Network planners are tasked with answering a broad spectrum of questions about their network, from the technical to the commercial, and the immediate to the long-term. Getting the right answer is time-consuming or, frequently, impossible with existing data sources and tools.

Engineers, network planners and managers all ask the same questions of their network:

• Will my network infrastructure be able to support a large service order, or the next 12 months forecast service uptake?
• Can I justify the cost of expanding my network?
• Are there more cost-effective options using alternative equipment or technologies?

As organisations move to next generation networks these questions become harder to answer. The introduction of new, flexible technologies like Ethernet, IP and MPLS afford users more choice, but necessitate more analysis and decision making. Today there may be a variety of ways to economically deliver a service to the customer.

Aria Networks Capacity Planner is the only OSS product able to model multi-technology networks, service policies, cost models and market-driven traffic forecasts to produce plans for optimised service design and profitable network upgrades.

Complimenting Aria Networks’ iVNT products, Capacity Planner builds on service planning capabilities to include comprehensive insight in to the impact of service demand growth on assets deployed in the network. With Capacity Planner communication service providers are able to see how planned services consume resources such as bandwidth, devices, cards, and ports, and generate optimal bill-of-materials for just-in-time network upgrades.

New features of Capacity Planner 1.1 make it quicker and easier to use throughout the service providers planning, operations, strategy and product management teams:

• A simple to use Excel interface for importing off-line network data, proposed network topologies, and forecast service demands
• New reports that provide common bill-of-material data on network resource requirements
• Configurable user interface menus that allow your automation, analytics and scripts to be executed as easily as core functionality
• Deployment options now include quick installation on user workstations for individuals or small teams, as well as maintaining support for shared server-based IT resources

Planning processes that previously took hundreds of staff several months to complete can now be automated and completed in a matter of hours.

Capacity Planner enables capital expenditure to be more precisely allocated, with cost-optimal answers resulting in significantly less need to build in contingent capacity.