Meet Infovista – The leader in modern network performance for 5G and SD-WAN

When it comes to 5G, subscribers and industry 4.0 need the same thing: seamless connectivity for every device, in every location, no matter what. And top providers around the world are making it a priority to figure out how to build that reliability into complex environments like large campuses and airports.

That’s exactly why Infovista and iBwave have collaborated to deliver a unified solution for indoor and outdoor-friendly network design.

Drawing on over thirty years of combined experience, iBwave and Infovista are the perfect partners to develop a network design application that can handle both indoor and surrounding outdoor areas without the need to switch software.

We’ve also teamed up to share some of our industry insights with our audiences through guest articles on the iBwave and Infovista blogs.

To kick it off, our Infovista team wanted to give the iBwave audience a look at who we are and what we do.

Who are we?

Infovista is a French company that was founded in 1995 and has regional headquarters in Paris, Dubai and Ashburn, VA.

For more than two decades, we have been the leaders in modern network performance with more than 1,500 enterprises and service providers around the world relying on our solutions to deliver perfect user experiences.

Today, our major focus is bringing innovations to our customers for 5G and SD-WAN. We are proud to be supporting major 5G trials with Tier 1 mobile operators around the world, and we recently became one of the first three technology vendors to be MEF 3.0 SD-WAN certified.

Managing the performance of modern networks and vital applications becomes more complex every day. We build solutions to give businesses and service providers complete visibility and total control to deliver brilliant user experiences.

Infovista for 5G

The possibilities with 5G are endless, and we’re proud to be a leader in helping customers around the world accelerate and perfect their 5G rollouts.

In 2019, our planning and testing experts spent the year supporting 5G trials across the globe. That means we have first-hand insights into the key challenges around 5G network deployments and how to solve them.

Here are three of our latest webinars to get you up to speed:

For key takeaways from 5G trials in 2019, watch 5G from Theory to Practice – Lessons learned from the first 5G deployments

To see our newest solutions for delivering connectivity to the connected car, watch Managing Connectivity Uncertainty for the Connected Car

And to learn about accelerating 5G deployments with automation, see How to use Analytics and Automation for Better, Faster 5G Planning and Deployment

Or check out our global 5G deployment tracker to see why we are the leading planning and testing vendor in the 5G market with more than 150+ customers in 51 countries (including 60% of the top 20 Mobile Operators).

What do we do?

In today’s hyper digital world, a great product isn’t enough to keep customers. Every business hinges on delivering perfect digital experiences to their users.

That’s why we build solutions to simplify and optimize the networks those digital experiences rely on.

These are our key solutions:

Our integrated 5G portfolio that covers the entire network lifecycle from planning to optimization and testing. (Get started with our complete planning and optimization portfolio: Planet, Ellipse, Geodata, VistaNEO)

VistaInsight is our multi-vendor multi-domain service assurance solution that supports digital transformation by simplifying hybrid NFV network operations, assuring performance for the SD-WAN edge and supporting enterprise SLAs.

Ipanema SD-WAN is the only SD-WAN with application intelligence that can transform unpredictable networks into great user experiences.

Want to learn more about us?

Head over to our blog to see the latest news and articles from our experts in the field, and check out our other guest article on the iBwave blog.

Or browse our resource library to get access to over 160 free webinars, eBooks and whitepapers on 5G and digital transformation.

And that is a quick overview on Infovista. Thanks to iBwave for giving us the airtime and check out our website to learn more.

Three Reasons to Unify Indoor and Outdoor Wireless Network Design

This is a guest blog by David Nathan from the Infovista team. Find out how iBwave and Infovista are teaming up to deliver a unified solution for indoor and outdoor-friendly wireless network design.

If you’re part of a mobile network technical team, get ready for unified indoor and outdoor network design. Ready or not, it’s coming, and it’s going to mean big changes for how operators build and deploy their networks.

Poor in-building performance has been a notorious challenge for cellular networks and one of the biggest hurdles to broad adoption in enterprise architectures. In the early days of cellular data, operators could argue that indoor coverage wasn’t really part of their mandate—it’s “mobile” coverage, after all. So, apart from major venues like stadiums and convention centers, operators focused their network design effort on providing reliable, high-performance connectivity for users on the go.

5G is about to change all that. All of a sudden, seamless indoor/outdoor wireless experiences are no longer a nice-to-have bonus. They’re a core requirement. Why does 5G make it essential to unify indoor and outdoor wireless network design? Here are the top three reasons.

1. Because 5G use cases demand it.

Unlike previous cellular data services, 5G will soon empower operators to segment their networks into different “slices” tuned to specific use cases. Operators and possibly neutral host players will offer packages of network resources for things like massive Internet of Things (IoT) installations, smart factories, and private networks. These slices will guarantee specified capacity, reliability, and latency under a service-level agreement (SLA).

Network slices represent one of the most promising new ways for operators to monetize their 5G networks. But many network slicing use cases function indoors, or in venues with mixed in-building and outdoor coverage requirements. If operators are going to guarantee specially tuned network slices under SLAs—and rely on those higher revenues to fund 5G network upgrades—seamless indoor/outdoor wireless connectivity becomes absolutely essential. That only happens when wireless networks are designed for it from the outset.

2. Because keeping them separate is inefficient.

Today, the few options available for dedicated in-building cellular coverage exist in a separate world from the rest of operator networks. Furthermore, design teams and solutions to plan and deploy in-buildings networks are generally sitting in separated organizations with their own design processes. When indoor coverage was viewed as a limited special case for a handful of venues, that made sense. But, if revenues and customer satisfaction will increasingly depend on use cases that demand seamless indoor/outdoor connectivity, that model just won’t work.

No operator wants to invest in building up a separate organization—with separate network design, separate tools, separate testing and deployment—for in-building services that make up an ever-larger part of their business. That much duplication is just too expensive and inefficient. Even worse: if you’re relying on separate organizations and design processes, you can expect much longer timelines for 5G network rollouts.

Furthermore, adopting a unified approach for the design of wireless networks unleashes new capabilities which were not accessible before, such as an accurate understanding of the indoor coverage subscribers will access from the outdoor network. Streamlining the design methodologies and tools enables significant cost reduction by eliminating expensive in-building site walk (OPEX) and helps to maximize the radio network return of investment.

3. Because it will be a key competitive differentiator.

Cellular data services might have meant “outdoors and on the go” in the early years. Today, that approach no longer aligns with how people actually use mobile devices. According to ABI Research, more than 80 percent of all data traffic is consumed indoors. And, as 5G spurs new enterprise use cases like massive IoT deployments and smart factories, that number will grow.

It all comes down to Business 101. If an operator can’t deliver high-performing in-building service and seamless connectivity, their customers will look to a competitor who can. This makes in-building coverage one of the most important opportunities for operators to differentiate their 5G services. Those that can unify indoor and outdoor network designs soonest will capture the lions’ share of new enterprise business as well as justify a 5G price premium. They’ll be well-positioned to peel off competitors’ consumer subscribers too.

It’s Time for Unified Network Designs. Infovista and iBwave deliver.

5G brings all manner of new use cases and challenges where in-building and outdoor wireless networks must continually, reliably interact. It just doesn’t make sense to treat indoor and outdoor network designs separately anymore. It’s time for convergence.

That’s why Infovista and iBwave have announced a strategic collaboration to deliver a unified solution to bridge the gap between indoor and outdoor connectivity.

The unified offering from Infovista and iBwave will allow customers to design and deploy 5G wireless networks to complex indoor and outdoor campus environments faster, without separate survey and planning tools. Expanded design capabilities will also cut costs and reduce the risk of unclear timelines that are often an issue in large venue and campus design.

By unifying network design processes and planning solutions, network operators can maintain a holistic view of their networks, slices, and SLAs. They can reduce operational costs, get the best of their RAN investment and significantly reduce deployment timelines. And, they can capture the attention (and revenues) of a growing number of enterprise and consumer customers, by delivering a seamless indoor/outdoor experience that competitors can’t match.

For details on how Infovista helps network operators design and test 5G networks from planning and optimization to testing, see the Planet Planning Portfolio and Tems™ Mobile Network Testing.

To learn more about 5G design for a variety of use-cases, read about Beamforming, an innovative process for advanced network design.

Feature Spotlight: Beamforming in 5G Design

Have you downloaded the latest version of iBwave? In this article we’re going to put the spotlight on Beamforming in 5G design – one of the key new features in Release 13.

What is Beamforming?

In iBwave Release 13, users can configure multi-beam antennas to support beamforming for 5G NR. They can also add individual RF patterns to components, which can then be combined into a single pattern for prediction. Effectively, you’ll be able to trial and preview the effect of individual beam configurations while designing in-building 5G networks.

Beamforming will improve over time as OEMs add more components and beam configurations to the iBwave DB. Product managers are working closely with manufacturers to roll out new VEX files, and users can anticipate increased beamforming for 5G NR functionality in 2020 and beyond.

How does Beamforming work?

Engineers can now configure multi-beam antennas (including sub-panels) and multi-beam small cells in the database editor and apply them to design projects. The DB Editor now allows users to view and filter RF patterns for beamforming antennas and small cells by beam type and beam index.

Predictions are calculated according to the beam-type associated with the output map when including a beamforming component in a 5G NR design. For example, SSB beam types will use an SS-RSRP map.

When the user defines PDSCH beam types, iBwave uses these to calculate MADR values. Users should note that the composite power values listed on tooltips represent the maximum gain value of the combined beam pattern. In predictions, coverage maps create a combined beam pattern.

Enabling or disabling individual beams will automatically update the output map using Beamforming with 5G NR antennas.

Want to learn more about Beamforming and 5G design?

Download this 5G NR quick reference poster to easily see beam measurements and SSB patterns while designing 5G networks.

Go in-depth on Beamforming with 5G expert Ali Jemmali in our webinar all about the topic.

Find out how to future-proof 5G for in-building design and convergence in our recent blog post.