Saisei

Network service providers and enterprises continue to face increasing capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure (opex) burdens amid growing requirements for high-speed broadband services. By eliminating the reliance on expensive proprietary hardware platforms, network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) promise to reduce capex along with opex due to a reduction in physical space, labor, and power consumption. Saisei, a California-based software company, is revolutionizing network analysis while addressing the challenges of real-time visibility, analytics, and control over networks. Saisei’s cutting-edge network performance algorithms and software-based solutions help accelerate revenue growth and ensure a great user experience.

Saisei’s “FlowCommand” family of Network Performance Enforcement (NPE) software assists organizations in migrating critical infrastructure to the cloud through a “hand holding” 3-step approach that includes Saisei Network Assessment for full visibility and analytics of network readiness and capacity planning; Saisei Network SLA for smooth deployment; and Saisei Network Optimization to maximize link utilization and user experience through NPE. “Network managers can improve customer experience through our next-generation traffic management and fair-sharing capabilities, while reducing capex and opex,” explains Julia Sartini, COO, Saisei.

Designed for the traffic demands of mobile, cloud, and IoT, FlowCommand supports up to 1 billion external hosts per instance and is compatible with virtual, legacy, SDN, and NFV networks. Typically, FlowCommand is either configured as a virtual machine with two network interfaces monitoring and controlling flows coming in and out of a vSwitch or will be placed as an edge appliance running on commodity hardware on the LAN/data center side of an edge router. The ability to control a traffic flow based on application, geolocation, group, user, and host metrics facilitates incredibly granular control and visibility of traffic over leased lines provided by service providers.

Network managers can improve customer experience through our next-generation traffic management and fair-sharing capabilities, while reducing capex and opex

Furthermore, FlowCommand maintains a comprehensive visual history of flow behavior over these links, ensuring detailed records of service-level agreement compliance.

“Saisei’s NPE solutions feature a powerful and flexible RESTful API for easy integration with third-party systems as well as graphical user and command line interfaces,” states Sartini. It provides the ability to prioritize certain application traffic, block or limit traffic to a foreign country or a questionable website, and set up complex subscriber policies for multiple service tiers. The single system of real-time insights paired with unprecedented security, bandwidth, and business policy enforcement can scale to the largest networks. Saisei’s real-time flow tracking, analysis, and correlation capabilities enhance existing network security solutions, and can replace some existing security functions such as firewalls. FlowCommand uses unique flow correlation algorithms to detect a variety of network-based threats and attacks. Its powerful alarm and reporting mechanisms can mitigate attacks in the network or data center by notifying network operations personnel.

Sartini shares a client engagement where Saisei collaborated with Sunway Digital Wave (SDW), a network infrastructure and internet managed services provider. SDW needed to provide consistently reliable and high-quality applications performance and internet access to more than 30,000 users. While in the process of building an SDN to support business expansion to new regions and accommodate new users, SDW’s network planners and operations staff needed targeted real-time analysis of traffic and bandwidth usage. After deploying Saisei FlowCommand, SDW optimized bandwidth utilization by more than 30 percent, resulting in cost savings of more than $80,000 and delayed capex on upgrades for more than six months. Focusing on customer requirements, Saisei continues to develop new features for proactive network management and is currently developing self-healing networks that leverage FlowCommand.