Diamond Technology Reviews 2016

BTR's Diamond Technology Reviews, now in its twelfth year, is a technology recognition program wherein vendors serving the broadband cable industry are invited to submit information about products that have been released or upgraded since last year's SCTE Cable-Tec Expo (held in October 2015).

Judges search for innovation that creates enablement, said Tom Gorman, president of opXL and DTR manager, noting that he is never disappointed with the submissions. "Technology advances allow operators to become smarter, faster and more efficient like never before. Once again, we reviewed a wide variety of products that solve issues for operators."

2016 has showcased better provisioning systems, advanced optics, and the ability to economically meet bandwidth requirements as vendors demonstrated that they are listening to operators and coming up with ways to meet needs and reduce pain points.

"For me personally, the innovation for network monitoring is always exciting," Gorman said. "The ability to leverage devices in the network, proactively find problems before the customer sees them, and gathering data that causes smart decision making are all things that are near and dear to me."

Each entry was assigned to at least three of our expert volunteer judges. To help ensure fairness, similar products from different vendors were reviewed by the same group of panelists. Judges based scores/comments on written material provided by vendors, as well as their own experience with or knowledge of the specific technologies.

BTR's staff played no role in the judging of the submitted products. Review panelists were informed that scores/comments would remain anonymous.

Specifically, judges used the following scale to determine Diamond scores:

0-1 Useful product, yet commodity
2-3 Solid product with viable attributes that set it apart
4 Excellent product with technical features and performance that provide clear and substantial benefits
5 Superb product that sets new standards for performance and provides groundbreaking and new technical milestones

Each product's scores were averaged and rounded to the nearest full or half Diamond. Note that products are grouped by score (with the highest Diamonds ranking first), and then in alphabetical order.

Scores of 3.5 or above are considered superlative and reflect a very positive opinion from the panel. Only products receiving a 3.5 or above are included in this article.

5 Diamonds/Innovation Award

Ciena 3906mvi Service Virtualization Switch

Fluke OptiFiber Pro OTDR

4.5 Diamonds

ADTRAN MOSAIC Cloud Platform

Casa Systems Distributed Access Architecture Solutions

Ciena Waveserver

Evolution Digital eBox IP Hybrid Set-Top Box

Metaswitch Perimeta Virtualized Session Border Controller

Vecima Networks Entra DOCSIS 3.1 Distributed Access Platform

4 Diamonds

Alpha Technologies AlphaGateway SMG