Here Comes the SON

(First in a series of three articles)
Recent trends have changed radically the way telcos view communications -- including how, when and what services they deliver and want to provide.

Web 2.0 has played a significant part in this transformation. It has altered the communications playing field, as well as the method and timeline for new service creation and introduction.

At the same time, many major telcos, which have one foot in the Internet world and one in the PSTN, have been working to realize their vision of a single, service-independent network – as opposed to multiple, service-specific networks. This new network, based on the IMS architecture, will deliver a variety of blended services.

As with Web 2.0, a guiding principle of IMS is to enable services to be rolled out more quickly and efficiently. But although Web 2.0 and IMS seem to be complementary – and are in terms of some of their goals – the fact that standards around Web 2.0 data models, policy, security and APIs (to name just a few) are not yet fully specified means costly integration is required for telcos to take advantage of the wealth of Web 2.0 applications and developers.

To bridge this technology gap and bring the best of IMS and Web 2.0 under one umbrella, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) has launched a new initiative called SON, or the Service Oriented Networks Forum.

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“SON is about allowing the telcos to tap into the applications environment of the Internet and at the same time, to expose network capabilities to the web, allowing web developers to reach into the network and access telecom services in a robust, reliable way,” says Jim McEachern, manager of application enabler standards at Nortel, and a key contributor to the focus group that led to the ATIS SON effort.

 “Web 2.0 is not a stationary target upon which the ATIS SON initiative must focus,” added Mark A. Wegleitner, senior vice president of corporate technology at Verizon Communications Inc. and second vice chairman of the ATIS Board. “Web 2.0, generally distinguished by the propensity for end users to use and contribute to shared applications resources, may represent the first stop for SON developers. But SON must really go several steps beyond, by defining the interfaces and structure that will allow the network and applications to be deployed in a reliable, scalable, secure and interoperable basis.”

ATIS officially launched its SON work in February through the creation of the SON Forum and the release of the SON Assessment and Work Plan. That plan, endorsed by the ATIS Board of Directors, was compiled by representatives of ATIS member companies including Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, British Telecom, Cisco, Detecon, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, GENBAND, Hewlett Packard, Huawei, JDSU, Juniper, LG, Motorola, Neustar, Nortel, Qwest, RIM, Sprint, TDS Telecom, Tekelec and UTStarcom.

A key tenet of the service-oriented network is reusability, a concept borrowed from SOA, the service-oriented architecture from the enterprise network arena. SON aims to “expose” network resources so various applications can use them to create and deliver a cornucopia of services. These services can be “exposed” in turn and combined into more complex services. The SON Forum refers to this reusability as its recursive nature.

“In the future, it will become increasingly important for the network and applications to cooperate in providing valuable services to customers,” says Wegleitner. “Service-oriented architectures allow applications to make maximum use of previously developed services through the efficient exchange of relevant data.

“Networks are extremely well positioned to provide service components such as connection, media conversion, messaging, etc.,” Wegleitner continues. “Key enabling data, such as presence and location are inherent in our network infrastructure. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the network can provide an overall control construct that can insure the seamless delivery and management of communications–related services.”

As Wegleitner mentions, common examples of resources that might be reused include location information and presence. Two others are identity services and voice services. Through SON, a telco’s voice service potentially could be pulled into a mashup that allows Facebook customers to converse by voice, or by SMS, depending on whether they are already talking on their mobile phones.

Such converged services could result in new revenue opportunities, enhanced customer loyalty and even great prominence for the telcos by giving them a play in the new message-based interactions and social communities to which many end users – especially the young ones – are flocking.

Next: Telcos can use SON to sell services to Web 2.0 firms

Paula Bernier, formerly editor in chief of xchange magazine, is a veteran telecom reporter. She prepared this article for ATIS.