout, the company’s technology partners also depend on NetScout

technology to maximize their own. All of them are concerned with both performance and

security. Here are a few of them:

Cisco Systems - Cisco and NetScout deliver value-added solutions to provide

network and service delivery assurance across a wide range of Cisco technologies,

including:

o nGenius Service Assurance for Cisco Unified Computing System Express

o Cisco Application eXtension Platform (AXP) for Cisco ISR

o Cisco Unified Communications

Citrix – The nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform provides end-to-end

Security SolutionsService Assurance (SA)



performance and availability management for virtualized business services based

on Citrix XenApp. The platform provides unified, service-oriented views

encompassing the performance of the network infrastructure, application tiers,

Citrix virtualization components, and business services.

Microsoft – The nGenius Voice/Video Manager integrates Microsoft Lync client

endpoint data metrics through the Microsoft Lync Monitoring Server. The nGenius

solution complements Microsoft Lync monitoring services with network mid-point

and multi-vendor call detail to deliver real-time visibility into end-to-end call

performance for voice and video sessions.

VMware – The nGenius Virtual Agent, a plug-and-play virtualized nGenius Probe,

is optimized for VMware and packaged as a self-contained virtual appliance that

supports the native VMware vSphere standard switch, vSphere distributed switch

for extended environments, and the Cisco® Nexus 1000V Series Switch.

Brand Equity

In June, Forbes named NetScout as one of the 25 fastest growing technology companies

in 2017. From a customer standpoint, Vodafone extended a contract with NetScout to

monitor network performance across 13 countries in Europe. Vodafone will be using the

ISNG platform launched in September, 2016. NetScout also entered into a collaboration

deal with Bouygues Telecom for the expansion of their Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) quality

management solution, supporting the demand and growth around voice, data, and video

services in France. NetScout remains a trusted partner for both the telecom service

provider market and the wider large enterprise market.

Conclusion

Service Assurance has continued to evolve over the last decade due largely to the speed,

volume and richness of available data sources and the growing ability, through analytics,

to convert this data into actionable intelligence. The intelligence that arises from this

activity cannot be contained in scope to traditional service assurance functionality to

better understanding of network or service performance. Ultimately, the goal must be

business assurance. For this, a new dimension is required: security assurance.

Furthermore, using the same smart data for business analytics purposes can help improve

customer experience and drive efficiency and productivity.

NetScout is recognized for the strategy that has resulted in the company’s ability to

leverage a common data set to provide visibility into all four categories: Service

Assurance, Security Solutions, Business Assurance and Business Analytics. With its

strong overall performance, Stratecast is proud to bestow the 2017 Stratecast

Global Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award in the

Communications Business Assurance Market to NetScout.



Significance of Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership

Any successful approach to achieving top-line growth must (1) take into account what

competitors are, and are not, doing; (2) meet customer demand with a comprehensive,

value-driven product or service portfolio; and (3) establish a brand that resonates deeply

with customers and stands apart from other providers. Companies must succeed in these

three areas—brand, demand, and positioning—to achieve best-practice levels in

competitive strategy.

Understanding Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership

As discussed above, driving demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation all

play a critical role in delivering unique value to customers. This three-fold focus, however,

must ideally be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on Strategy Innovation and

Customer Impact.



Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award, Stratecast | Frost &

Sullivan analysts independently evaluated two key factors—Strategy Innovation and

Customer Impact—according to the criteria identified below.

Strategy Innovation

Criterion 1: Strategy Effectiveness

Requirement: Strategy effectively balances short-term performance needs with long-term

aspirations and vision for the company.

Criterion 2: Strategy Execution

Requirement: Adoption of best-in-class processes supports the efficient and consistent

implementation of business strategy.

Criterion 3: Competitive Differentiation

Requirement: Unique competitive advantages with regard to solution or product are

clearly articulated and well accepted within the industry.

Criterion 4: Executive Team Alignment

Requirement: The executive team is aligned along the organization’s mission, vision,

strategy, and execution.

Criterion 5: Stakeholder Integration

Requirement: Strategy reflects the needs or circumstances of all industry stakeholders,

including competitors, customers, investors, and employees.

Customer Impact

Criterion 1: Price/Performance Value

Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar

offerings in the market

Criterion 2: Customer Purchase Experience

Requirement: Customers feel like they are buying the most optimal solution that

addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints

Criterion 3: Customer Ownership Experience

Requirement: Customers are proud to own the company’s product or service, and have a

positive experience throughout the life of the product or service

Criterion 4: Customer Service Experience

Requirement: Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality

Criterion 5: Brand Equity

Requirement: Customers have a positive view of the brand and exhibit high brand loyalty



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices

Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan Awards follow a 10-step process to evaluate award

candidates and assess their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and

integrity of the Awards are based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify Award recipient candidates from around the globe

Conduct in-depth industry research

Identify emerging sectors Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning of all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

Confirm best-practice criteria

Examine eligibility of all candidates

Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

Brainstorm ranking options Invite multiple perspectives

on candidates’ performance Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

Share findings Strengthen cases for

candidate eligibility Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized Award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on Award candidates’ eligibility

Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

Pressure-test fit with criteria Confirm inclusion of all

eligible candidates

Final list of eligible Award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official Award consideration materials

Perform final performance benchmarking activities

Write nominations Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice Award recipient

Review analysis with panel Build consensus Select recipient

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform Award recipient of Award recognition

Present Award to the CEO Inspire the organization for

continued success Celebrate the recipient’s

performance

Announcement of Award and plan for how recipient can use the Award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Upon licensing, company is able to share Award news with stakeholders and customers

Coordinate media outreach Design a marketing plan Assess Award’s role in future

strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s Award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree-view of industry challenges, trends,

and issues by integrating all 7 of

Stratecast | Frost & Sullivan's research

methodologies. Too often companies make

important growth decisions based on a

narrow understanding of their

environment, leading to errors of both

omission and commission. Successful

growth strategies are founded on a

thorough understanding of market,

technical, economic, financial, customer,

best practices, and demographic analyses.

The integration of these research

disciplines into the 360-degree research

methodology provides an evaluation

platform for benchmarking industry

participants and for identifying those

performing at best-in-class levels.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN

THE CHAOS



About ODAM

The processes and tools that communications service providers (CSPs) have utilized to run

their businesses have changed over time. More than a half-century ago, CSP network and

business management processes were manual (OAM&P). As CSPs evolved over the years,

so did the operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) that

address CSP business and network management needs. In recent years, the lines between

OSS and BSS have become less clear, with much overlap. In addition, the roles in which

OSS and BSS operate have expanded beyond traditional boundaries. As such, Stratecast

now uses the term Operations, Orchestration, Data Analytics & Monetization (ODAM) to

encompass both the traditional OSS and BSS functions and the new areas in which

business and operations management must now work together, including virtualized

networks and telecom data analysis.

About Stratecast

Stratecast collaborates with our clients to reach smart business decisions in the rapidly

evolving and hyper-competitive Information and Communications Technology markets.

Leveraging a mix of action-oriented subscription research and customized consulting

engagements, Stratecast delivers knowledge and perspective that is only attainable

through years of real-world experience in an industry where customers are collaborators;

today’s partners are tomorrow’s competitors; and agility and innovation are essential

elements for success. Contact your Stratecast Account Executive to engage our experience

to assist you in attaining your growth objectives.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth

and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's

Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined

research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation

of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of

experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the

investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership,

please visit http://www.frost.com.