April 10, 2013

With Vasona racking up $22 million in its first 22 months, it's clear the mobile video optimization space is one to keep an eye on.

The reasons why are equally as clear. The influx of mobile data, dominated by video, has caught the mobile operators off guard. While in the past, technology has been their savior -- faster networks begat faster Intel -- video has turned this equation on its head. Now, technology isn't growing as fast as consumer demand.

What's more, everyone is mobile. More →

April 9, 2013

In a general sense Vasona Networks plays in the content optimization space. But, it doesn't do what one normally thinks about when it comes to content optimization. Vasona doesn't do content transcoding, transrating, or compression. Instead the vendor does traffic management at the network edge. To be specific the company really sees itself as being in the edge application controller business. The vendor sells a software solution to mobile operators called SmartAIR1000 that can be installed on off-the-self computer hardware and is placed between the access and the core network. The SmartAIR1000 makes decisions on how to send traffic across the RAN to ensure end-user quality of experience based on data it takes from the network control plane, content awareness, and information on the current congestion level of the base station. More →

Mar 28, 2013

March 21, 2013

Start-up Vasona Networks fits firmly in one of the most important current trends in mobile net-work planning, moving processing and intelligence to the cell edge to ease congestion in the core and backhaul.

The firm has raised a further $12m in venture capital to develop its SmartAIR1000 platform and fund carrier trials. This is categorized as an “edge application controller”, which sits between the RAN and the core and manages radio sessions at the cell site. It also increases carriers’ visibility into what is happening in their network, in real time, and right down to individual user or small cell behavior.

The firm has raised a further $12m in venture capital to develop its SmartAIR1000 platform and fund carrier trials. This is categorized as an “edge application controller”, which sits between the RAN and the core and manages radio sessions at the cell site. It also increases carriers’ visibility into what is happening in their network, in real time, and right down to individual user or small cell behavior. More →

March 20, 2013

Vasona Networks Inc., a developer of platforms for mobile network capacity and resource management, has closed a recent $12 million Series B round, bringing its total funding to $22 million. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with participation by New Venture Partners. Vasona Networks is based in Santa Clara, California, with research and development offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. More →

March 19, 2013

Vasona Networks Inc. has raised $12 million in Series B funding to help wireless phone companies manage traffic jams on their cellular towers.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has built appliances that can see the applications that are running through an individual cell tower and manage the traffic to maximize the bandwidth.

Carriers are employing many different tactics and types of equipment to address the same problem, but none at the edge of the network, where Vasona's software is deployed, said Bob Goodman, a managing director with Bessemer Venture Partners , which led this round. "At this point carrier networks are so congested they usually deploy multiple solutions."

New Venture Partners, which, like Bessemer, participated in Vasona's $10 million Series A in May 2011, participated in this round.

Despite the pains that mobile carriers are having keeping up with demand for bandwidth amid the growth of smartphones and tablet computers, venture capitalists are funding fewer networking companies.

Venture investments in U.S.-based communications and networking companies have hovered around $1.5 billion annually, down from about $2.75 billion each year before the 2008 financial crisis, according to VentureSource, a research arm owned by Dow Jones & Co ., publisher of this newsletter.

The problem of helping carriers make the most out of their last mile is one that this team has tackled before. With backgrounds at networking companies BigBand Networks Inc . and Divicom Inc ., Vasona's team has experience helping cable, satellite and other video providers get more video across their networks.

At those companies they not only learned the techniques that are helping solve this problem, but also that this problem isn't going away anytime soon.

"In all examples, you expand the pipes and consumers find new ways to use the bits," said Biren Sood, Vasona's chief executive. "Whatever it is, whether 3G, 4G or 5G, this problem is not going away."

Vasona Networks , which was founded in 2010, has its software in trials and deployments at multiple carriers.

The proceeds of the round will be used to expand its support capabilities as more trials convert to deployments, Mr. Sood said. More →

March 19, 2013

"A lot of carriers have very little visibility into what's happening in their network in real-time," Sood told Light Reading Mobile recently.

The technology aims to reduce congestion by giving different types of data transmissions different bit-rates. For instance, video needs a consistent bit-rate to avoid jumpiness where other applications that update in the background may not; so it's pointless to give those connections more juice than they need. More →

March 19, 2013

Vasona's edge platform works with mobile traffic across all applications, at granularity of every cell in a network. It assesses and acts on congestion based on exactly where it is occurring and what is causing it. Bandwidth is allocated to each application in real time for the best overall subscriber experiences.

The venture capital financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation by New Venture Partners and a strategic investor, all of them participants in the company's Series A round. More →

March 18, 2013

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Vasona Networks was founded in 2010, but it only came out of stealth mode in January. The company’s focus is on developing devices and software that enables mobile network operators (like AT&T and Verizon Wireless) to fine-tune all the traffic happening on their networks, down to each cell.

The company’s recently introduced SmartAir1000 edge application controller allocates bandwidth on mobile networks based on where it needs to go. More →

March 18, 2013

Vasona Networks disclosed that it has raised $22 million in Series A and B fundings to help further its efforts to ease mobile network congestion.

The latest funding for the Santa Clara company led by CEO Biren Sood was reported by the Business Journal, based on a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. More →

March 10, 2013

Vasona is leveraging its position as software in the network to deliver IP video and data at the appropriate time and bit rate over a given cell.

What makes us particularly excited about this category? Carriers can test software solutions on their network at a low upfront cost and see proven results in a short time before committing to a more substantial order. More →

February 24, 2013

“We started out when smartphones were first beginning to grow and the tablet hadn’t been invented yet,” says Vasona’s CEO and founder Biren Sood. “But it was obvious that the mobile network was going to see a lot of growth.”

To illustrate their solution, Vasona’s founders compare the cellular network to a chaotic highway where all kinds of vehicles – cars, trucks, buses, scooters and ambulances – drive erratically, causing accidents.

“We don’t add bytes. We don’t add capacity,” says Nery Strasman, Vasona’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “Instead, we make them smarter. You can prevent an accident if you add new lanes or manage existing lanes more wisely.” More →

February 15, 2013

Vasona Networks went out of stealth mode recently, announcing its SmartAIR1000 system. To learn more on the company's offering, I met Biren Sood, CEO and Nery Strasman, CTO, in their R&D center in Tel Aviv.

"We both came from making the cable networks better," says Biren, "we want to do the same to mobile networks."

Vasona claims it has founded a new category of products, with the ability to manage mobile traffic at the cell level with application-aware traffic management. More →

February 14, 2013

The holistic view of traffic is fundamental to modern network planning. That is a theme taken up by Biren Sood, CEO of Vasona Networks, which has unveiled the SmartAir 1000 edge application controller, to address network congestion. He said in an interview with FierceWireless: "It's all about the cell. You have to manage the cell holistically. You have to understand the various users on the cell and the applications they're consuming and then you have to manage all of the that to get the cell to perform to the best of its ability.” He added: "Traffic is impacting all parts of the network. The idea of focusing on the cell, which is a very expensive part of the network, and being able to use that more efficiently, that's what this new product category is all about.”

The company, founded in 2010, recently emerged from stealth mode with various operator trials under its belt. It claims a new level of precision in the way it tunes traffic on a cell-by-cell basis rather than prioritizing packets from the core, or by following users around and controlling their traffic regardless of network conditions at the time. Vasona‟s system sits between the RAN and core and monitors the congestion level of each cell as well as the inbound and outbound traffic streams to those cells. When one looks set to get too full, Vasona‟s tools start to adjust the traffic flow, perhaps by prioritizing video streaming over downloads, or culling extraneous information from a video. More →

February 12, 2013

Goodman likens Vasona’s software to a traffic cop managing the flows of traffic across a network. “It is aware of what is happening at the radio edge in real-time…but it is aware also of what is happening in the content. Is it a web session, is it a video session, is it some software being downloaded in the background? It can make real-time decisions about how to manage the resource and how to prioritise the resource,” Goodman says.

Field tests of Vasona’s solution have shown a “tremendous uplift in bandwidth utilization, particularly at the peak time,” according to Goodman. More →

February 7, 2013

Traffic is impacting all parts of the network. The idea of focusing on the cell, which is a very expensive part of the network, and being able to use that more efficiently, that's what this new product category is all about," Sood said.

Rival traffic-shaping solutions that are deployed higher up in the network can manage individual sessions but lack visibility into what's happening on the cell, said Sood.

Using Vasona's platform, which sits between the radio access network and core network, operators can ensure bandwidth is allocated in real time based on the nature of each application and type of media. More →

February 6, 2013

February 6, 2013

Application controllers like SmartAIR1000 locate the bottlenecks and the types of apps and what they are doing. A person sending texts would not get as much bandwidth as a person streaming video.

Current platforms do not have the ability to make these distinctions and adjust resource allocation accordingly.

The benefits to mobile operators are significant. By efficiently using existing resources, there is less pressure to do costly upgrades. Improved efficiency leads to better network performance and less customer turnover. Carriers can open up more revenue-generating services with some of the bandwidth freed up. More →

January 22, 2013

Vasona Networks is using traffic-shaping techniques to help operators optimize networks by the cell, enabling them to address specific target areas impacted by traffic congestion.

The startup--which has offices in Santa Clara, Calif., and Tel Aviv, Israel--just emerged from stealth mode. However, Vasona has already attracted $9.8 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and New Venture Partners. More →

January 21, 2013

“We understand the nature of the cell, and we understand the capacity of the cell,” Sood said. “With that understanding we can get the right bits to the right applications in the most efficient way.”

Vasona’s kit sits in between the radio and core networks where it monitors the congestion level of its associated cells as well as all of the inbound and outbound traffic streams to those cells. If a cell starts getting crowded, Vasona will start tinkering with mix of traffic going to that cell, for instance prioritizing streaming bits over a file download or tossing out extraneous information in a video, Sood said. Once the congestion in a particular clears, Vasona’s tinker stops, Sood said. More →

December 21, 2012

As for Vasona Networks, it also can see what's happening in the network and make changes in the way video gets downloaded--in essence smoothing out the video so it doesn't freeze up when someone tries to watch it.

"At the same time it uses much less bandwidth and allows all the data traffic to flow at the same time," Goodman says. "So they're kind of like a very sophisticated traffic cop who makes sure that all the cars are flowing through the intersection as fast as they possibly can." More →

March 19, 2013 :

Vasona Networks venture capital financing reaches $22 Million

Company closes series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from other existing investors, including New Venture Partners

Vasona Networks, Inc.®, a provider of platforms for mobile network capacity and resource management, today announces total funds raised of $22 million, including a recent $12 million Series B round. The venture capital financing was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation by New Venture Partners and a strategic investor, all of them participants in the company’s Series A round.

The newest financing follows Vasona Networks’ success bringing to market its pioneering SmartAIR1000™ edge application controller, which is in deployments by mobile network operators around the world. The company will use the proceeds to accelerate its growth and expand field operations, while continuing investment in its research and development activities.

“During the last few years, Vasona Networks has rapidly defined, developed and validated its platform, establishing a new category of solution for pressing mobile operator needs,” says Bob Goodman, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and member of Vasona Networks’ board of directors. “This new financing positions the company to fulfill and build on the strong demand it’s experiencing.”

Founded in 2010, Vasona Networks recognized that bringing together certain mobile, media and IP networking technologies could address the deluge of growing application usage that mobile operators face today. Vasona Networks’ resulting flagship SmartAIR1000 edge application controller works with mobile traffic across all applications, at granularity of every cell in a network. It assesses and acts on congestion based on exactly where it is occurring and what is causing it. Bandwidth is allocated to each application in real time for the best overall subscriber experiences. This solution empowers mobile operators to more effectively use resources as they face expensive and complex upgrades to add network capacity.

“Vasona Networks is succeeding across our operations including multidisciplinary engineering, launching the first edge application controller, deployments with top global operators, and substantial support from our venture investors,” said Biren Sood, CEO, Vasona Networks. “Our funding validates Vasona Networks’ leadership positioning, with participation including Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the most venerable venture capital firms, and New Venture Partners, a sophisticated investor in communications infrastructure markets.”

About Vasona Networks

Founded in 2010, Vasona Networks, Inc.® works with global mobile network operators to deliver better subscriber experiences. The company’s pioneering edge application controller, the SmartAIR1000™, takes a holistic approach to addressing mobile network data traffic congestion that occurs in each cell, monitoring every application demanding bandwidth. With this visibility, Vasona Networks’ RateControl™ technology allocates bandwidth by precise determination of user needs and experiences. The company has received investments from Bessemer Venture Partners and New Venture Partners. Vasona Networks is based in Santa Clara, California, with research and development offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, visit www.vasonanetworks.com.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

With $4.0 billion under management, Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) is a global venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass., New York, Mumbai, Bangalore and Herzliya, Israel. BVP delivers a broad platform in venture capital spanning industries, geographies, and stages of company growth. From Staples to Skype, VeriSign to Yelp, LinkedIn to Pinterest, BVP has helped incubate and support companies that have anchored significant shifts in the economy. BVP also led the Series A financings of Broadsoft, Intucell and Flarion. More than 100 BVP-funded companies have gone public on exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia. See www.bvp.com or follow BVP on Twitter: @bessemervp

February 6, 2013 :

Vasona Networks introduces SmartAIR1000 for mobile operators to manage individual cell congestion and improve subscriber experiences

Industry’s first edge application controller works at cell level and at application network layer to manage all bandwidth, including streaming media, web browsing and downloads

Santa Clara, Calif., February 6, 2013 – Vasona Networks, Inc.®, a provider of platforms for mobile network capacity and resource management, today announces the SmartAIR1000™ edge application controller to address cellular bandwidth congestion. The platform works with traffic across all applications, at granularity of every cell in a network. It assesses and acts on congestion based on exactly where it is occurring and what is causing it. Bandwidth is allocated to each application in real time for the best overall subscriber experiences. This solution empowers mobile operators to more effectively use resources as they face expensive and complex upgrades to add network capacity.

As subscribers use more devices and bigger screens to consume media, worldwide mobile traffic is skyrocketing. Operators have invested in raw capacity upgrades and network tools to meet this demand but struggle to gain control at a key trouble point — the cell. The SmartAIR1000 addresses this frequent bottleneck with a comprehensive approach that determines each cell’s current capacity and characteristics of each of its concurrent sessions, whether streaming audio and video, web browsing, file downloads, or others. The platform can then ensure that all available bandwidth is allocated according to the nature of each application and media-type. This capability is not possible with single-purpose solutions that only address one type of data or media, or solutions that lack perspective on which sessions are causing problems and where those problems are occurring.

“Mobile networks can be unruly because traffic has no regard for other traffic — selfishly contending for as much resource and capacity as it can get,” says Biren Sood, CEO of Vasona Networks. “Vasona Networks is working closely with mobile operators on establishing the SmartAIR platform to overcome bandwidth contention problems and enhance subscriber experiences.”

Always Watching, Acting Just As Congestion Occurs

The SmartAIR1000 is compatible with 3G and 4G networks, including cdma2000, UMTS/HSPA and LTE. Inserting transparently between the radio access network (RAN) and the core network, the platform employs a variety of techniques that span mobile network mapping, high-speed packet processing, and Vasona Networks’ RateControl™ technology. This results in unprecedented comprehension of what media and data are being delivered by what applications in which particular cells. The SmartAIR1000 monitors fluctuating cell capacity and session loads, intelligently assigning bandwidth to each application just before congestion impacts subscriber experiences. It is a standards-based edge application controller that can work in conjunction with other network tools commonly deployed by mobile operators, including policy servers, video optimizers, caching solutions and deep packet inspectors.

“By intelligently and flexibly managing traffic at the level of the cell within each RAN, solutions such as the edge application controller provide mobile operators with the vital functionality they need to assure the best subscriber experiences,” says Monica Paolini, president of mobile technology and services analyst firm Senza Fili Consulting. “This value will further increase as mobile service usage continues explosive growth.”
Vasona Networks will demonstrate the SmartAIR1000 at Mobile World Congress in Hall 2, Stand 2D50 of Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, February 25-28. For more information, visit www.vasonanetworks.com.

About Vasona Networks

Founded in 2010, Vasona Networks, Inc.® works with global mobile network operators to deliver better subscriber experiences. The company’s pioneering edge application controller, the SmartAIR1000™, takes a holistic approach to addressing mobile network data traffic congestion that occurs in each cell, monitoring every application demanding bandwidth. With this visibility, Vasona Networks’ RateControl™ technology allocates bandwidth by precise determination of user needs and experiences. The company has received investments from Bessemer Venture Partners and New Venture Partners. Vasona Networks is based in Santa Clara, California, with research and development offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, visit www.vasonanetworks.com.