Guavus
Operations Analytics with Machine Intelligence

As sensors proliferate and IoT grows in importance, most vendors remain focused on the collection or visualization of data. But the business value resides not in the data itself, but the ability to understand the data. Guavus’ emphasis is on the delivery of actionable insights using machine intelligence. Having already built a proven and scalable platform for capturing large volumes of sensor data, Guavus applies a new breed of analytics to help solve problems that confound conventional technologies. The result is an intelligent offering with applications across a variety of industries.

Founder Anukool Lakhina based Guavus on security and network optimization research that he conducted for his Ph.D. dissertation. Guavus was working in the space even before “big data” became an industry trend, and remains a trendsetter today.

Guavus’ core product is an operations analytics platform, with a suite of machine intelligence algorithms that apply data analysis to deliver insights. The data inputs and outputs are tailored to specific industry requirements. Some APIs are generic, but often highly specific for industries such as telecommunications, banking, or airlines. Depending on client needs, Guavus adds specific downstream connectors and provides outputs to third-party applications.

One of the platform’s core functionality is compiling data and finding anomalous behavior. It then identifies the underlying root issue of any anomaly and responds appropriately, whether it means a device reset or the issuance of a consumer message. However, the platform can be far more proactive, determining the likelihood that an event will occur and passing relevant information downstream, such as the potential root cause of the event and the recommended remediation to the parties or devices that would be affected.

For example, one of Guavus’ customers needed to know whether a service problem arose from the physical network layer, the service delivery layer, or the field deployed device. Guavus correlated the interplay of those three layers of service delivery with service impact proxies.

We integrate into a client’s system to make their environment more proactive, intelligent, and customer-friendly

Using sensor indicators and machine intelligence, the platform identified the source of the issue, determined the potential impact, the customers who would be affected, and the potential fix to the problem. This resulted in a measurable service improvement, equating to tens of millions of dollars in savings.

Ease of deployment is central to Guavus’ value proposition. “We deploy in a very non-disruptive way,” explains Chris Menier, Guavus VP of Products & Marketing. “We integrate into a client’s system to make their environment more efficient, intelligent, and customer-friendly.” The result is a tailored solution with fast time-to-market. “We’re able to significantly accelerate a client’s IoT strategy because we have a very accessible and extensible platform prepackaged with a set of modular use cases.”

Security is always a significant concern, especially since IoT creates many more potential entry points. A large-scale increase in a class of routine events, such as those associated with a DDoS attack, is easy to spot. But Guavus’ highly granular detection capabilities can even identify small attacks on a single device or a group of devices, along with singular events that are so abnormal that they are almost certainly malicious.

Guavus plans to continue growing its customer base, including expansion into new verticals, and expand its geographic reach through both channel partners and direct sales. “We have an R&D focus, and our people are always looking for new algorithms, better insights, faster analysis,” says Menier. “We promote a constant evolutionary cycle.”