Today QOptics emerges from stealth mode, changing its name to Elematics and debuting its intelligent network control that is designed to make managing an Internet backbone easier.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [November 4, 2002]

Today QOptics changes its name to Elematics. If you've not heard of QOptics, don't be surprised. Since its founding in December 2000, the company has been in stealth mode, operating under our RADAR screens.

"We been actively working with our carrier customers," explains Clive Cook, CEO of Elematics, "but we've been shunning analysts and the press."

The company has been developing its multivendor network control system for carrier networks, dubbed Intelligent Network Control Plane (INCP). The product sits between the element management systems (EMS) developed by a variety of vendors and the network itself, and collects all of the network information into a single database (below).

"We built this to solve a problem common in carrier environments, especially those carriers that have grown through acquisition," says Cook.

Cook explained that each vendor has a domain on the network. Each vendor's network elements are controlled by a proprietary element management system. Vendors also use more than one Operations Support System (OSS). Says Cook, "our INCP mediates between the software OSS and the hardware elements and gives each OSS a view of the whole network, not just those hardware elements that the particular OSS is compatible with."

Building such a system requires close work both with the carrier customers and also with the network equipment vendors.

"It's easy to see who we have to work with among legacy equipment vendors," says Cook, "but, obviously, the next generation is tougher to pick. There are big companies but there are also many startups too, and it is too early to say who the leaders will be."

Elematics designs a software module for each network element. The software node is designed to gather information about that network element and send the information to an Elematics network controller. The network controller runs on a Sun Sparc workstation, on Sun's Solaris operating system.

"For example," says Cook, "a CO would have one workstation running a network controller, and each network element in the CO would have a software module."

The network controller reports back to the optional Control Planet Gateway (CPG) that is located in the carrier's network operations center (NOC). The CPG translates the information it has received into the proprietary formats of the carrier's various element management systems. It is essentially a database translation module, processing the network map it has received from network controllers situated throughout the network into any of several proprietary formats demanded by the carrier's various software systems.

Whether or not the carrier purchases the CPG database module, the idea is that an administrator at the NOC can view the entire network. But different billing systems installed at various times can still interact with the OSS systems that they have always used, and vendor-specific applications developed to interact with individual pieces of hardware can also still be used.

Cooks says that carriers know that the voice industry has standards and is fully interoperable, but bemoan the fact that the network core, which is mostly optical, uses equipment that is generally proprietary and not interoperable. He hopes that INCP will help make the network core as easy to manage and provision as the voice network.

This ease of management translates directly into return on investment (ROI). Says Cook "on a large network with 2,000 nodes and 50,000 ports, the initial investment would be about $30 million and the ROI over three years could be as high as $384 million, factoring in additional revenue from new services and faster provisioning times as well as reduced capital expenditures."

Other benefits include faster provisioning times, as much of a difference as two weeks versus two months. Says Cook, "our software gives network administrators a better picture of the network, allowing them to find unused or underutilized elements, which translates into savings on capital expenditure."

Service providers need to be large to benefit from the Elematics solution. Cook notes, "if you've got a single vendor network, that vendor's solution will address the problems we've depicted. If you're a Tier 1 carrier, you'll be interested in learning more about Elematics."

The INCP product is available today, and pricing was not disclosed.

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