By Paul Wiener
Product Line Manager, Digital Systems, JDSU
What do JDSU and the Department of Defense (DOD) have in common? Both organizations are helping fight counterfeiting, protecting millions of electronic and mechanical parts that pass through the supply chain.
Today counterfeiting is a growing global issue that impacts manufacturers, businesses, and consumers alike. According to the International Association of Authentication, U.S. businesses lose $200-250 billion per year to counterfeiting and 750,000 jobs in the U.S. have been lost to counterfeiting. The reach of this crime is widespread affecting industries from consumer electronics to pharmaceuticals to music and airline and automotive parts.
Because of the impact of counterfeiting in the airline industry, the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the Levin-McCain amendment, was signed into law in January, 2012. It requires contractors to create programs that ensure traceability of all parts throughout the defense supply chain while also training their staff on how to detect counterfeit parts and suppliers.
So how can technology help? Companies like JDSU offer a full suite of overt (visible), covert (hidden), and digital (coded) authentication technologies that can be used in on-product and on-package solutions across a range of applications. These solutions help address emerging traceability requirements and detection issues throughout the supply chain.
How does it work?
· Overt solutions include sophisticated and multi-layered imagery that allow each package to feature distinct and easily recognizable visual aids for shipping personnel to verify against a valid example.
· Covert solutions provide the next layer of product identification and authentication and enable field investigators and enforcement officials to verify the authenticity of a product through specials tools such as handheld microscopes.
· Digital solutions such as 2D barcodes or QR codes allow for full life-cycle traceability throughout the supply chain. These serial numbers allow each item to be tracked from introductory design to final assembly using either a handheld tool or a mobile device to view the history of the entire product.
As technology becomes more and more advanced so does counterfeiting. This only reaffirms the need for companies like JDSU to continue to develop new technologies and work with organizations to combat this issue across many industries, including contractors who work with the Department of Defense.
Jazz was not the only main attraction in New Orleans the week of May 7th. One of the largest trade show events for the wireless industry – CTIA – took place and JDSU showcased its comprehensive, powerful wireless communications test and measurement portfolio.
For the event, we showcased two significant launches. PacketPortal, which is JDSU’s recently launched Smart Network Application Platform (SNAP) that allows communications service providers to more intelligently capture and analyze network data remotely to provide the highest quality subscriber experience, added two application partners: DAX Technologies Corp and NetSocket. DAX was on-hand to help demonstrate how, by using PacketPortal, today’s network monitoring and troubleshooting applications are dramatically enhanced by uniquely extending visibility and removing blind spots at the network edge. Specific to CTIA’s audience, this combination helps enhance the mobile customer experience, as DAX is a leading provider of customer experience management software for some of the largest wireless carriers, offering engineers and customer care agents the ability to obtain a holistic, correlated view of subscriber behavior, quality of experience and network performance. With PacketPortal, DAX management software will be able to gather and analyze a wide range of data from the network edge, on demand.
JDSU also unveiled PacketInsight™, a software-enabled next generation network monitoring solution that pinpoints service-affecting network issues hundreds of times faster than any competing offering.
As demonstrated on the showroom floor, typically, massive amounts of stored network data is often required to identify and resolve network problems. And, sifting through terabytes of stored data can often take days. Unlike any other solution available on the market, PacketInsight rapidly “rewinds” to points in time on the network and pinpoints quality impairment issues. PacketInsight also provides the ability to perform the fastest data retrieval in the industry. It is the only solution that captures data at rates approaching 10 Gbps (gigabits per second), enabling a faster time to resolution. With its rewind and analysis capabilities, PacketInsight eliminates the need to reproduce service issues, which often can take days based on traditional troubleshooting practices. PacketInsight troubleshoots network issues such as intrusion detection as well as voice, video and other application-level issues and has the adaptability to use JDSU’s Signaling Analyzer Real Time (SART) or existing third-party solutions.
Customers, partners, members of the media and analyst communities streamed in and out of the booth during the week to take in JDSU’s leading wireless test portfolio, and discuss big trends such as M2M, monetizing the network, ensuring high quality in a communications environment of video streaming, social media, LTE/4G, and an array of soaring mobile device use for communicating and entertaining. With JDSU’s test solutions, networks and services using mobile technology is supported by globally recognized and award-winning test solutions to help ensure quality. In addition to exhibiting and conducting meetings on the state of the mobile industry, JDSU was also a speaker on one of the industry panels: “The Path to 4G.” For the overall program that week, the closing keynote speaker was former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
All in all, a great event hosted in the vibrant city of New Orleans. You might say the exhibit halls were “jazzed up” by all of the excitement surrounding advancements and tremendous potential in mobile communications. And JDSU was there to “put it to the test” with our unmatched wireless test solutions.
The Interop 2012 exhibition and conference
, which occurred last week in Las Vegas, hosted enterprise communications experts from around the world, who unveiled new solutions, business advancements and discussed the future of global networking. JDSU was front and center with its suite of Communications Test and Measurement business segment solutions for IT professionals. Our Enterprise testing solutions
showed how Enterprise professionals can install, maintain, troubleshoot and optimize networks and applications with precision and speed while keeping an eye on the bottom line.
- Network Intelligence — We showcased our PacketPortal™, solution that lets operators see the network the way users experience it. It gathers intelligence all the way from the network’s edge via a probe the size of a thumb drive that has technology built into it, that improves troubleshooting and optimizes the user experience.
- Network Turn-up and Troubleshooting, and Physical Media Test Certification — Our complete line of tools for active test of networks and protocols were on display, garnering much attention from attendees. Solutions address daily basics such as moves, adds, or changes, as well as accelerate the turn-up of 10G networks, as well as tools that accelerate the installation of physical media – whether fiber or copper.
- Storage Area Network Test — We also showcased our industry “gold standard” for providing the visibility necessary to find and fix SAN issues impacting application performance -- the JDSU Xgig Analyzer.
Among our show headliners was our announcement of a strategic partnership with NetSocket as a PacketPortal application partner. This partnership allows real-time IP service assurance for the cloud to enterprise users. NetSocket delivers immediate insight into cloud networks, providing complete service visibility, ensuring higher session quality and lower support costs. With PacketPortal, NetSocket extends service visibility all the way to the branch offices, providing optimized data capture with its smart filtering capabilities. Attendees saw first-hand how this integrated solution worked, through an on-site demonstration at the JDSU booth.
This was also the second year for JDSU as the official test and measurement provider for InteropNET. Ed Gastle and Tyler Vander Ploeg hosted a training session, discussing how JDSU set up the live physical network to over 300,000 square feet in just five days, with a focus on the tests, mobile and paperless documentation strategies, and the tools used to monitor and certify the implementation. This infrastructure allowed the streaming of content to booth computers, screens and attendees’ smart devices. To better understand the complexity of this endeavor, view JDSU’s case study and videos that describe how our enterprise test tools enabled the smooth operation of last year’s InteropNET.
Overall, what made the show’s ‘Buzz List’ was the profound shifting to the cloud for everything from application delivery and security to monitoring. There are management difficulties the cloud brings, but tools are there for the IT professional enabling a smarter, more economical operation of the network.
2012 started off as a busy year for the pharmaceutical industry, with several cases of counterfeit drugs drawing attention to the need for strong anti-counterfeiting measures. In February, news broke from Swiss drug maker Roche that fake versions of its cancer drug Avastin had been distributed in the United States. Officials said that the counterfeit products did not contain the key ingredient needed in Avastin, which is used to treat cancers of the colon, lung, kidney and brain.
Then again in April, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced that a second counterfeit version of Avastin had been found in the U.S., packaged as Altuzan, the Turkish version of Avastin that is not approved in the U.S. These counterfeit vials did not contain the active ingredient needed in Avastin.
These recent cases of fake drugs entering the U.S. not only demonstrate the major risk counterfeiting presents to consumers’ health and safety, but it also highlight how counterfeiting has become more sophisticated.
With counterfeiting becoming more sophisticated, the trade of counterfeit drugs is on the rise. Currently the World Health Organization estimates that nearly double the amount of counterfeit drugs were sold in 2010 compared to 2005. And according to Interpol, the return on investment for counterfeiting pharmaceuticals can be over 20 times more than the return on dealing illegal drugs.
Officials are now taking notice as global regulators work to put laws and regulations in place to protect consumers. JDSU is a leading provider of overt, covert, digital authentication technologies used to protect some of the world’s top pharmaceutical brands. As technology makes it easier for counterfeiters to develop new ways to replicate brands, it has become increasingly important for companies like JDSU to develop the latest technology to help protect these brands.
If industry analysis is accurate, the growth potential of 4G/LTE in the Asia-Pacific region remains impressive:
Out of 110 networks, currently 9% have 4G/LTE networks up and running
53% have plans to roll out LTE networks or are currently conducting trials
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore are among the leaders in the region who have deployed 4G networks
Australia, Japan South Korea and China are in the process
In all, total mobile capital expenditure in the region is estimated to reach $53B by year end
The region set to surpass 120 million LTE connections by 2015
Not only are these numbers impressive, but regional developments are fast-moving. In April, Bharti Airtel became the first operator to launch 4G/LTE services in India, in Kolkata.
We’ve witnessed firsthand some of these network launches, and we continue to see strong promise coming from the Asia-Pacific region as networks—and users—become more sophisticated and demand more services. Last year, Hong Kong’s first and leading mobile network operator, CSL, used our solutions to test and monitor its combined LTE/DC-HSPA+ network, launched in November 2010, for its customers across Hong Kong. In addition, we were the independent tester for Asia Pacific’s largest mobile operator—Singapore Telecommunications Limited’s (SingTel), as it rolled out its LTE trials in Singapore, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. We also supported Twain’s Chunghwa Telecom’s migration to LTE.
All eyes will remain on the Asia-Pac region, given that this is one of the fastest growing regions for wireless services.