Quallaby secures eight-figure performance management contract with BT

BT will implement a performance management solution across all of its lines of business in several countries. Lowell, Mass.-based Quallaby announced this week that BT will use its Proviso solution to consolidate and replace several existing systems.

The multi-million dollar project, part of BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) program, includes the consolidation of performance management systems for ATM, Frame Relay and IP services, including MPLS and VPN. Quallaby will handle performance monitoring for BT’s retail, wholesale and global services lines of business across the UK, France, Germany, Benelux and the Nordic countries.

Proviso, the company’s sole product, can collect performance data from various elements in the network and deliver reports in about five seconds. It then consolidates the data into a single data mart, which Mike Combs, product marketing director at Quallaby, said is the company’s competitive advantage.

"We’ve been focused since our inception on performance management for larger service provider deployments. And this is architected to collect data from as many as three million network sub-elements," Combs said.

The system will provide historical reports and real-time monitoring of key performance indicators. BT will incorporate the reports into its virtual business centre, which gives customers on-demand visibility into the quality of their services.

BT will decommission several systems. "The whole thing is about getting away from homegrown and heavily modified commercial systems and trying to streamline the OSS," Combs said.

The current project roadmap for this implementation runs through the second quarter of next year. Quallaby expects to complete the job in approximately 12 to 18 months. Combs said the eight-figure deal will include about 25% of revenue from services.

Quallaby will be replacing an InfoVista solution in the UK network for ATM, Frame relay and MPLS. Combs said the Proviso solution also will replace some Concord Communications implementations as well as internally developed solutions in the Nordic countries BT serves.

"As the economy got tighter, [our competitors] shifted toward the enterprise space to go after deals there," Combs said. "We stuck to our knitting and focused on building a scalable solution. I think this deal shows that our focus on this market paid off."