If Opportunity Doesn’t Knock, Build a Door
Okan Azmak, Director, Strategic Partnerships, Telenity

The keys to Converged Service Delivery Platforms are service abstraction, optimization of network resources and operations, and ease of billing and collections for new services.

It is no secret that mobile competitive fundamentals require new agility to anticipate the market dynamics and respond quickly and effectively, and optimize cost structure in terms of both capital and operational expenditures.

The mobile industry is undergoing major upheaval as subscriber penetration rates saturate, competition from MVNOs challenge operators' plans to improve data ARPU with a focus on content and data services, and peer-to-peer networking and VoIP-over-mobile looms large. If that's not headache enough, the impact of Mobile-WiFi convergence on operators' business models is unclear, as are those of fixed-mobile convergence and evolution to IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). While everyone agrees that network and service convergence will happen in the long run, operators face near-term expenditures to cover 3G license fees, and evolve their networks to 3G and IMS.

Optimization of the cost structure has already begun with evolution to all-IP networks; for instance, VoIP is used in many network backbones today. However, alignment of network assets and operations in support of business models still remains a challenge. That is in part due to the fact that, each new service, such as SMS, MMS and content downloads, has come with its own infrastructure, and has been added to the network to create a patchwork of service silos. There is little, if any, integration between these services, and the ability for network operators to collect timely market data and respond to it swiftly is still in the future.

The Internet offers a good example for improving revenues, as it has proven itself to be a medium where innovation and entrepreneurship have created immense value for service providers, as well as consumers and enterprises that consume those services. While there are some obvious differences between the Internet and traditional telecom networks, there is absolutely no reason why the Internet model cannot be translated to mobile and next-gen networks with some modifications.

This idea is central to Service Delivery Platform (SDP) standardization efforts under OSA (Open Systems Architecture) and Parlay Group activities. The definition of SDP has evolved over time, as new and previously unforeseen services, such as alert services, content and webservices have come into play; however, several guiding principles remain the same.

Multiple Doors

We see three clear guiding principles for SDPs: service abstraction, optimization of network resources and operations, and ease of billing and collections for new services.

Service abstraction enables the complexity and the particulars of underlying networks to be hidden from application developers through standardized APIs, service creation and integrated development environments, and SDKs. Webservices are the latest development in this arena. Through these tools developers no longer need to be well versed in the particulars of traditional telecom protocols, such as ISUP, MAP, CAP, INAP.

Further, in today's legacy networks the ability to incorporate different service capabilities, such as an SMS activity leading to a content download, which can lead to a Push-to-Share session with few clicks on the number pad, is not yet possible. Service abstraction tools also provide the glue that can integrate diverse set of discrete services under multimodal service scenarios.

When it comes to operations, it's the SDP's responsibility to translate the service logic to the particular network environment in which it operates. This is extremely important because with service abstraction, the network – whether mobile or landline – becomes programmable by third parties who do not have in-depth experience with telecom environments but do have creative ideas for new services and applications. This clearly offers new ability to attract entrepreneurial energy to the mobile medium.

It also significantly improves the efficiency of network resources. New data services have typically introduced redundant components to the network, such as databases and OA&M systems that would not work with one another. With MMS and content downloads, systems for content management, digital rights management, device management and transcoding have been added to the list of network components. This list continues to grow with unified messaging, instant messaging, Push-to-Talk, Push-to-Talk over Cellular, streaming, gaming and location based services.

Each of these solutions typically undergoes long and arduous integration and acceptance cycles, which not only drain operational resources but, worse, delay time-to-market. SDPs provide a framework in which such systems share common resources such as databases, switching systems, CRMs, etc. and integrate into the network through highly optimized interfaces.

But, service abstraction and cost optimization mean little if service providers cannot charge for those new services. The SDP assists in this regard by offering a service discovery and charging framework through which various applications integrate with the particular rating, charging and billing systems in each network. All services that reside on the SDP integrate into such a framework. By the time new services are tested in the network, they are also ready to be billed.

Earlier standardization efforts for the SDP focused on service discovery, and service abstraction for call control, messaging, user interface management, mobility management, charging and billing. Service abstraction, particularly for 2G and 2.5G networks, posed a formidable challenge and required much of SDP vendors' resources given the diverse variety of signaling, call control and messaging protocols in the many networks worldwide. Without it, SDP's value proposition would have been severely limited.

In successive releases, standards have evolved to expand on earlier specifications and have introduced new capabilities, such as policy management, presence and availability management, and multimedia messaging.

Companions and Competitors

The past year and a half has seen intense activity in web services. Even with these expansions, standardizations efforts have tended to focus on core technologies, and have paid little explicit attention to some other aspects of service delivery, such as managing customer experience.

Providing an appealing customer experience requires many facets of the network to work in unison. Numerous user interfaces, such as SMS, web, WAP, IVR, facilitate access to products and services; personalization and service navigation help subscribers customize the products and services they purchase, and customer management enables subscribers to address both technical and billing issues painlessly.

Taking its cue from customer experience management, the focus of service delivery has progressed beyond the network integration over the past twelve months to expand into business processes. Considerations such as partner management, service management, quality of service management, SLA (service level agreement) management have now entered the domain of the SDP. With such a wide range of activities now considered under service delivery, it has become clear that no single company can provide all the components for an SDP. Today, an SDP involves an eco-system of vendors and solutions that have to work well together. Telenity's Converged Services Platform (CSP) provides key components in the SDP ecosystem. Canvas CSP is proving itself in numerous networks delivering solutions with a wide range of partners.

As the industry moves forward, Telenity is at the vanguard of those who offer innovative and high-performance products that integrate well with others and make it possible for opportunity to knock repeatedly for mobile operators and service providers.

To learn more about Telenity and Canvas CSP, please visit our website: www.telenity.com

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Canvas CSP, Converged Services Platform Brochure (PDF)

Converged Services - SDP Eco-System Demo