Arris has bulked up its video-on-demand play, while slimming down its DOCSIS 3.0 cable-modem headend gear for smaller systems.
The company introduced a range of products across its broadband, VOD and access-and-transport units, tying them together under a new marketing slogan, “Convergence Enabled.” According to Arris, the tagline is to connote the vendor’s ability to deliver voice, video and data all the way to an end user.
“Driving convergence above all things is the insatiable demand for bandwidth,” said Stan Brovont, Arris’s global vice president of marketing and business development.
The company detailed the C4c CMTS, a slimmed-down version of the Arris C4 DOCSIS platform — it’s roughly half the size and capacity. The C4c CMTS (the little “c” stands for “compact”) provides 16 to 80 downstream channels and 12 to 60 upstream channels in a 7-rack-unit chassis.
The sweet spot for the C4c is “probably in areas where there are eight downstreams today and they need to upgrade to 32 downstreams,” said Derek Elder, senior vice president of product strategy of Arris’s broad-band communication-systems unit.
On the VOD front, Arris launched ConvergeMedia, a group of media application and distribution platforms, the first major overhaul of the video-on-demand lineup since Arris acquired C-COR more than a year ago.
The applications are in three categories: VOD management, which provides session and edge-resource management and hierarchical content popularity profiles; ad-decision management for VOD ad insertion; and related tools for guide support and personalization.
In addition, Arris unveiled two VOD servers: the XMS, designed for the centralized hosting of large amounts of video; and the MDX, designed to provide high streams-to-storage ratio.
The MDX was developed by Verivue, a startup that has received funding from Arris, Comcast and four venture-capital firms.
The Arris-developed XMS, which provides up to 96 Terabytes of storage capacity, is able to use a combination of disk or solid-state storage, according to the company.
In the network-management space, Arris announced ServAssure Advanced, an application that applies network and service-assurance knowledge to DOCSIS 3.0 data to deliver service quality and maintain the efficient use of network resources.
Bryant Isaacs, the president of Arris media communication systems, confirmed that Comcast is using ServAssure Advanced as part of its broad DOCSIS 3.0 rollout.
'Convergence’ Mix
Arris’s new products include:
