NetCracker and NEC Hit Half-Billion Subscriber Mark in Scalability Testing

Industry Milestone Set for Scalability and Performance of Turnkey TOMS Solutions

WALTHAM, MA — June 29, 2010 — NetCracker Technology and NEC Corporation are announcing the successful completion of their joint SVT (Stress and Volume Testing) project. The project involved stress and volume testing of NetCracker software on NEC equipment for the world’s mega-carriers.

The project marks another milestone in the process of building and integrating the highest levels of seamless interoperability between NetCracker’s software and solutions and NEC’s Network and IT platforms.

The SVT project was conceived to address the needs of mega-carriers who are racing past the 100 million subscriber mark and need to start preparing for the next level of growth. In view of their requests, NetCracker and NEC designed the three-month, intensive testing program using the following extreme parameters:

• 30,000 concurrent provisioners, across multiple technology, network, and service domains, orchestrating complex orders and tasks for fulfillment and service assurance. This was to simulate the provisioning and management of complex services and applications on a massive scale expected by the largest NetCracker customers in 2–3 years. Special emphasis was placed on ensuring a high proportion of provisioner functions/tasks, as opposed to generic user tasks and CSR tasks which are far less complex and impose much smaller loads on the system.
• Use of a single, modular Xeon-based platform with Linux OS to ensure that, while there would be very large transaction volumes, the cost of the solution remains low through the use of open, non-proprietary platforms.
• Unique approach that allows high transactional volumes and huge, interconnected dataset analytics to scale seamlessly and linearly in a single, clustered system, as opposed to an approach that utilizes two completely separate environments with higher maintenance costs and the inevitable integration tax.
• Use of existing, installed software from two diverse customer production implementations as opposed to lab-optimized software and configurations in order to enable the validation of real-life scenarios.

The tests were run concurrently (mixed mode), executing all scenarios end-to-end, with a steady load during the measurement cycle. Both Multiprocessor (MP) and Real Application Cluster (RAC) were used for the database server configurations.

For NetCracker and NEC customers, the results validate the ability of NetCracker’s innovative Telecom Operations and Management Systems (TOMS) software and NEC’s high-performance hardware to meet the fulfillment and provisioning needs of service providers with projections of over half a billion subscribers. For service providers that have presence in multiple countries or are incumbents in countries with very large subscriber bases, the test results enable them to confidently scale their customers and operations without a corresponding increase in cost.

The program also reached a key milestone in testing the performance of NetCracker software on NEC equipment (Scalable HA Server NEC Express5800/A1160, Blade Server NEC Express5800/B120a, and NEC D3-10 Storage) and achieved the NEC Equipment certification. This underscores NetCracker and NEC’s commitment to integrating their platforms and offering end-to-end solutions.

“The success and results of the joint NetCracker–NEC testing project mark a key milestone in delivering best-in-class scalability, cost-effectiveness, and pre-integrated turnkey solutions to both our customer bases,” said Dr. Michael Feinberg, CTO, NetCracker Technology. “We look forward to delivering continued innovation and value to the industry in the future via similar joint efforts.”

About NetCracker Technology

NetCracker Technology, a subsidiary of NEC Corporation, is the leading provider of Telecom Operations and Management Systems to Communications Service Providers worldwide. www.NetCracker.com.

NetCracker is a registered trademark of NetCracker Technology Corp. All other company or product names mentioned in this media alert may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is one of the world's leading providers of Internet, broadband network and enterprise business solutions dedicated to meeting the specialized needs of a diversified global base of customers. NEC delivers tailored solutions in the key fields of computer, networking and electron devices, by integrating its technical strengths in IT and Networks, and by providing advanced semiconductor solutions through NEC Electronics Corporation. The NEC Group employs more than 140,000 people worldwide. For additional information, please visit the NEC website at: http://www.nec.com.