Nokia to acquire telecom analytics provider Deepfield

nokia-at-mwc-2016Nokia today announced its deal to acquire Deepfield, a provider of big data and analytics SaaS for network performance management and security.

Founded in 2011 with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the privately held Deepfield employs approximately 65 people. Craig Labovitz is the founder and CEO of Deepfield.

Deepfield provides integrated cloud, application and IP network insight in real time to enterprise and telecom customers to improve network performance, efficiency and security.

Deepfield’s Internet Genome technology solves the visibility problem by identifying over 30,000 cloud applications and services. The technology tracks traffic that runs to and through networks to reach subscribers, in real time, without the need for expensive probes, taps and monitors in the network itself.
Deepfield analytics technologyDeepfield in January 2016 announced a year of growth highlighted by contracts to multiple large content providers, carriers and more than 85 percent of U.S. cable operators.

Deepfield has more than tripled revenue and doubled in size in 2015. Moreover, strong demand for Deepfield’s Operational Intelligence platform positions the company to continue this strong growth rate and adoption in 2016.

Deepfield is seeing strong interest in its solutions for network performance and DDOS offerings for service providers and enterprises. Deepfield solutions replace legacy proprietary hardware-based solutions that are slow and expensive to deploy.

Why Nokia acquired Deepfield

The technology of Deepfield drives and guides SDN controllers to make automated changes to networks to adapt to changes in application demand, flow and traffic patterns.

Espoo, Finland-based Nokia said the acquisition will extend Nokia’s leadership in real-time, analytics-driven network and service automation.

Telecom service providers, cable operators and cloud, webscale and large technology companies wil benefit from the deal.

Though cloud applications and services – including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Google Docs and Facebook – make up more than 60 percent of network traffic, providers have limited insight into which applications are running on their networks, and what impact this application traffic is having on their networks and subscribers.

Network and service automation require big data analytics in real time in the wake of the emergence of SDN and NFV technologies.

Nokia plans to solve the network and service automation problem by adding Deepfield big data analytics with the dynamic control capabilities of open SDN platforms, such as the Nokia Network Services Platform (NSP) and Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP).

Nokia’s service assurance and customer experience management portfolios will leverage Deepfield’s big data analytics, including per subscriber application performance, to automate actions that ensure service health and mobile customer satisfaction.

“Combining Deepfield’s analytics with Software Defined Networking techniques (SDN) will allow our customers to automate engineering and assurance processes while enhancing performance, utilization and security,” said Basil Alwan, president of Nokia’s IP/Optical Networks business group.