The new CTO at mobile network capacity and resource management software provider Vasona Networks is Rui Frazao, who previously was director of network engineering for Vodafone. While at Vodafone, his responsibilities included overseeing network engineering efforts in central Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
"Rui brings an operator's perspective on how Vasona Networks' solutions deploy in the network, and has unique understanding about the rise of virtualization in environments operating at large and growing scale," said Biren Sood, CEO of Vasona Networks, in a statement. "Rui's experience, expertise and visionary track record are vital as our rollouts expand and our work proceeds with customers on realizing the future of mobile network architectures."
Originally from Portugal, Frazao started in the local organization there and went on to work at Vodafone Germany. His experience spans wireless, DSL and cable, where a lot of consolidation has been taking place.
Frazao told FierceWirelessTech that the industry in general has been addressing the carrier market with the same type of technology approach for the last 10 or 15 years, and he wants to be part of changing that. There's a need to consolidate infrastructure to make it more efficient and deliver faster, positive impacts for the customers of those services.
There's also a push from the carrier side to deploy more open source software and he was part of the development of network functions virtualization while at Vodafone. Open source tries to ensure there is a certain level of openness in the market that doesn't lock operators in with a limited number of vendors.
Vasona has an interesting product, particularly where it sits in the network architecture, which is quite new and unique, Frazao said. Until now, things have been pretty much siloed in terms of what is core, what is transmission, what is transport. This actually has been a challenge because each of the elements takes care of the function it is performing, but when you look from an end-to-end perspective at what's happening to end-user traffic or user experience, there's a lack of technology or infrastructure to give visibility to the carrier on what's happening and how to react.
One of the challenges that carriers face is in managing their networks involves all the layers that have been added over the years, starting with 2G, then 3G and 4G, as well as circuit-switched voice and packet-switched voice. It's challenging to manage the infrastructure primarily based on strategies that were formed around managing voice, he added. Operators are looking for ways to simplify the infrastructure and new technology that can remove complexity and bring more automated functions.
Among his accomplishments, Frazao was responsible for overseeing the launch of Europe's first full-production, virtualized network core, and he led the deployment of VoLTE across Vodafone Germany. Prior to Vodafone, he worked at Cisco, among others. He replaces former CTO Nery Strasman.
Vasona, a Fierce 15 2013 winner, has deployed its technology with Cellcom in the U.S., and it has commercial deployments in Latin America, with pilots in Europe and Asia. The company plans to be at Mobile World Congress in February.
For more:
- see this release
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