OPEN WIDE

STARTING IN THE MIDDLE

Service delivery platforms aren't a new idea, but using an SDP as a horizontal “mega-platform” upon which next-generation services are built is. Today's SDPs typically combine support for IT standards, including Java J2EE-based application servers and SOAP-based Web services, running alongside more traditional carrier technologies such as SIP application servers for IP call control plus hooks to underlying IMS enablers and Parlay X Web services. In addition to delivering a service creation and delivery environment, today's SDPs also provide for content/media management and delivery and an array of other functions.

So what does that mashup of acronyms really mean? For carriers, a J2EE application environment allows mainstream developers — rather than communications protocol and C-coding specialists — to write and build services that leverage carrier network features such as call control, messaging and billing. That makes it easier, faster and cheaper to build internally delivered applications. It also makes it possible — if a carrier chooses to go that route — to expose network elements as Web services that can be consumed by outside developers to build new composite applications. A J2EE-based application infrastructure also fits well into emerging SOAs, in which applications are built from components that are combined into business processes for easy “orchestration.” Those same SOA principles are affecting the telco back office as well.

Overall, the telecom industry has been moving toward a more software-rich environment for years, from the advanced intelligent network to Parlay (network functions exposed via CORBA, an old-style programming approach) and Parlay X (based on newer Web services-based approaches). With J2EE-based SDPs, advances in the IT world now have collided fully with trends in the telecom world.

At least part of the maturation involves the evolution in recent years of J2EE, the server-side Java programming platform, to better support real-time, carrier-scale applications. J2EE improvements include the elimination of latency via Java virtual machine optimizations to support session-based call control, the emergence of “enablers” as a concept for delivering Web services-wrapped access to network protocols and functions, and improved manageability of J2EE app servers to ensure five-nines uptime and scalability across tens of millions of subscribers.

“IT platforms and IT development methodologies have reached a level of maturity where you can now build telecom-grade applications on a standards-based IT platform,” said Indu Kodukula, vice president of product management for Oracle. “That wasn't true even five years ago. We weren't at a place where you could implement IP services on a J2EE platform. The technology has matured tremendously.”

“All of this is clearly a move away from siloed solutions to something that is more open and layered and more reusable,” said Bernd Kaponig, principal software engineer in the CTO office at Sun. “Where you used to have a lot of specialized equipment and software in telecom, telcos are increasingly using off-the-shelf hardware and software. That's coming from the IT side.”

Beyond improving service development, the “IT-ization” of telecom yields other benefits as well. For instance, because SDPs are built on industry-standard hardware and server software — rather than a single, monolithic piece of vendor hardware — the economics of IP service delivery change drastically. One vendor claimed it would take only a $1500 Linux server (not including application software) to supply 750,000 users with VoIP service. In addition, as carriers move to these more IT-based infrastructures, they can use increasingly mainstream IT technologies like low-power blade servers and server virtualization to improve system management and further cut costs. It's also likely that services built today on pre-integrated (and most often proprietary) SDPs will begin to transform into applications that can be run on any industry-standard J3EE SDP, in much the same way that enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management moved from proprietary platforms to applications running on standard J2EE app servers in the last decade.

To be fair, not everyone sees big horizontal service platforms as the way of the (near) future. For instance, vendor MetaSwitch offers a VoIP/SIP platform and integrated SDP that carriers have used to deploy IP-based applications such as voice/Web unified messaging.

“We're certainly seeing some carrier interest in very general-purpose SDP platforms, but in general, service providers across the board are hesitant to write or have third-party developers write their applications,” said Martin Taylor, vice president of product management and technology strategy for MetaSwitch. “They like that our platform has open APIs, but generally what they say is, ‘We want you to write out apps for us.’”

Such single-service deployments work because the business case and return on investment is there from the start — a challenge that has slowed the deployment of IMS and that at times makes the case for a big, horizontal SDP a tough one as well. Others say SDPs can help carriers speed the jump to their next-generation networks.

“The value of the SDP is that you can begin generating revenue in advance of the transformation of the network from one state to the next, from legacy networks to new IP networks,” said Tim Greisinger, vice president of communications sector solutions for IBM Software Group. “Some carriers see it that way and want to be aggressive and innovate today with new services. Other carriers take a much more traditional approach: They want to transform the network first, and services will come once the new network is in place. The challenge is that that's a cost-first model, all about investing capital costs and transforming the network without generating new revenues.”