1. New York
London
Sao Paulo
Panama City
Buenos Ares
Mexico City
San Diego
Denver
Palo Alto
Los Angeles
A Directions Whitepaper
5WAYSToDeliverQualityofServiceforYourCustomers-
FasterandSmarter
Maximize Revenue, Improve Customer Satisfaction
and Reduce SLAViolations
Growing demand is driving the delivery of new complex satellite services. Ranging from television broadcasts, enterprise
services, broadband connectivity to mobile applications, these services offer the potential for higher revenues and market
expansion.With these new services comes added complexity and increased risks for customer impacting issues. So how
do you effectively reduce Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations, minimize customer churn, maximize revenue and
improve customer satisfaction?
Here are five ways you can deliver Quality of Service (QoS) for your customers - faster and smarter.

2. Prioritizebroadbandserviceissuesbasedonthegreatestimpactonthebottomline
So, what happens when your broadband satellite services are disrupted by multiple issues, such as rain fade
and an equipment failure at the same time? Which service do you fix first?
Many of the leading providers of satellite services worldwide are turning to Service
Quality Management (SQM) applications to help them prioritize their customer
services. So what can an SQM solution tell you? Picture multiple services having an
outage at the same time, such as your high speed Internet service for an oil rig, the
video conferencing service for an office and a long distance learning application for
a university.
By reviewing the SLA Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each service using an SQM solution that provides deep service
visibility, you can quickly prioritize the remediation of the services. You can view the time left in the SLA before a violation
occurs and the cost of a customer outage credit for each service. In an instant you can determine that the high speed
service is not close to violating its SLA, but that the video conferencing and long distance applications are both close to
being out of compliance.
When you examine the cost of the customer outage
credits, it’s clear that the video conferencing service
has the most significant penalty associated with a
violation, so it becomes the highest priority issue with
the long distance learning application and the high
speed Internet service being second and third in line
to be resolved.
By prioritizing service issues based on revenue impact
you can minimize the effects on the bottom line. The
services with the highest revenue impact are fixed
in priority order or if a service has just violated its SLA
and a credit is already going to be paid, then the next
highest revenue customer service can move to the top
of the priority list, since it has the most impact to the
bottom line now.
1
Video
Teleconference
High-Speed
Internet
Long Distance
Learning App
Services SLA Compliance Status
$ $$ $$$
Potential Cost
Value of Outage Credits Prioritization
$ $$Out of Compliance
Out of Compliance
Out of Compliance
$$$
$ $$ $$$
1
2
3
Prioritization Process
Prioritizing the video conferencing service based on revenue impact.
Three services are down with critical alarms
Video conferencing and long distance app
service are close to being out of compliance
Video
conferencing
service has the
largest
penalty followed
by the long
distance app
and high speed
internet service
Therehasbeen50%revenuegrowthover
thelast5yearsinbroadbandservices.
SatelliteIndustryAssociation(SIA)
1

3. 2
Predictenterpriseserviceproblemsaheadofcustomerimpact
Your enterprise customers pay more and expect higher levels of service. The
SLAs reflect that reality. Enterprise services offer you higher margins, but they
bring with them more risk, since penalties for outages are larger. So how do
you avoid service issues impacting your customers and the potential of steep
SLA penalties?
Predictive analytics can help you detect issues that affect your enterprise services prior
to revenue and customer impact. A robust SQM solution offers not only historical, but
also predictive metrics to raise operational productivity.
For example, you can monitor the signal quality of a data transmission service that
supports a SCADA application using KPIs such as EIRP, Es/NO and C/NO using a solution
such as NeuralStar SQM. If the metrics drop below a minimum threshold, it could point
to an upcoming interference issue that may soon affect this enterprise service. This
gives you a chance to proactively try to resolve the interference issue prior to an SLA
being violated.
By setting dynamic thresholds for the data transmission service you can keep revenue streams flowing and SLAs intact
by effectively predicting service issues prior to them occurring. The dynamic thresholds can be set above and below
baseline values so that you receive alerts if satellite traffic levels spike or drop dramatically. This enables performance and
latency issues to be rapidly detected and adjustments made to maintain throughput, minimize congestion and ensure a
high level of QoS to avoid any customer impact and SLA penalties.
Predictive analytics can also be used to detect other common issues that can affect enterprise services such as increasing
power levels of HPAs indicating a possible rain fade event, beam voltage fluctuations highlighting an impending transmitter
problem, rising temperatures on LNAs signaling near-term equipment failure or disk space and memory utilization on
servers reaching capacity pointing to a performance issue.
Detecting an upcoming interference issue based on changes in signal quality.
Alarms indicate signal quality has fallen below minimum threshold levels for the enterprise service
Dropping
signal
quality levels
for enterprise
service
indicates
an upcoming
interference
issue
Predictivemetricsareespeciallyuseful
forcompaniesthatareseekingto
mitigaterisksandpreventdisruptive
eventshavinganimpactonproductivity.
Gartnerestimatesthatby2017,
organizationswithpredictiveanalyticsin
placewillbe20percentmoreprofitable
thanthosewithout.
Gartner,theworld’sleadinginformation
technologyresearchandadvisory
2

4. You now know that there has been no impact to the mobile broadband service because there has been no downtime
due to the automatic failover, but you need to replace the back-up BDC to reduce any future risks. This added intelligence
enables you to quickly determine the real issue, avoid wasting time reviewing non-critical alarms and minimize any service
disruptions to deliver a good quality of experience and minimize customer churn.
3
ImplementintelligentservicerulestoreduceMTTRformobilesatelliteservices
Is a growing source of your revenue based on the insatiable mobile bandwidth demand from users in the
maritime, land and aeronautical sectors? If so, keeping these customers satisfied and the churn rates low is
core to maintaining your growing revenue stream. Then, how do you minimize service disruptions, so latency
sensitive mobile applications deliver a good quality of experience to keep customers satisfied?
You create intelligent service rules based on your mobile satellite concept of operations
to reduce any downtime and accelerate the troubleshooting and remediation
process. The service logic behind the rules identifies the real alarms, suppresses the
false ones and determines the root cause of issues faster to reduce the Mean-Time-To-
Repair (MTTR) and minimize any service disruptions to mobile customers.
For example, when a Block Down Converter (BDC) that supports the delivery of broadband mobile connectivity to a
cargo ship fails, it triggers a flood of downstream alarms showing multiple issues that can overwhelm you. You don’t know
which alarms are real and which ones are false positives or the affect they have on your customer’s services.
You don’t have time during an outage to review each alarm individually – the service needs to be back online immediately
to avoid frustrated customers. You only want to view the critical alarms that require action, instead of filtering through a
sea of alarms.
You need intelligent service rules that automatically suppress downstream alarms for the other devices in the equipment
chain when a BDC fails. Rules that add intelligence to your operation by monitoring the service status and service quality
indicators and send out only a single major alarm that lets you know that the service is “Available”, because the BDC
automatically failed over to a back-up device, but “At Risk” because there is no longer any redundancy with the spare
BDC in use.
Enhancing mobile satellite service performance by providing actionable intelligence.
Mobile service is running
on back-up BDC
BDC failure triggers
major alarm
Single alarm with others suppressed
Service
availability
over time
for mobile
service
Service
status is
“Available”
The
service
quality is
“At Risk”
Mobilesatelliteservicesgrewby25%in
2014.
SatelliteIndustryAssociation(SIA)
3

5. 4
Minimizedisruptionstohighvaluecustomerservices
Do you know what customer services are being passed through your devices and the criticality of the
equipment in terms of its SLA implications? This insight is vital during troubleshooting and the maintenance
process.
As an example, a common challenge when conducting maintenance is the lack of real-time visibility into the relationships
among devices, customer services and SLAs. Trying to track the relationships manually through spreadsheets and diagrams
is time consuming, labor intensive and prone to human error. So how do you effectively perform routine and preventive
maintenance, while delivering the QoS your customers expect?
With the right SQM solution, you can view in real-time your entire inventory of equipment that supports customer services.
You can immediately see what services are running through a rack of equipment and what customers would be affected
by maintenance and determine any SLA implications.
Consider a scenario where you need to take a specific downconverter offline for its preventive maintenance. You find
primary downconverter number five in the inventory list and you can see that it’s a high value device because it supports
five important customers with services ranging from full-time video, high speed Internet access to video conferencing.
By looking at the SLA metrics it’s clear that the device is supporting three services that are out of compliance. You quickly
determine that it’s best to wait until the SLA issues have been worked out before taking the downconverter offline for
maintenanace. This will help minimize the service impact to your high value customers. With this type of visibility across
your inventory you are better able to plan your maintenance efforts and troubleshoot effectively to ensure the optimal
delivery of services to your customers. You can also quickly see which devices support multiple services and ensure that
spares are available, since any downtime could cause SLA violations and costly outage credits.
Improving customer service delivery by optimizing maintenance efforts.
Downconverter availability and status
Several customers
relying on downconverter
Multiple services
running on the device No alarms associated
with the equipment
Three services
out of
compliance
4

6. 5
ReducecostlySLAviolationsinhighestprofitsatellitevideoservices
If you’re like most satellite operators, television broadcasts are a big source of revenue. So how do you
effectively ensure the uptime of these top revenue producing television services to avoid costly SLA violations
and enhance the customer experience?
Let’s start by looking at the top ten SLAs for these video services by revenue in real-
time. With a solution such as NeuarlStar SQM, at a quick glance you can see if any of
your top revenue sources are affected by a service issue.
For example, when your most profitable full time video service is displaying a red alarm,
you can determine the immediate customer impact by looking at (KPIs) including how
many seconds the SLA has been out of compliance, what the dollar value is of any
outage credits and how the expected performance of the SLA is compared to the actual. The longer the outage, the
greater the likelihood that the customer experience will be negatively impacted.
You can also determine the longer term impact of the television service issue by reviewing the total dollar value in the
cycle and how much time is left in the cycle. As the duration of an outage increases, so do the outage credits as a
percentage. You can get a real-time view into the total dollar value of the outage credits that may need to be paid back
to the customer, if the television service issue isn’t resolved within a certain time frame. It tells you the overall impact this
television service issue could have to your operations and to your customer satisfaction levels.
To jump start the process of minimizing the full time video service issue - examine the end-to-end services map that shows
which segment of the satellite operation is affected by the issue, whether it’s a carrier, downlink or uplink problem. Then
you can quickly drill down into the affected service segment and start the troubleshooting process to resolve the issue.
Minimizing customer impact by monitoring the top SLAs for video services.
Performance of SLA for video service
Top ten
SLAs
by revenue
showing an
issue with
video
service
End-to-end
service view
showing
alarm
KPIs for affected
SLA
- Outage credits
- Value per cycle
- Time out of
compliance
- Total time
in cycle
SatelliteTVServices(DBS/DTH)account
for77%ofallsatelliteservicerevenues.
SatelliteIndustryAssociation(SIA)
5

7. 6
ManagingComplexServices-ThePathForward
Managing customer services and doing so effectively is becoming a necessity and no longer a
luxury in today’s hyper competitive environment. A recent report from the World Teleport Association
surveying global operators, teleport operators and telecom businesses describes the driving forces
well.
“All this points to a future where the ability to manage complex network services – and do it effectively, efficiently and
with superb customer service will become a major competitive differentiator. If our respondents are correct, it may well
become something more: a matter of survival for service providers both big and small, in every market.”
Does your organization have an SQM solution in place to compete effectively? One that helps you take a business
focused approach to managing services and SLAs, rather than just managing the underlying network and devices. A
solution that will help you to keep pace with demand, better manage customer services, and drive greater profitability.
Choosing the right solution could be the critical milestone that helps your organization not only survive, but thrive in this
customer centric environment.
NeuralStarSQM:MaximizingRevenue,ImprovingCustomerSatisfaction
andReducingSLAViolations
NeuralStar®
Service Quality Manager (SQM) is the first end-to-end enterprise software product for
satellite and terrestrial service management. It helps service providers improve quality of service and
customer satisfaction, maintain and grow revenue and optimize satellite and terrestrial operations.
Improve Quality of Service and Customer Satisfaction — NeuralStar SQM improves the quality of services and more
effectively manages SLAs, resulting in enhanced customer care and increased customer satisfaction. It minimizes service
disruptions to customers by discovering issues faster and helping operational staff resolve them rapidly.
Maintain and Grow Revenue — NeuralStar SQM identifies high-priority problems quickly and helps operational staff respond
based on business impact such as revenue, profitability, service and customer experience. It enables organizations to
manage more services, launch new services and maximize SLAs to maintain and increase revenue.
Optimize Operations — NeuralStar SQM monitors service performance across satellite and terrestrial operations in a single
unified platform delivering end-to-end management visibility. It proactively monitors the network to identify issues before
they become service impacting and scales to manage hundreds of services and thousands of supporting devices.
CustomerSuccess
Theworld’sleadingproviderofsatellite
servicesusesNeuralStarSQMtomanage
itsbusinesscriticalcustomerservices
effectively.Usingthesingleplatform,
theyareabletomonitorandcontroltheir
entireteleportoperationsandmanage
alloftheirservicesforcustomers.
Customersexperienceahigherlevelof
service,operationalproductivityisraised,
costsareloweredandproblemsarepro-
activelyprevented.
NueralStar SQM’s global and customer service centric view.

8. 5971 Kingstowne Village Parkway
Suite 200
Alexandria, VA 22315
703-254-2000
Email: Info@KratosNetworks.com
www.KratosNetworks.com
From Kratos, the Leader in End-to-End (E2E) Management
Kratos is a leader in helping organizations assure the availability, reliability and quality
of communications across large scale, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed
operations.With a complete End-to-End (E2E) management suite of products, we provide
unprecedented visibility into your entire operational environment. Our products include:
NeuralStar Service Quality Manager (SQM) for service and SLA management, NeuralStar
for the management of large scale enterprise networks and Compass, the industry leading
Monitor & Control (M&C) solution with over 3,000 global installations. Our RF interference
mitigation and cancellation and other ground station solutions can also be seamlessly
integrated for complete satcom management.