Cariden Technologies, Inc. announced new products and services in its MATE(TM) portfolio designed to extract accurate business-relevant information more quickly and easily. MATE Collector's new Flow Interface provides the ability to collect and analyze NetFlow, S-Flow and J-Flow data to determine the cost of traffic flows and monitor their use of network resources. This includes being able to analyze peering traffic compliance to agreements and calculate bit-mile costs for that and other services, thus providing operations staff the ability to meet their obligations for transparency to the commercial side of their business. The new functionality also provides the most accurate way of collecting a traffic matrix for capacity planning, allowing even greater accuracy and lower cost of ownership at a time when efficiency of resource allocation is essential for business competitiveness. Cariden's approach differs from existing NetFlow collectors in three key ways: fully integrated with MATE, network planning and simulation tool, making data collection and analysis easy. Enhanced accuracy of the collected flow data is achieved by ensuring results match existing traffic counter data and adjusting the final matrix accordingly. Much higher scalability than existing solutions, being able to instrument an entire network at the fraction of the current cost. Cariden also announced additional features such as allowing for intuitive modeling of the impact to the network when peering connections change due to outages, as well as other new features for MATE Live, MATE Design and MATE Collector. The new version is Release 5.3 and all products are available now.

Network operators expect SDN technology to simplify their networks and make them more agile for the creation of high-value services. To meet these challenges, Cariden Technologies, Inc. announced a blueprint for a class of SDN solutions that will provide visibility and programmability for enterprise and service provider data centers and networks. Distinct classes of SDN have emerged based on use case and value proposition, and Cariden explains how to view them through their prisms of value: Flow Services SDN addresses the wealth of security and visibility applications that become possible with flow-level programmability; Virtualization SDN provides virtual network connectivity for efficiency and agility; Infrastructure SDN -- introduced by Cariden -- exposes network resources for continual optimization and predictable handling of diverse traffic demands. The platform requirements for an Infrastructure SDN can best be illustrated by two specific use cases: Bandwidth Calendaring and Demand Placement. Bandwidth Calendaring provides visibility and reservations of network resources across time; examples that leverage this include data center replication, video streaming and cloud services migration. Demand Placement informs applications of availability of network resources in different locations; relevant examples include content cache placement and network-aware DNS. Cariden's vision of abstracting and controlling physical resources through software -- realized in the creation of a Network Services OS (NS-OS) -- forms the core of an Infrastructure SDN solution. The NS-OS operates in three layers: Network Controllers layer that is the equivalent of device drivers in computer operating systems providing I/O and control to specific devices (an OpenFlow controller, if present, would be integrated at this layer); Network Model layer that provides an abstract view of network resources and reservations across time; Services Control layer that provides intelligence for controlling network paths, network admission and orchestration tasks.

Cariden Technologies, Inc. announced the availability of MATE Live, a solution that combines predictive network analytics with easy access to current and historical data for use in operational applications, such as health maintenance and congestion mitigation. MATE Live extends Cariden's MATE portfolio of products, which includes MATE Design for planning and traffic management, and MATE Collector for automated and continuous discovery of network data for maintaining the world's most complex networks. MATE Live builds upon MATE Collector's proven efficiency at discovering and assimilating critical network information. MATE Live also provides the following groups with additional cost-saving services: Planners-develops trending reports used by MATE Design for determining future needs, such as site-to-site traffic trends per class of service. Designers and Engineers-determines whether MPLS paths are routed optimally over time and which events cause them to reroute. Peering Coordinators-monitors priority peers and their growth, while verifying traffic is balanced. Business Managers-determines the impact of new services per market or per site. Along with MATE Live, Cariden announced-as of the 5.2 release of the MATE portfolio-new features for MATE Design and MATE Collector.