The test and measurement gear business is getting increasingly competitive as operators see network, device and even app reliability as essential to their success and demand more complicated, integrated solutions. Two items of news this week highlight the challenges as well as the opportunities inherent in the mobile broadband test systems market.
After reportedly failing to make revenue targets, Spirent Communications this week announced that CEO Bill Burns is stepping down from his post immediately and will be temporarily replaced by the company's CFO Eric Hutchinson. Burns had been with the company for five years.
Panmure Gordon analyst George O' Connor told Reuters that Spirent should consider Sue Swenson for the CEO slot. She is an independent non-executive director on Spirent's board and also serves on the board of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
Meanwhile, test and measurement gear maker Azimuth Systems unveiled an integrated automation and analytics toolset designed for LTE device profiling and benchmarking in the lab and the field. The company said its products provide end-to-end testing and analysis of mobile performance, starting with user experience at the application level and moving through to network conditions.
Device Automation & Control (DAC) is a software product designed to enable unattended execution of user experience testing and logging on smartphones and other mobile devices. DAC integrates with Azimuth's new Diagnostics & Analytics (DnA) software, which analyzes and correlates metrics from the user experience to device performance and network conditions, including access, connectivity, mobility and PHY/MAC.
The toolkit also enables sharing of reports and supporting logs between lab and field teams, and between operators, manufacturers and their partners.
For more:
- see this Spirent release
- see this Reuters article
- see this Azimuth release
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