NEW STANDARDS HELP PROMOTE MODULAR SOLUTION DESIGNS

Blade architecture, not sparse attendance, may have been the real reason for all the elbow room at Supercomm earlier this month as companies demonstrated their tiny form factors for application servers, gateways, inventory systems and more. Force Computers, HP, IBM, Intel and Telcordia Technologies were among those systems, server and solutions providers demonstrating blade-based, or modular, architectures.

Intel is behind, or “inside,” the drive to more modular architectures in telecom networks. The company introduced new modular communications platforms with several partners that are based on emerging standards such as Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) and Rack Mount Servers (RMS).

“Convergence has happened, and the proof points are in the move to modularity,” said Howard Bubb, vice president and general manager of Intel's network processing group. He added that standardizing these architectures would help drive the necessary cost reduction and scale for telecom.

HP joined the cause as a premier member of Intel's Communications Alliance. The two companies will co-develop solutions based on Intel Itanium and other processors as well as the AdvancedTCA and RMS specifications. “With modularity, you don't have to train on so many different infrastructures, and that helps reduce operational expense,” said Rich Piziali, product manager for telecom systems operations at HP.

With that in mind, HP announced the availability of its cc3310 server, a NEBS Level 3-certified platform running Linux in a rack-mountable configuration. It is based on the Intel TIGPR2U carrier-grade server platform and is targeted at network equipment providers and software vendors that sell to fixed and mobile operators. Alcatel also based its multimedia messaging server on the TIGPR2U platform.

IBM played its variation on that theme by introducing a set of offerings designed to ease the operational burden of the back office through open, modular platforms. “We have all hit on capex for the last couple of years — that's done,” said Mike Hill, general manager of telecom for IBM. “Now the heavy pressure is on operational expense.”

IBM extended its eServer BladeCenter product with a BladeCenter T system for telecommunications. The telecom system also uses Intel processors and supports a carrier-grade Linux operating system used for applications such as softswitches and voice over IP.

In conjunction with its Open Integrated Platform for Telecommunications, which integrates, tests and validates off-the-shelf components, IBM says it can accelerate the introduction of new services such as number portability.

Telcordia relies in part on an IBM blade server architecture for its suite of next-generation OSS solutions. Telcordia also announced a relationship with Granite Systems whereby Telcordia will offer Granite's Xng service resource management solution as one of three inventory blades in its OSS platform.

The architecture will help Telcordia realize its new product focus. “We are not doing projects anymore,” said Ragui Kamel, group president of new generation systems at Telcordia. “We develop products. And we do it with a lot of openness and partners.”

Force Computers, a provider of board-level and system-level computing solutions, also announced new products based on Intel processors. The company introduced the ATCA-710 single-board computer, the first commercially available board based on AdvancedTCA with support for carrier-grade Linux. It is designed to support 2.5G and 3G wireless and broadband applications.