Frost & Sullivan, a globally recognized research and consulting firm, has picked Empirix as the 2019 Best Practice Award for Global Network Test and Monitoring Product Line Strategy Leadership. Empirix was chosen, in part, for its dedication to providing value and quality experience to our customers.
“Achieving excellence in product line strategy is never an easy task, and it is made even more difficult considering today’s competitive intensity, customer volatility, and economic uncertainty – not to mention the difficulty of innovating in an environment of escalating challenges to intellectual property,” Frost & Sullivan Chairman David Frigstad wrote in the congratulations letter. “In this context, you receipt of this award signifies an even greater accomplishment.”
In choosing Empirix, Frost & Sullivan acknowledged industry challenges that call for a “more pervasive monitoring solution that is predominantly software and applicable across heterogeneous multi-vendor environments.” They also noted that next generation solutions should be highly compatible with alternative network inspection solutions, offer passive and active testing, and feature network automation.
Frost & Sullivan’s criteria:
Brand equity
Empirix was born out of Hammer Technologies, which was founded in 1992 as a testing solutions provider for the telecommunications industry. Since being spun off as Empirix in 2001, we’ve increased our network performance and monitoring capabilities and acquired OneSight, Mutina, and Verios in 2002, 2010, and 2014, respectively. Empirix was acquired in 2013 by Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm with several other network testing companies under its umbrella.
“Today, Empirix offers a comprehensive service assurance solution backed by active and passive monitoring and testing, wrapped up with powerful machine learning and AI capabilities via the Hammer, Diagnostix, and Holistix platforms for an NFV-based environment,” Frost & Sullivan said. “Clients appreciate this breadth of coverage.”
The firm also noted that Empirix has a broad client base exceeding 500 from industries including insurance, banking/financial, and utilities. Empirix serves its global customer base via offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, and India.
Breadth
Empirix delivers end-to-end testing and validation solutions via two delivery models that span all phases of the delivery lifecycle:
- Cloud-based: Implementations such as Hammer On-Demand and Hammer On-Call provide self-service and fully managed service functionality for quality assurance (QA), feature/regression testing, performance/stress testing and ongoing, periodic operational testing so DevOps teams can automate CX testing via a single source solution.
- On-premise: Hammer leverages the same technology to test voice applications such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR), voicemail, and conference bridge. The product line uses Hammer CallMaster as a model-based automated script generation tool, providing easy test case creation and scenario design with little or no coding required.
“To address probing across a virtualized network environment, Empirix engineered Empirix virtual Agent (EvA), a key component of the virtual Empirix System Architecture (vESA),” they wrote. “EvA proved useful for monitoring multi-vendor scenarios.”
Features
Empirix solutions are designed for deployment in the cloud, on site or hybrid. The platforms also integrate with third-party information sources within the virtualized network infrastructure. Frost & Sullivan described Empirix as a”mediation platform” because by combining the deep dive analysis of an operation support system (OSS) and the customer experience monitoring capabilities probes offer.
“When pitting Empirix against its top competitors, Frost & Sullivan finds this mediation platform feature is its key differentiator,” they wrote. “Ultimately, Frost & Sullivan’s industry benchmarking analysis ranks Empirix among the very few companies that has developed such cutting-edge active and passive network monitoring test capabilities.”
Scalability
Lack of scalability is a common pain point network operators face, which has led many of them to prefer cloud-based solutions. However, there’s a void for suitable monitoring solutions that Empirix fills. In recent years, Empirix has strengthened its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings with the launch of Hammer Cloud Platform (HCP).
“In addition to the Hammer Cloud Platform, Empirix offers a cloud-native, probe-free monitoring solution for enterprise and service providers to troubleshoot their physical, hybrid or virtual network infrastructure,” they wrote. “Frost & Sullivan notes that this is an important advancement given that the cloud contains a significant amount of virtualized elements, is multi-vendor, and with the deployment of 5G, moves at a really fast pace.”
Customer service
Frost & Sullivan called Empirix “well reputed across the world” for its dedication to customer service. Flexible, technology-specific programs available in-person and online help customers maximize their ROI.
“The quality of customer services offered by Empirix to its end users is not limited to the Hammer platform, but is ubiquitous across its complete range of products and solutions,” they wrote.
Award abstract
Who is Frost & Sullivan?
Frost & Sullivan is a leading 58-year-old market research and consulting firm that tracks multiple industries including automotive, healthcare, information and communication technology, and more. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Frost & Sullivan employs 1,800 analysts and has offices in over 40 countries.
What are the Best Practice Awards?
The Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards have recognized exemplary achievements within a multitude of industries and functional disciplines for the last 19 years. Frost & Sullivan conducts best practices research to properly identify unmatched innovation and leadership among companies, products, processes, and executives.
Receiving the Frost & Sullivan Product Line Strategy Leadership Award is a compelling third-party validation of a company’s growth strategy and execution. Empirix’s Best Practices Award is a strong indicator to employees, investors, customers, and the public that Empirix has superior product line strategy in the passive and active network test and monitoring market.
Why Empirix?
As the modern network evolves to accommodate faster deployments, operators struggle with inadequate visibility when monitoring heterogeneous network infrastructure. Frost & Sullivan has singled out Empirix as an exemplary participant in this regard, since it has understood customer requirements and formulated a solution to address each pain point.
Empirix solutions, whose functionalities are driven by their Hammer, Diagnostix and Holistix products, offer some unique competencies including a powerful mediation platform capable of ingesting advanced data sets from third party sources and cloud-native, probe-free monitoring to troubleshoot physical, hybrid or virtual network infrastructures of all sizes. Empirix empowers its end users with more powerful network test and monitoring capabilities as they steadily migrate to the cloud. With their impressive experience in the market, and growth strategies, Frost & Sullivan is proud to bestow the 2019 Global Passive and Active Network Test and Monitoring Product Line Strategy Leadership Award to Empirix.
What is product line strategy leadership?
The award recognizes the extent to which the product line meets customer base demands, and the overall impact it has in terms of customer value and increased market share. Best-in-class companies drive demand, brand strength, and competitive differentiation while also developing unique value for customers with superior and comprehensive product lines.
Significance of the award
To receive the Frost & Sullivan Product Line Strategy Leadership Award, an organization must strive to be best-in-class in three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the brand, and differentiating from the competition.
Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from a company and then making the decision to return. A comprehensive product line that addresses numerous customer needs and preferences is a critical ingredient to any company’s long-term retention efforts.
The 360-degree research approach
Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research methodology represents the analytical rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all seven of Frost & Sullivan’s research methodologies. Too often companies make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission.
Successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the 360-degree research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry players and for identifying those performing at best-in-class levels.
