Aviz details how APB and ASN quantify deep observability ROI

The vendor blog argues that open packet broker and DPU-offload architectures can change the economics of deep packet inspection and observability, offering quantified CapEx, OpEx, and TCO reductions. The post focuses on five ROI cost assumptions and describes how Aviz Packet Broker (APB) and Aviz Service Node (ASN) are positioned to address them for enterprise network and security teams.

Research Overview

The post presents five “myths” related to cost and ROI for deep packet inspection, visibility fabrics, and packet brokering. It frames the discussion around enterprise challenges that arise as traffic rates and AI-related workloads increase, while tying the economics discussion to TCO measurement.

The blog’s structure moves from common beliefs about sunk costs and migration effort to claims about technical capability, DPU use cases, and ROI quantification. It includes specific quantitative ranges and describes how Aviz components fit into an open networking approach.

Key Findings

Across the five sections, the blog’s central cost argument is that packet broker functions can run on whitebox hardware and that visibility functions can be offloaded from host CPUs to DPUs. The blog claims this supports lower CapEx and OpEx compared with proprietary appliance approaches.

The post provides several numeric ranges, including “~30% savings” as a tipping point in observability projects and “40–60% TCO reduction” in real deployments. It also states “30–40% CapEx savings” and “50%+ OpEx savings” for open, SONiC-based brokers, with the ranges presented as dependent on the environment.

Technical Breakdown

For packet brokering, the blog describes an approach in which packet broker functions can operate on whitebox or commodity switches rather than proprietary appliances. It also positions the packet broker as a software-defined visibility fabric, designed to support standard interfaces such as REST, CLI, and GUI.

For DPU usage, the blog characterizes the Aviz Service Node (ASN) as a component that offloads networking and security functions from host CPUs to DPUs. It states that ASN handles GTP-C/U, steering, and subscriber-coherent visibility at line rate, and that this offload frees host resources for analytics and detection tools.

Operational Impact

The post addresses ROI and migration effort by describing potential phased adoption even when an organization is locked into multi-year support contracts. It proposes starting with new domains such as expanding packet broker capacity or AI-fabric visibility, and then shifting additional footprint when contracts expire.

It also presents a strategy for organizations that cannot replace existing NPBs immediately, including deploying a smaller production setup for capacity expansion or layering “Network Copilot™ on top of your existing NPB.” The blog further ties its measurement approach to visibility costs that scale with higher link rates and AI-related traffic patterns.

Leadership Perspective

The blog claims that ROI modeling can be built from a comparison of current NPB costs (hardware, support, smart-hands contracts, and power/rack) against projected costs for SONiC-based APB hardware, support pricing, and DPU-based offload. It also says ROI should consider how many tools receive full traffic versus filtered traffic.

In addition to cost modeling, the blog indicates it can support business case materials such as “TCO case studies, detailed decks, and customer references.” It states that the ROI engine used for SONiC and Network Copilot™ can extend to deep observability by estimating time saved, incidents reduced, and tool consolidation.

Overall, the blog’s takeaway is that open packet broker and DPU offload are presented as a way to quantify and reduce CapEx and OpEx for deep network observability while supporting phased migration and integration with existing tools. This “Blog Signals brief” is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.