BroadForward joins the Network Intelligence Alliance

April 27, 2012 - PRLog -- Policy Control Conference 2012, Amsterdam, The Netherlands – BroadForward, the first independent software vendor specialized in enabling fast and seamless integration and connectivity of Broadband, Policy Control, Charging and IT systems, today announced that it has become a member of the Network Intelligence Alliance (NI Alliance), an industry organization created for collaboration among the Network Economy’s technology providers. Participation in the NI Alliance will help BroadForward to build and market innovative solutions for customers seeking to improve integration and connectivity of Broadband systems.

In today’s Network Economy - a world that now depends and runs on networks - accurate visibility and precise tracking of data crossing networks have become crucial to the availability, performance and security of applications and services. The growing complexity of IP transactions, the explosion of mobile applications, and the mainstream adoption of cloud computing surpass the capabilities of conventional tools to improve how networks operate, expand services, and cope with cybersecurity. Just like Business Intelligence solutions emerged to unlock information hidden in the enterprise, Network Intelligence technology is an emerging category of technology to reveal the critical details of the data locked inside network traffic and transactions.

The NI Alliance serves two purposes: first, as a forum for collaboration among technology providers whose solutions secure data in transit, ensure efficient data delivery, monetize data transactions or track real-time information. Through the NI Alliance, members can better serve their customers.

The NI Alliance also seeks to educate the market and the public on the role and value of Network Intelligence in protecting sensitive information; delivering value-added services, applications and information; and ensuring better performance of network-dependent solutions.

BroadForward supports Network Intelligence product vendors with a specialized software toolkit for advanced integration of their products with any Mobile Broadband, Policy Control, Charging or IT system. Using the BFX Broadband Policy Gateway offers them significant reduction of deployment project cost and lead-times, by reducing customization efforts.

“We are excited to be part of the NI Alliance, and to have the opportunity to work closely with other members,” said Taco Schoute, CEO of BroadForward. “Enormous progress will be achieved if Network Intelligence member products have the ability to easily connect and interface to any type of system in the data and control plane. Vendors providing mobile broadband products and services to operators will need to be able to ensure their products are capable and ready to work with both state-of-the-art and legacy systems around them. This way the use cases operators desperately require can be enabled much faster and more effectively. BroadForward’s on-board software enables them to do this without having to delay crucial roadmap commitments caused by customer-specific integration and development work.”

Through its BFX product line, BroadForward supports Mobile Operators, Product Vendors and System Integrators in solving their integration challenges and advancing their competitive offerings. The BFX Broadband Policy Gateway enables connections to and from virtually any Broadband, Policy, Charging or IT interface, straight out-of-the-box. BFX features a rich set of translation, mediation and service logic functions for a wide range of protocols, such as Diameter, XML/HTTP, SOAP, LDAP and Radius. BFX is an extremely flexible, high performance Broadband Policy Gateway that can run standalone or seamlessly embedded in the majority of new and legacy systems to deploy any Policy, Charging or IT interface with minimal effort.

“BroadForward is a valuable addition to the NI Alliance and we welcome their participation,” said Erik Larsson, Chairman of the NI Alliance. “Companies joining the alliance such as BroadForward play a leadership role in their respective areas of expertise that will enable organizations to most effectively apply Network Intelligence to better manage, protect and profit from their data networks.”

Establishment of the NI Alliance was initiated by Qosmos, whose Network Intelligence technology components provide the crucial first step in understanding what’s passing through networks. Qosmos’ hardware and software components extract and interpret real-time traffic, translating a data stream’s 1s and 0s into their respective communications protocols, metadata and content for use by third-party applications.

Through the NI Alliance, Qosmos expands its collaborative approach to help vendors design and deliver advanced solutions with embedded Network Intelligence technology in less time and at lower cost. The NI Alliance provides a channel for dialogue and partnerships that Alliance Members otherwise may not have considered or pursued when addressing the needs of joint customers. Visibility within the vendor community through the NI Alliance affords companies opportunities to market more comprehensive solutions with greater ROI and faster time to value for customers.

About the NI Alliance
The NI Alliance is an industry organization created for collaboration among the Network Economy’s technology providers and to educate the market on the role and value of Network Intelligence technology. Members are vendors involved in the capture, processing, decoding, analysis, and leveraging of network data; suppliers of Network Intelligence technology components; software vendors; and information providers of solutions, such as cybersecurity, telecom service assurance, traffic optimization and more. Participation in the NI Alliance helps members to build and market innovative solutions to Communications Service Providers (CSPs) governments and enterprise customers seeking to improve performance, security and the monetization of network-dependent services and applications. For more information, please visit www.nialliance.org

About BroadForward
BroadForward is the first independent international software company specialized in integration of Broadband, Policy Control, Charging and IT systems. Through its BFX product line, BroadForward supports Mobile Operators, Product Vendors and System Integrators in solving their integration challenges and advancing their competitive offerings.
BroadForward was founded by an internationally recognized team of mobile telecoms experts with a track record in building carrier-grade, revenue generating products and services for global mobile operators. R&D at BroadForward is 100% focused on improvement of connectivity and enrichment of broadband systems. BroadForward’s software development is done entirely in The Netherlands.
For more information, please visit www.broadforward.com or follow us on Twitter: @broadforward.

BroadForward Media Contact   
Taco Schoute, BroadForward
Phone: +31 85 489 5 689 / Email: info@broadforward.com

NI Alliance Media Contact
Debby Stefaniak, Full Circle Communications
Phone: +1.215.712.2409 / Email: dstefaniak@fullcirclecomm.com