Ciena Help Itron Ensure Peak Performance of Critical Business Applications

Ciena Corporation announced a deployment with Itron, a world-leading technology and services company dedicated to the resourceful use of energy and water. With Ciena Network Transformation Solutions (NTS) and AT&T’s global managed service, Itron can better manage, monitor and control its network performance to ensure availability and performance of business-critical applications. The managed service provides a comprehensive view of Itron’s available network resources and offers a sustainable governance platform to allocate bandwidth consistent with defined business objectives.


·         With a global workforce of more than 8,000 employees in more than 80 offices worldwide, Itron relies on advanced communications and back-office applications to keep its team productive. It is critical that the company’s network keep pace with demand, prioritizing and guaranteeing bandwidth availability for a rich and consistent experience for employees.

·         Driven by powerful analytics and a software-enabled solution set, Ciena’s Network Transformation Solutions allow businesses, like Itron, to guarantee the performance of critical business applications such as unified communications and centralized back-office software. Specifically, Application Assurance Managed Service (AAMS) gives Itron precise control over its network resources, helping the company’s IT team to manage finite bandwidth and direct it to the applications and communication services that need it most.

·         By managing network resources proactively and programming the network to allocate capacity automatically, Ciena’s AAMS guarantees that critical business services will perform when needed. Part of Ciena’s suite of Network Transformation Solutions NTS, AAMS draws on Ciena’s OPn architecture approach for building programmable networks that scale and automatically respond to changing demands for high-bandwidth applications and services.

·         “We need to ensure that our team is focused on delivering value to our customers, not whether their communications tools are going to perform as expected. In particular, with a finite amount of bandwidth, we need to make sure that our network resources are used efficiently, in ways that drive greater productivity and collaboration. Ciena’s Application Assurance Managed Service adds intelligence to our network that allows us to achieve both of those goals.”

­   Chuck McAtee, vice president of information technology and Chief Information Officer, Itron


·         “The proliferation of network-enabled and mobile business applications gives our enterprise customers new tools to communicate, collaborate and grow. Collaborating with Ciena to deliver this advanced managed service enables us to address our customers’ changing communication requirements while giving them the ability to get the most value out of their network. Together we have the strength and commitment to seize business opportunity with innovative alliances that use intelligent, software-enabled network architectures and managed service solutions.”

­   Anne Chow, senior vice president, AT&T Premier Client Group


·         “Ciena has a deep understanding of how networks operate and the strategies to ensure resiliency and predictability. It is our job to focus on networks, so that enterprises can stay focused on their business. IT departments today are under constant strain of changing traffic patterns and needs. Our Network Transformation Solutions practice helps to monetize service providers’ network architectures, offering proactive managed services that allow operators to leverage network assets more efficiently.”

­   Michael Jones, vice president and general manager AT&T account, Ciena 


Technology Background:

    Ciena’s NTS is a consultative practice offering a suite of services based on network analytics and transformational planning that help carriers and enterprises migrate, consolidate and build out new networks, maximizing revenue and profitability. AAMS is a new service offering within this portfolio.
    AT&T delivers a variety of tools businesses require to govern and forecast network performance at every level. Through an agreement with Ciena, AT&T customers have access to view the network’s applications to drive greater productivity and efficiencies while preserving business cadence. Although our agreement is relatively new, Ciena was one of six recipients of the 2013 AT&T Supplier Award.
    Ciena’s AAMS uses technology from Ipanema Technologies, to proactively provide application performance management. Ciena is also demonstrating its corporate and strategic commitment to supplier inclusion by contracting with Link America to deliver next-generation operational support for this service.

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