CENX, an assurance supplier based in Ottawa, Canada, has announced the appointment of Ed Kennedy as its new CEO. Mr. Kennedy, until recently President of Tollgrade, comes to CENX with a background in carrier service assurance, cementing CENX’s recent focus on the transformation of assurance, especially within virtualized and distributed networks. As readers of Appledore’s research likely know, CENX has a novel approach to service assurance, with a focus on (as we see it) two critical transformations: 1) automation of the assurance process and 2) simplification and correlation of **service** assurance in a multi-domain, multi-technology, multi-layer environment. Such environments will more and more be the norm, driven by virtualization (NFV, SDN, XaaS) and digital collaborations (with services made up of components from many enterprises, including carriers). As a small, innovative supplier CENX has a common problem. Being small, they have a limited voice and outbound resources. Being innovative they need to change long-standing perceptions and the status quo. The two don’t mix well. Ed is charged with a path to growth. CENX has recently announced a high profile carrier customer in Verizon, where they are effecting a unified view across domains, and supporting the closing of the automated assurance loop […]