Spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is forecastto grow at a CAGR of 5%, driven mainly by growth in the Middle East and Africa.Spending in the Asia-Pacific regional (APAC) market will be driven by subscribergrowth in China and India and the leap-frogging of technology investments byCSPs to catch up to developed countries. Central and Latin American (CALA) ismostly emerging markets so investments will outperform NA and EMEA over theforecast period at 6% CAGR. A major catalyst for service assurance spending to support next-generationservices is the need to measure customer quality of experience. The marketforces increasing awareness of customer experience are in part being driven bythe commoditisation of telecoms services - primarily voice - and the threatposed by new participants in the telecoms economy that offer premium servicesover a broadband network. CSPs are investing billions of dollars in capital toprovide convergent mobile and fixed broadband services to consumers andbusinesses, but this has not led to improvements in customer loyalty, which isreflected in price concessions and churn in mature segments of their business.Despite the incumbent status held by most Tier-1 and Tier-2 CSPs, which servemillions of broadband and mobile subscribers, CSPs have acknowledged that theirability to assess customer satisfaction is limited. Legacy systems that weredeployed to support specific network technologies make it difficult to gain aunified view of the customer. At the same time, the convergence of servicesbrings with it technology and operational challenges.

This 69-page report provides a detailed five-year forecast for probe systems,fault and event management, service management, performance monitoring, andworkforce automation by service: mobile, residential broadband, businessservices and PSTN, further broken down by region: North America, CALA, EMEA andRoW. The report includes market shares of the leading suppliers overall and ineach of the application segments. The report includes analysis of the marketdrivers and inhibitors for growth in all segments. The report addresses the following important questions:* Which technologies and services will affect investments in the serviceassurance market? * How is the supplier landscape changing and who is best positioned in eachsegment? * What impact will the global recession have on assurance spending?The report includes tables comparing 46 suppliers. The leading suppliers' marketshares are provided for the overall assurance market, as well as for each of theapplication areas. Overall, this 69-page report is an excellent source of market intelligence forCSPs, network equipment and software suppliers, systems integrators, venturecapitalists and financial analysts.

HELSINKI, FINLAND, Jul 02 (MARKET WIRE) -- Mobidiag's CE-IVD-marked Prove-it(TM) Herpes-test helps the clinician intargeting antiviral treatment correctly for patients with severeherpesviral infectionsHelsinki, Finland - June 2, 2009 - Finnish biotech company Mobidiagannounces CE-marked herpesvirus microarray for rapid In Vitro Diagnostics(IVD) of life-threatening central nervous system infections. The achievedcertificate ensures the safety of the product in clinical use and opensEuropean markets for the company. Prove-it(TM) Herpes identifies sevenherpesviruses in a single assay, whereas most current methods search foronly one virus at a time, or are unable to identify all viruses coveredby Mobidiag's assay.Human herpesviruses cause life-threatening infections in the centralnervous system such as encephalitis, the inflammation of the brain. TheEuropean estimated prevalence of central nervous system infections causedby herpesviruses is close to a million a year. Thus, the annual marketsize for herpesviral diagnostics is 100 million euros in Europe alone."Due to the diverse symptoms of herpesviral infections, the clinicianfaces a great challenge in either confirming or ruling out the infectionbased on clinical examination alone", said Jaakko Pellosniemi, CEO ofMobidiag "Rapid diagnostics is vital.

Left untreated, the mortality inencephalitis can be as high as 50%. Prove-it(TM) Herpes provides rapidand reliable results enabling correct targeting of antiviral treatment",Pellosniemi continued.The clinical performance and safety of Prove-it(TM) Herpes was evaluatedat six University, hospital or private laboratories around Europe. Theresults of analyzing 525 cerebrospinal fluid samples in parallel with thecurrent DNA-based methods were excellent: sensitivity 90% and specificity98%. Prove-it(TM) Herpes demonstrated additional value by identifying 14multi-infections and 17 Human Herpesvirus 7 infections missed or notcovered by the current diagnostics. Furthermore, Mobidiag's test foundtwenty infections not suspected by the clinician at all."No longer the clinician needs to know which virus test to choose -Prove-it(TM) Herpes answers all questions at once. Furthermore, thecoverage of the assay eliminates the need for multiple tests and therebysaves time and can halve the diagnostics costs in hospitals", Pellosniemisaid.Prove-it(TM) Herpes was developed in co-operation with the HospitalDistricts of Helsinki and Uusimaa and the University of Helsinki, Finland.Mobidiag is a Finnish biotechnology company developing, producing andmarketing rapid diagnostic tests for hospital laboratories.