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| Quallaby
PROVISO V2
by Steve Broadhead Table of Contents Introduction INTRODUCTION: Making the case for high availability global network services If the networking and telecommunications industry is famous for its false promises on bandwidth availability then it is even more famous for presenting the “killer application” that no one actually needs. All too often technology is introduced and is then in search of applications, rather than the other – and more appropriate – way around. We saw it notably with ATM on the LAN – a technology that eventually found its true vocation in the WAN backbone. So is the situation any different this time around with the promise of affordable, high-speed, global networking? Or is yet another case of high-bandwidth technology chasing real-world applications? Let’s face it, there’s always been more bandwidth available on the LAN than the WAN. While WAN access bandwidth – at best – has increased 30 times over in recent years – the move from ISDN at 64kbps to ADSL at 2Mbps is one example, LAN speeds – even at the desktop - have moved from 10Mbps to gigabit speeds – a 100-fold increase and 500 times the WAN bandwidth example quoted. Bear in mind here we are talking about what is generally in use as of now. But does this mean that there is no demand for high-speed WAN connectivity? On the contrary, it can be argued that only user perception of WAN bandwidth limits has slowed the adoption of new global applications and services, typified by the new “e” wave which is hitting us from all angles, but often falling flat at the moment. The problem is, the kind of e-business and e-commerce applications and services being introduced, or even merely spoken about currently, do not readily fit the 64kbps access speed running onto a 2Mbps WAN backbone model we have all become familiar with over the years. Even basic Internet applications such as web-browsing struggle in such a bandwidth-restricted environment. So when you look at supporting e-business in the form of ERP, CRM and other bandwidth intensive applications globally, something rather more performant and resilient than the typical Internet scenario is required. And it’s not as if the technology is not there to satisfy the new wave of bandwidth-hungry WAN applications. With miles and miles of fibre in the ground, 10Gbps DWDM-based backbone networks in the process of being deployed and 1Gbps and above backbone solutions - primarily ATM and SONET/SDH based to date - already commonplace, there is bandwidth there to be tapped. While historically users have largely been told what they can have, and at what – usually high - price they can have it, now there is seemingly the opportunity for them to finally dictate their own terms and services – AKA self-provisioning. In turn this should lead to a tidal wave of new applications and services making use of this seemingly endless bandwidth which is coming our way. And all the while, the good old Internet is still taking over the world. The Internet has done more than encourage millions of people to become computer users. It has created an entire industry in its own right. One which is growing incredibly quickly and in all directions. And at the heart of it all is a kind of company which simply didn't exist a few years ago - the Internet Service Provider or ISP. Now there are thousands of ISP's world-wide who in themselves have created an industry within an industry and – on the back of this success we now have ASPs or Application Service Providers, specialising in outsourcing application management and delivery and NSPs or Network Service Providers whose primary aim is to offer high bandwidth, global networking. SPs in general have specific needs in terms of hardware and software which, while sharing some requirements with general business and industry, has resulted in the creation of a new generation of products capable of delivering a new wave of services to the end user. And the incumbent operators have not been slow to join in and offer a raft of Internet and related services themselves. What, then, started with the Department of Defense in the US and then emerged as just a bit of fun for bored teenagers and would-be PC expert users is now big, big business. Internet access is no longer a casual hobby but a real business application. With this shift in emphasis, so the expectations of what the Internet can deliver have moved along too. The kind of "will-it, won't-it work" approach to Internet access might be - just about - acceptable for a home hobbyist, but for a business user there has to be a guarantee that the Internet will deliver each and every time they use it. This, in turn, has placed a somewhat different emphasis on the service provider. Whereas a couple of years ago an ISP might have got away with offering unreliable access - in terms of not being able to get onto the 'net or being thrown off in mid-session - for many users this kind of service level is simply unacceptable. The result is a new generation of "super SPs" - service providers geared towards business users first and foremost and casual online access second. In many cases these SPs have been around for a few years and have seen a change in the pattern and make-up of their user base from casual to business oriented. This focus on providing business-oriented Internet access has led to the SPs offering a much wider range of services than before, such as everything from a shrink-wrapped Internet access solution to LAN-based access, high-end broadband access, high-end email solutions, secure access, Intranet solutions, web site hosting and web-based development. The general belief now is that, as a Service Provider, you need to do more than just offer an Internet access service. You need to be able to cover the marketing, communications and IT disciplines of a company, understand the organisational structure. In effect you are acting as a consultancy, not just an old ISP. However, to date there has been a fundamental problem in trying to provide high-bandwidth access to the 'net with the result that the Internet itself has often proved far from ideal when it comes to providing absolute guaranteed service and performance levels. The result is the rise of the aforementioned NSP, delivering guaranteed, global high-bandwidth network services. But is customer demand really sufficiently in place to support these high-level NSPs? Well according to US-based Infonetics Research's latest study, "User Plans for Managed Network Services in Europe 2000”, European managed network service expenditures alone - including managed WAN, remote access, and security services - will grow 466%, from US$3.2 billion to US$18.1 billion between 2000 and 2004. This indicates that the answer is a resounding “yes”. Another key application trend in the networking industry that is bandwidth-hungry is the convergence of voice and data, rather than treating each as a separate service, as has traditionally been the way.� Always you had one network or service for your data and another for the voice and fax. Except now it doesn’t need to be like that. Whether on the LAN or WAN, voice and data convergence is big news, with a plethora of products to allow you to run pretty well “anything over anything” pouring from the doors of the network vendors. Again, according to Infonetics Research, US enterprise voice/data WAN convergence expenditures alone for equipment and services will grow to $16.2 billion by 2003. The catalyst here is the wholesale take-up of IP as the sole protocol used across the network. That this is the protocol used across the Internet is clearly key in its dramatic and widespread uptake, but even without the Internet explosion it was becoming hugely popular on LANs and WANs alike. Consequently IP forms the basis of all the convergence products and solutions. From a technical standpoint, while this standardisation on one protocol does simplify some matters, it also creates a completely new global network to manage and, with this, a whole new set of problems to resolve. Which sounds like an opportunity for companies such as Quallaby… So it seems clear that user demand and applications are equally in place to make use of global, high-speed networks. But more importantly, is the technology genuinely in place? Well in the network performance management, monitoring and reporting areas, at least, Quallaby – whose PROVISO V2 product is the subject of this report – believe this has not been the case prior to its arrival on the scene. A very fundamental problem lies in the inherent limitations of the SNMP and RMON standards on which network management systems are primarily – and in some cases, exclusively – based. Just because they are all but ubiquitous across networking globally doesn’t mean that they are actually any good. Not that Quallaby is able to work outside of these “standards”; indeed it is partially confined by them like other vendors, but it is very much a case of making the most of what you have available to work with. In the view of the NSS Group, there has been far too much “lip service” paid to SNMP and RMON support with too little effort made to provide management tools that – while supporting these standards – do move the science of management forward. However, Quallaby is attempting to move network management forward at the NSP level, albeit within the aforementioned constraints, and this approach should be applauded. Ironically, the networking industry fought for years to ensure that an industry standard for network management came about and that vendors thereafter adhere to international standards. The philosophy being quite clear – users should not be held ransom to a proprietary technology as a result of a “one off” decision.� Rather, the customer should be given the opportunity to constantly test one supplier against another, secure in the knowledge that there was always an option to switch suppliers in the event of poor quality of product or service. So SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) was borne out of this philosophy having won over the confidence of customers when compared with a plethora of vendor-specific proprietary management solutions and the ISO (International Standards Organisation) supported, but excessively complex, CMIP (Common Management Interface Protocol) standard.� As a result, SNMP became the absolute, internationally accepted standard for managing network devices. And it was followed by RMON (Remote MONitoring), effectively a specialised SNMP MIB intended to provide “wire management” statistics and facilities, based around nine statistics groups designed to inform the network manager of the absolute status of any device. Being entwined with SNMP gave RMON a status advantage over any other mechanism in that it was immediately acknowledged as an international standard. And when measured in terms of support, RMON has undoubtedly been successful, as pretty well every network hardware vendor incorporates it within their offerings. This, in turn, gave the user-base the industry standard solution it wanted. However, as is so often the case with standards that are agreed between vendors with conflicting proprietary interests, RMON – like SNMP - is a compromise solution that falls short in a number of very important ways.
While RMON - and SNMP especially - are here to stay in the mid-term at least and therefore need to be embraced, network management needs to offer far more than just the basic levels of support for these standards, in order to be of any real use. Moreover, there are definitive products – market leaders� - in all areas of network management that are now so engrained within their user base that they also need to be supported as if they were industry standards. What is required then, is a new approach to network management that is designed with modern IP-based, e-commerce and e-business networks in mind. But at the same time the existing network management standards and popular components must be adhered to and supported respectively, ensuring compatibility all round. A tricky combination to achieve? Let’s see how Quallaby is approaching this dilemma at the NSP service management level… The Quallaby approach outlined Key to Quallaby’s overall product approach is the changing market itself. Outsourcing really has been reinvented but this time with enterprises now being “savvy” enough to ensure they get a good deal, many having had their fingers burned in such experiences in the past. Consequently they are pressuring the SPs to provide them with guarantees and control over what is happening within that providers network. In turn this means that developers such as Quallaby are under pressure from both the enterprises and the SPs to develop tools that enable the latter to provide this level of network accountability to the former. In most examples, this translates into SPs competing heavily in the area of guaranteed network performance, in the form of a Service Level Agreement or SLA. This is designed to deliver a specific guarantee of service parameters such as throughput, delay, and availability, with the SP writing into the contract a rebate system if those parameters are not met. So for once the customer actually wins! At the same time, the SPs must derive as much value as possible from existing services, such as Internet access, while they expand into the newer, high margin markets. They must also do all they can to recoup the huge expenditure in creating these global networks in the first place. Incumbent service providers in Europe alone will have spent more than $9.1 billion on network equipment by 2004, while world-wide revenues for service provider core and edge hardware suppliers is forecasted to total $14.45 billion for the year 2000, according to Infonetics Research. The key to success for SPs here is in controlling and maximising available bandwidth at all times. A combination of different user types, applications and time zones mean that global network bandwidth management is anything but simple. But if bandwidth utilisation can be accurately monitored, measured and managed 24 hours a day, then the network capacity can be maximised and high value services added to core service offerings without impacting on those existing services. All of which adds up to a better range of options for the enterprise users and more profit for the SPs. The problem is – what tools are out there to enable a service provider to achieve exactly this? Historically, the vast majority of products in use by SPs and enterprises alike to measure network quality have been device-oriented performance managers that were not really designed to provide continuous, real-time service management analysis and reporting. Yet this is precisely what is needed in this new era of outsourcing - a tool that can first collect and consolidate information from a huge and varied number of sources. Then it must be able to offer that data, in a number of different formats, to a diverse range of customers for viewing in a meaningful manner. Which is precisely what PROVISO V2 from Quallaby aims to do. So just how exactly does it achieve this and with what degree of success? Read on… Quallaby describes PROVISO as a service level management or SLM solution that it has architected specifically for NSP requirements. For the NSP, the aim with PROVISO is to offer a centralised network data collection and management solution for storing all network data from which it can optimise and manage the delivery of all services. Think of it as a kind of Rolls Royce of data collecting and reporting tools and you’ll get the basic idea. There is one key word that describes Quallaby’s approach to engineering PROVISO V2 and that word is scalability. With the primary target market the NSPs or “super” service providers we spoke of earlier, PROVISO must be capable of supporting millions of data feeds or inserts per hour and then making that data available in the form of real-time reports. This is no easy task as the company has found out in what it seems has been a long learning curve for the developers en route to creating V2 of PROVISO. Key to the product is its modular architecture (see next section). All three of the modules that make up PROVISO V2 - DataLoad, DataMart, and DataView – were designed from the ground up to increase scalability options compared with anything else on the market, including the previous version of PROVISO itself. Each module uses a server-based architecture optimised for parallel operations; the aim being to avoid bottlenecks in network, CPU, and database read-write access and achieve linear performance with respect to the number of network devices monitored and the duration monitoring, regardless of the size of the network. PROVISO is available purely on the Sun Solaris platform currently, again on scalability grounds, as well as conforming with the preferred OS platform of its key potential customers – over 90% in truth. A big issue for Quallaby was providing the kind of performance needed, not simply to get the data into the system but also to get out in the form of real-time reports. This required the adoption of an architecture based around a single central data source but distributed data collection and reporting options and again Solaris fits the bill here. Not only does this design provide performance and scalability but also added resilience in the event of a failure on the network. So where does PROVISO fit into the bigger picture? Quallaby sees the NSP network management solution consisting of fault management, customer-care, help-desk, billing, provisioning, WAN services management and network performance monitoring – the latter being PROVISO’s job. A key part of the PROVISO architecture therefore lies in its integration with these elements. Not only must it work within an overall solution but it must also be capable of synchronising data with the other elements around it. So PROVISO sits within the overall management framework, interacting with fault management, network management, provisioning and billing systems. For example, it shares details of events and alarms with a fault management system, repository details with a network mapping tool, network knowledge with a provisioning system and enables any metrics to be imported and exported between itself and a billing gateway. PROVISO V2 is based around a modular architecture – the DataLoad, DataMart and DataView modules combine to create a complete system.
Taking each in turn… DataLoad is a distributed SNMP data collection tool that also supports non-SNMP bulk data import – via a .csv file for example. Most of the popular network management software products are directly supported by PROVISO V2 but in most cases a flat file can be exported from a software application in a format that can be imported by Quallaby’s product. A number of flexible tool kits are also provided as standard for configuring DataLoad to support new and custom network devices for data collection. The starting point for PROVISO is the network mapping. Clearly, most – if not all - service providers will already have a tool such as OpenView in place with its own topology of the network stored, so PROVISO does not simply re-invent the wheel in terms of over-writing the existing view of the network. Instead, Quallaby has found to date that the majority of its customers use the bulk data import methodology as the primary data source and SNMP collections as both a means of adding in new and additional data and as a means of enabling the comparison and qualification of the accuracy of the existing data repository. The latter is a valuable feature of what – at first glance – appears to be just another network node discovery mechanism. Importantly, the distributed nature of the SNMP collectors – up to eight are supported currently but this will increase dramatically with the next release of the software – means that real-time network data can be brought into the system at a phenomenal rate. Quallaby quotes a realistic rate – combining SNMP and data import methods - of in excess of 9.75 million data inserts per hour currently, though this already impressive rate will double in terms of SNMP collection with the next minor release of PROVISO and increase five-fold with the next major release of the product. Using the bulk data import option only, the input rate increases dramatically and since this is the most popular method, a realistic combination of the two methodologies means that even huge networks can be mapped very quickly indeed. In this version of PROVISO for example, Quallaby supports bulk data insert rates of around 18.25 million per hour. Now that is pretty quick but the combination of DataLoad and DataMart have been architected to support a massive two million inserts per minute or above, and beyond 10 Terabytes of permanent storage. The latter means that records can be maintained over long time scales before archiving – 90 days and beyond currently Of course, speed is nothing without resilience. Importantly, DataLoad collectors continue to function even if the link to DataMart is broken, and automatically and transparently recover when the link is restored. Also, to protect data integrity, DataLoad automatically detects and adjusts SNMP index reallocations - such as when a new module is added to a network switch or router, for example. Flexibility is the other key aspect of the data collection management within both DataLoad and DataMart see below). For example, a discovery can be fine-tuned to look for only specific devices – say within a given IP address range for example. Equally users can specify a search based on particular vendors’ devices such as, in a given range of IP addresses find only Ciso switches and Lucent devices (all types). This kind of flexibility means that instead of the usual “all of nothing” auto-discovery process that can obviously take a long time to run on a large network, typified by the vast majority of products that only search on an IP address range with no filtering capabilities, PROVISO offers a far more realistic way of performing network element discovery, especially given that most SPs will already have a network map stored via an SNMP manager. DataMart is the effective heart of the system for data management, aggregation, consolidation, archiving, and retrieval. As we already stated, PROVISO V2 is available purely on the Sun Solaris platform currently and in terms of the “engine” that is where it will stay, though the company is looking at HP/UX and LINUX as possible additional front-end platforms for managing PROVISO operations from. The primary reason for the tie into Solaris is the equally strong tie into Oracle’s 8i version of its database, which forms the basis of the PROVISO engine and DataMart. The choice of Oracle was based firstly on the accepted need for an SQL database but equally on its comprehensive scalability in all areas. A real benefit comes in the form of the database partitioning available with 8i which is used by PROVISO to maintain database performance levels even when traffic levels are very high. Partitioning allows tables and indexes to be divided into smaller pieces, focusing operations on particular portions of tables. It also allows tables and indexes to span table-spaces, and makes it possible to perform a number of maintenance operations on a per-partition basis, thus dividing the maintenance process into more manageable chunks. So by limiting the amount of data to be examined or operated on, and by enabling parallel execution, the Oracle partitioning option provides a number of performance benefits Information about how the underlying tables and indexes are partitioned can be combined with information from the WHERE clause of a SQL statement. This intelligently reduces the amount of data on partitioned tables on which queries or DML operate. Complex AND and OR conditions involving elements of the partitioning key in the WHERE clause are intelligently used to eliminate whole subsets of partitions from having to be considered. When a SQL statement with varying bind variable values on the partitioning key elements needs to be executed repeatedly, partition-aware optimisation can dynamically adjust the set of partitions that need to be considered, optimising still further. Importantly, the Oracle partitioning methods are very flexible so Quallaby has been able to fine-tune the database to its own needs. For example, Oracle supports a choice of range, hash, and composite-partitioning methods for specific control over the physical placement of data, by defining a partitioning key whose value is used to route rows to particular partitions. The range partitioning method is particularly useful for grouping related ranges of data together – important for Quallaby as we will explain shortly - and allowing those logically defined partitions to be managed as a unit of a larger table or index.� These logically defined ranges can map directly to relevant business units such as business periods, regions, departments, companies, or customers. Hash partitioning can be used to spread data evenly among partitions, helping to provide many of the benefits of partitioning, without having to establish partitioning ranges. Composite partitioning combines the control of range partitioning, for logically controlling data placement, with the flexibility of hash partitioning, for spreading data among partitions. The reason why Oracle maps so well onto PROVISO V2 is because of the importance of grouping within the product. Pretty well any and every element within PROVISO can be grouped – and even grouped within groups in a nested fashion – so that a seemingly impossible situation where millions of objects need to be managed, becomes easily manageable by dealing with a relatively small number of grouped items So one of DataMart's most powerful capabilities is the ability to support and manage groups based on user-defined criteria such as customer, device vendor, Class of Service, link type or site. Other important features include an automatic inventory for resource definition, a resource manager for data repository synchronisation & verification and a metric workbench for generating formulas for SNMP data as well as a number of other data management tools. Of these the key factor is that DataMart provides ongoing synchronisation with the other management system components so the inventory is always correct and up to date. The inventory options – in line with the discovery process – are very flexible and make use of the grouping concept so that any SNMP attribute can become a property on which a group is formed. Equally any SNMP object can become a sub-element of any other object. Likewise, the collect policy management options are very flexible for ongoing SNMP data collection. Polling can be differentiated by target group, formula, calendar data or specified polling period. If grouping is used then, where sub elements have been defined, this further controls data collection since only those effectively requested sub-elements will be polled from the master devices. DataView is the “public” side of PROVISO, a report generation module that provides the kind of statistical proof both SPs and their customers are looking for to quantify network and service performance respectively. If you are the service provider you need evidence to show your network performed according to any SLA. As the customer you need to see validation of the SPs claims.
The number one requirement for Quallaby was to differentiate itself from the common performance monitoring and reporting tool method of effectively offering a limited menu of fixed, batch delivered reports. Instead the company wanted to be able to offer totally customisable, real-time reports, or “reports on demand” to use Quallaby-speak. So for the reporting side of PROVISO, Quallaby needed both flexibility and scalability – not an easy combination to uncover. Here the key was to base the reporting on a dedicated and distributed applications server engine architecture, feeding HTML based reports – with Corba, XML and Java support - via a portal style, web-based delivery mechanism. In this way the required – and incredibly high – level of performance for offering a reports on demand service could be achieved. And while there is only one actual set of network performance data, the way this information can be presented makes it appear different to each type of customer, so the flexibility target was attained also. As such, Quallaby identified three basic targets for reports and introduced three levels of reports that encompass the relationship between service providers and their constituencies: customer-facing reports, network operations centre reports, and business development reports, which together create a complete picture of service level management. What Quallaby calls customer-facing reports are external reports for the customer on the overall state of the network and the Quality of Service (QoS) required to be conformed to as part of the SLA. As such they are a verification of the level of service stipulated in the agreement. Network operations centre reports, in contrast, are internal reports for service provider personnel to identify the operational characteristics of the network infrastructure. As such they act as a benchmark for service level monitoring and show whether service providers are meeting their service level goals or not which, as we’ve already identified, is crucial for customer confidence to be maintained. While these report formats are aimed at technical staff, the business development reports are intended for management level consumption. They show a “top-down” view of network performance, providing information on how network services might be best utilised at any given time. The primary aim here is to allow specific services to be targeted more precisely and thereby the figures act as a sales tool as well as a status check. Each of these three reporting types may require different data sources, metrics, format, content, and delivery mechanisms. But gathering the data is just the first step. It is the ability to then harness that data and transform it into usable information for the kind of “three-dimensional view” of the system that impresses with the DataView architecture. From an SPs viewpoint it is also the best methodology to enable a truly differentiated level of service to be seen. One major benefit of basing DataView on a dedicated applications server technology is that reliability and resilience can be in-built. PROVISO V2 supports multiple DataView servers so that load-balancing and fail-over support can be enabled. This improves both performance and availability, as well as overall scalability. From a security standpoint, authentication and authorisation – Verisign’s Digital Certification Authorisation is directly supported – are both available and now integrated with the industry-standard LDAP directory services. Theory is all well and good – and the theory behind PROVISO V2 is very good indeed – but just how well does the product work in the real world? To find out we made use of Quallaby’s in-house test lab facilities. The company has spent in the region of $3m kitting out a facility designed to model large service provider customer networks. At the heart of the labs is an EMC Symmetrix Enterprise Storage system holding around 2 Terabytes of data so we are talking about the ability to benchmark very large performance numbers indeed and a scalable network inventory of hundreds of thousands of resources. The aim is to enable Quallaby to get a grip on real customer issues such as data behaviour and latency/bottleneck problems that arise in a “real” growing network. In this way they can therefore pass on real advice to the NSP community. And from speaking with a number of service providers recently, we at NSS can vouch for their cries for help. The storage subsystem is front-ended by 12 Sun Enterprise 4500 servers which were configured in PROVISO V2 as follows:
Sat on the hardware were two Oracle database servers with support from Precise SQL tuning software, with a gigabit link through a Layer-3 Ethernet switch. Additionally there were terminal servers from Xyplex, plus a Suntape library with 11 racks of tape space currently holding four terabytes of data. This is the test configuration that has produced the performance figures quoted earlier in the report, but to reiterate, these are currently:
We know of no other performance monitoring and reporting software capable of equalling these figures currently. And bear in mind that these are set to increase five-fold with the next release of PROVISO in the near future. We also wanted to focus on the usability aspects of the system. Management is via the UNIX CLI – with a very extensive command set – or from a GUI-based PROVISO Manager on the UNIX workstation. The former is extremely powerful and – again in The NSS Group’s experience – the favourite of the systems engineer, regardless of the product. However, for day to day administration of PROVISO through the DataMart module, the GUI-based manager is a viable alternative. This gives you a number of tab options – Configuration, Metric, Resource, Monitor and Data Manager – the five key aspects of DataMart in other words.
Underneath each of these are a number of options that vary accordingly, depending on the function being managed. For example, under Configuration, the range of options might include functions such as Import-Export, User Configuration, Threshold Configuration and Calendar Configuration. Clicking on any of these takes you to the next level screen for specific details on that function. The interface supports the common mouse operations such as click, double-click and drag and drop, as well as typical drop-down menu options so anyone familiar with a UNIX, Windows or MAC GUI should have no problems operating the manager. One visual option you have within PROVISO is to create “dashboards”. These are real-time graphic displays on one or multiple formulas or MIB objects across any number of hosts. For any given object you can define a threshold limit, a title and comments to explain what the dashboard is indicating. In this way it is possible to create an environment that allows less-technical administrative staff to have an interface into PROVISO and thereby spread the human workload. DataView is managed from the applications server itself, again GUI based, but with a different looking interface. The primary tasks here initially are setting up users, groups, security and access rights. The interface works in a tree type format (a la MS Internet Explorer) so any element on the left can be expanded to create a tree with sub-branches beneath.
The reports themselves can be created from scratch or taken from PROVISO’s optional Application Pack reporter sets. Application Packs provide service-ready content reports including pre-defined style sheet sets, indicators, and default values for reported elements. The aim here is not simply to provide an off-the-shelf reports menu but also a means of giving effectively a report template that can then be easily and quickly edited, rather than creating a report from scratch.
Editing of reports is again via a UNIX GUI interface where anything from what elements make up the report to what formulas are used to create the end figures can be created and changed. Since delivery of reports is via a web portal, from a user perspective, reports are simply another web browser application. The reports have a simple menu format with available options on the left. These vary according to the access rights set, so that one set of reports will be available for SP staff only and another set for their customers – on a customer by customer basis – so that every report viewer effectively gets a customised interface. On the right is the report display area. This might be a table or a graph. Where tables show any kind of thresholds being exceeded, those cells are highlighted in red for immediate investigation by the user.
Summary and Pricing Information Quallaby prices PROVISO V2 on a “per CPU” basis, starting at $70,000 for a 4-CPU server license. Extra CPUs are then charged at $35,000 each. However, in reality a contract with Quallaby will most likely include extras from software add-ons such as the report Application Packs to external consultancy and perhaps even some specific development work. Given the nature of Quallaby’s target market – the NSPs – however, price is likely to be very much secondary to what benefits PROVISO V2 is likely to give that service provider. And the answer here is “many and varied”. More specifically, with every service provider desperate to be able to offer true high-value services to their corporate customers or even lower-tier SPs, any tools that help enable that to happen will – we suggest – be considered like gold dust in the mid 19th century. PROVISO V2 really has been designed to scale to support extremely large, global networks. And it really does have a very flexible reporting infrastructure. Overall – whether from an administrative or end-user perspective – PROVISO V2 is a well-organised package where most of the undue complexity has been removed. Considering the underlying complexity, this is no mean feat. If you’re an NSP we suggest that you cannot afford to ignore what Quallaby has to offer here. PROVISO V2 is already impressive but a quick look at the product roadmap shows that it’s going to get even better and in the very near future at that. So ignore it at your potential (huge) cost. Don’t say you weren’t warned… We therefore have no hesitation in awarding PROVISO V2 our NSS Approved award. With the promised performance improvements expected to be delivered in the next version, we expect to be able to give it the Gold next time around. Quallaby
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Germany GmbH Appendix B: The real E-business and e-commerce Opportunities The “E” era is well and truly with us and – despite some spectacular .com failures recently – will be around for a long, long time yet. It can be argued that global, high-bandwidth connections will offer great opportunities in e-commerce and e-business, largely limited only by an individual’s imagination and the inability to create a genuine business plan. The argument equally follows that voice and video will finally have real alternative media to operate on. So, on the back of the growth of the Internet, we have e-business and e-commerce. But is this just more hype or is there real substance and business opportunity here? Consider first that many felt exactly the same way about the Internet itself until recently and the personal computer before that. Even the telephone took the best part of a hundred years to become widely accepted. But imagine if you’d been the one to think of direct, telephone-based sales in the ‘50’s or ‘60’s in the US when suddenly it became more than just a device for speaking with friends and relatives. That there are similar opportunities now in the e-world is very clear. But how, exactly, to go about taking advantage of this situation is less so. Not least is the issue of what is the difference between e-business and e-commerce and which is applicable to yourself and your company. Then there’s the prickly subject of investment costs and – the bottom line – how do you actually increase profit through this investment and what kind of timescales dictate the return? If e-business is defined as inter-company business carried out across the Internet, then e-commerce, within the same breadth of definition, is transactional business, often an individual making some kind of personal transaction across the Internet. Classic examples are home banking, online travel reservation, or buying products, such as books and CDs, online. In all cases, e-commerce is effectively the communication between a users’ PC or Mac and the remote Host computer, which is replacing either a telephone call or the trip down to the shop, bank or office, which would have been necessary before. Obviously, this concept applies equally to a staff member working on behalf of their company as to a home user ordering the latest “Best Seller” from an online bookstore. In this sense, many e-commerce applications can be seen as absolute replacements for their “manual” equivalents.� So in some cases, from a business perspective, it could be argued that e-commerce does not actually generate more revenue than a traditional commerce approach would, but simply the same level of income via an alternative way of customer interaction. However, there are two very important reasons why this should not be the case. The first is that the Internet provides a means of acquiring a completely new customer base, in addition to existing customers who transact in the traditional manner. While there is a percentage of PC-literate customers who will simply change their transaction method from, say, phone-based, to PC via the Internet, there are many more Internet users – millions - who are potential new customers. Moreover, the non-computer literate customers aren’t simply going to disappear so long as an adequate service still exists to cater for their needs, so effectively you are creating a new stream of income. But even where expansion of the customer-base is not seen as critical, e-commerce can improve bottom line profit by reducing operating costs, often substantially. This is the second, and most important, reason for looking at e-commerce. Offices, warehousing, staffing levels and any other fixed operating cost can all be potentially reduced by putting at least part of a business operation online. A recent study from Giga Information Group in the US suggested that the cost savings globally through business use of e-commerce will rise from what was $17billion in 1998 to $1.25trillion in 2002. As a very interesting comparison, business-to-consumer e-commerce trade over the same period is set to rise from $8billion to $108billion, so it is clear where the primary objectives of e-commerce lie in the short-term at least. But this may be for the wrong reasons – the negative attitude towards e-commerce and the obsession with its failures to date. Another argument is that, under the influence of e-commerce, services will actually become more important than that products themselves as organisations will collaborate as and when needed to provide one-stop shopping points. A commonly used example is the airline business where you will soon be able to not only book a ticket online but, at the same time, be offered a choice of hotel rooms, car rental options or other onward travel options and travel insurance, for example. Not that – using this example – an airline will need own a hotel chain or a car fleet; it will simply act as middle-man to integrate all these “product” options under one service, earning commission from the respective hotel chains, car rental companies and transport companies. What this means in practice is that the opportunities presented by e-commerce and e-business are not restricted to what one company alone can offer but are truly powerful when you consider how effective the bundling of services and products might be. In turn, this dictates the need for a truly global, high-speed network, which brings us neatly back to our starting point – the wonderful new world of near unlimited global bandwidth being touted by all and sundry currently. However, the answer lies not in purely adding ever-faster components, but in adding some intelligence to the network in the form of network management to control those components. Such is the belief – and role – of Quallaby in this new order and we believe the company has the products in place to help make high-bandwidth global networking a reality.
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