Procera Networks - Policy Enforcement in Motion

Cloud Operator Challenges

Cloud Operators are becoming more critical to the success of businesses and integral to the day-to-day activities of consumers. Global businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on the cloud for their data and for for services including sales force automation, logistics, and even collaborative work through Google Docs. Consumers are becoming more cloud aware and are using services such as iCloud, online storage and backup, and even social networking. Cloud operators need to ensure that they can deliver high quality service levels to their hosted customers (and their customer’s customer), provide guidance on how and for what their bandwidth is being used, and in doing so, enable creative business models. Detailed analytics expose how their service is being used highlighting potential bottlenecks, security threats, new opportunities based on application trends, and therefore the ability to grow their business based on the usage profiles of their customers. Cloud operators span from incumbent operators, datacenter providers, and even Amazon and Google.

Cloud Operator Requirements

Service levels are critical to success. Cloud Operators need to deliver a highly available and accurately billed service to their cloud based customers. Operators need detailed analytics on the services that they are delivering to their cloud customers and the ability to provide accurate accounting for traffic including detailed documentation for billing disputes. Operators should also be able to provide their customers with detailed reports on how their services are being used by consumers, and deliver these reports regularly to their customers. Operators want to be able to associate traffic with specific “subscribers”. For each subscriber, SLAs must be delivered and documented. Subscribers expect a Quality of Experience to be delivered at the content and application level as specified in their SLA. Bandwidth usage for cloud services needs to be managed ‘clinically’, which includes the ability to manage and mitigate security threats in real-time.

PacketLogic Cloud Solutions

IPE deployments for cloud services are focused on enforcing the policies and commitments defined in the customer SLAs and secondly, on measuring bandwidth usage for billing purposes. The “subscribers” that the PSM follows are a combination of cloud content owners and end-users; each with their own SLA. The data center operator can now ensure that each type of customer receives the agreed level of service, including detailed billing records to manage and report on SLA performance. Packetlogic Report Studio provides each customer with detailed reports covering the applications being used to access their hosting service, the traffic load and peak values, as well as the delivered QoE. Report Studio is used to generate customer specific reports to assist in resolving a range of disputes including billing disputes. Effective resolution protects revenue.

Detailed analytics provide the operator with the ability to better manage bandwidth, provide superior SLA’s and to create new and innovative business models that are geared specifically towards the user and their usage/ application trends. The analytics also provide a solid foundation upon which to make investment decisions necessary to support a rapidly growing customer and usage base.

Cloud Operator Use Cases:

• Business and Network Analytics: Detailed analytics on network consumption based on cloud customers and consumers, and based on applications, devices, location, and other metrics used to create new business plans and charging models.
• Usage Management: Management of cloud services based on volume of traffic for each cloud service as well as consumption by consumers accessing the cloud service.
• Intelligent Charging: Usage-based billing, zero rating or tiered charging based on time-of-day, cloud service accessed, or content.
• Traffic Steering: Subscriber and application-aware steering of traffic to other cloud services or security solutions for value-added services and 3rd party content/service providers.
• Threat Management: Integration with threat management systems for granular data feeds, mitigation, and audit purposes.

PacketLogic Benefits for Cloud Operators:

• Scalability up to 100s of Gbps capacity and millions of consumers, allowing cloud operators to evolve and grow their cloud services.
• Real-Time operational visibility on the network, users, applications, and content.
• Detailed analytics through PacketLogic Intelligence Center and Report Studio for usage and charging purposes.
• Fine-grained policies for cloud service, consumer, and content control through the PacketLogic Real-Time Enforcement
• Simplified charging and service creation through Virtual Service and the PSM