Case Study 1 - Multi Protocol Router (MPR)

Customer

• A major communication equipment manufacturer in the United States

• Recommend and develop the feature set for the customer’s routers to enable the customer to enter the emerging router segment as an extension of the customer’s WAN products and enterprise networking solution offerings.

• Conducting a market survey, identifying available routers and their features.
• Recommending the feature set for the customer’s routers
• Software development and porting of certain protocol source code baselines licensed from third-party vendors and us.
• Integration, performance engineering, interoperability with other market products and reliability engineering.
• Software developed for various versions of the router in terms of hardware interface. For instance, the Company developed a device with SNA connectivity options in the router.
• Customer simultaneously developed the router hardware based on Intel I960 processor and a VxWorks operating system.
• Router developed supported various LAN protocols, and WAN interfaces and was manageable through SNMP.

• Customer was able to enter the emerging router segment despite lack of prior in-house experience in the router segment.
• Several of these routers have been installed within the customer's existing client base, representing a substantial additional revenue source for the customer.
• The customer was able to cater to different segments of its client base using different versions of the router.

In 1995, the Tolly Group Industry Benchmark Report rated the product as "the best branch office solution for integrating SNA and IP traffic on networks that support mission critical applications", ahead of comparable products by other industry leaders.

Customer:

• A German network integrator involved in designing and installing narrowband and broadband networking solutions for customers in Europe and rest of the world

• A device with Multiple Protocol Switching capability, interfacing with networks and devices supporting a combination of X25, SDLC, PAD, etc.

• Licensing, porting and customization of the customer’s X25, SDLC products .
• Developing the remaining software to provide the required features.
• Tightly integrated development process, with several versions of the product built and released by the customer in Europe.
• Since there was no equivalent product available in the market, the customer developed the hardware and low-level kernel for the equipment.

• Customer was able to develop a feature rich product and release several versions of the product, representing a substantial additional revenue.
• Time –to-market advantage due to a tightly integrated development process.

Customer:

• A major communication equipment manufacturer in Europe

• Internet Protocol (IP) support in several of the customer’s existing and new telecommunications equipment.

• Aricent IP protocols suite were found appropriate for customer’s requirements.
• Customer licensed our IP products and also started a Dedicated Facility with us for the IP porting efforts.
• Development and porting efforts involved almost all the IP related products.
• Host of upgrades done as per the latest IETF standards.

• Fast mover advantage due to a readily available IP protocol suite.
• Cutting edge products due to protocols conforming to latest IETF standards.

Case Study 4 - XLC Support

Customer

The customer is Germany based ISDN backup systems company.

Requirement

Maintain a large baseline covering several Wide Area Network access products Large installed base in Europe

Solution Framework

• Off-shore engineering support

  • The relationship was later converted to a dedicated facility for offshore engineering support. There are 15-20 Nodes in the DF and support for controlware systems in terms of enhancement and maintenance efforts is being provided.

• Baseline control and Multiple General Access release management
  • Multiple baselines for all Controlware’s customers were controlled; for each customer patch, releases made and maintained; managed GA releases
• Feature additions Migration of OS from AMX to OSE Conversion of zApp based code to VC++ for the NMS solutions
• Customer Support
• First Level Support: A team of engineers was located onsite to provide first level support to end customers.
• Critical Site Support: Multiple team of engineers were sent onsite for integration & system testing.

• Reduced support management overhead
• Continued availability of aptly trained engineers
• Sustained ROI over 6 years

Case Study 5 - Current Engineering Centers

Customer

US based Software Solutions Provider, (initially a part of a global telcom major) is working in the fields of data warehousing and Unix based servers.

Requirement

• Current engineering support for multiple product families Network, Transport and Application layers of OSI stack. X.25, Net BIOS, X Windows X.400 messaging services, X.500 directory services.
• Need to move engineering focus to new generation products.

• Multi site development.
• First level of support in US facility and next level in Aricent.
• Migration to new hardware/OS versions.
• Direct releases to the supply chain management.
• Planned technology transfer to gain product knowledge.
• Team of tech-leads got the know-how from customer and started the DF Defined and monitored SLAs
• Prioritization of the customer reported problems and definition of turn-around time for the priorities established.
• Protocol current engineering center 15 communication products handled.
• Various X25 packages, OSI protocol based packages, Net BIOS and X-Windows packages.
• Messaging current engineering center.
• Two generations of messaging and directory products.
• Used third party supplied source baselines.
• Managed the change over to new generation products and also developed migration tools.

• Globalization of engineering. This was as part of the parent's strategy to globalize their engineering activities.
• Continued satisfaction of customers.
• The customer's clients saw a seamless transition from US based support to India based support.(In fact, most customers were not even aware of the changeover)
• Sustained ROI over 6 years

Case Study 6 - Protocol Integration Lab

Customer

US based Software Solutions Provider, (initially a part of a global telcom major) is working in the fields of data warehousing and Unix based servers.

Requirement

To test multiple releases of protocols on multiple platforms

Solution framework:

• System testing of all releases of protocols/ platforms/ interface boards.
• Feature integration testing
• Feature audit testing
• Put to use internally on customers facility before General Release.
• Remote test execution.
• Developed the test automation environment.

• Established additional validation facility for long-term use
• Reduced validation time leveraging time zone differences

Customer

Spin-off a global communications major based at USA and the relationship.

Requirement

• To simulate multiple network topologies
• To test a multi service platform in various topologies

• Simulation of multiple boards per node
• Entire System including the multi board distributed architecture was simulated.
• Tested the simulated network with traffic generated through the real interfaces.
• About 20 Nodes were simulated on OSE, pSOS Soft kernels on Solaris.
• Development of multi board multi node simulator
• Feature, reliability and stability testing
• Test automation
• Testing of dynamic routing and label switching

• Re-usable simulation environment
• Elimination of the need for physical equipment