Web services in action

IBM is helping bring the Web world to service providers

Web services-based development is coming, slowly but surely, to service provider networks, and IBM, for one, has zeroed in on this, working with providers around the world to implement new service creation environments.

For service providers, telecom Web services offer the most direct path to opening up service creation to a larger universe of developers, said Mebs Rehemtulla, senior architect of communications solutions for IBM.

“From the developer perspective, lots of operators are trying to open up their innovation pipelines to new product ideas,” he said. “To do that, they really have to create a much lower barrier of entry for developers to do programming for their [telecom] platforms.”

The upside to this approach is big, including the chance to ditch server- and service-specific development silos and open telecom development to Java and Web-centric developers. Coupled with new service-oriented architecture approaches, Web services will let carriers develop their own services more quickly while more readily exposing piece-parts of network functionality to third-party developers, Rehemtulla said.

IBM is far from alone in advocating this IT-centric angle to next-generation service development. Vendors such as BEA, HP, Oracle and others are pitching similar approaches, offering Java/session initiation protocol-based application servers sitting in the middle of broad service delivery platforms, typically backed by a tooling strategy that often centers around the open source-based Eclipse development tools.

IBM's Web services pitch spans the development side with its IBM Rational Tools — including a “modeling”-based approach to service development and re-use, enabled by new integrated SIP modeling and testing tools — and the service delivery side with the WebSphere Application Server, which for several years now has offered a “converged container” offering Java/SIP-based execution on a single platform.

Overall, this approach should bring a more holistic approach to telecom Web services creation and management, Rehemtulla said. “The goal is to provide a set of tools to bring broader product life-cycle management capabilities, business and technology risk management, and governance around development of these new services,” he said.

Traditional equipment providers are far from handing over telecom Web services to IT entrants such as IBM. That said, IBM has begun to work with traditional equipment providers — for instance, it has a formal partnership with Nortel — and Rehemtulla said that “a few years ago Alcatel and Ericsson wouldn't take our calls, but now they come to work with us on carrier opportunities.”

Still, service providers likely will have to choose among several paths forward, in particular in the area of exactly how IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) networks and Java-based, Web services-based application layers work together, said Christophe Gourrad, an industry consultant and author of the IMS Lantern blog.

One approach keeps the two environments largely separate, with a “loose Web services layer” connecting the two, Gourrad said, an approach that somewhat mirrors today's network environments. A second approach envisions a much tighter link between IMS and Java-based service creation layers, leveraging the converged containers offered by J2EE suppliers such as IBM to offer a more “intimate” connection that “combines the direct usage of SIP and Web services for service delivery.”

That's an opportunity IBM and others are pursuing. “The specification of SIP servlets as an extension of Web servlets gave the opportunity to J2EE suppliers like IBM, BEA and Oracle to position themselves at the core of the future telco application layer,” Gourrad said.