Service Delivery Platforms take quantum leap forward
By Ilhan Bagoren, VP Marketing, Telenity

Service Delivery Platforms glow with the golden advantage of the programmable network, where wireless operators can quickly take full advantage of their network infrastructure and anticipate—not merely react to—major forces of change in the demand for new services and applications.

The “programmable network” is a key phrase here. Wireless carriers are in a tug of war between shareholders who clamor for greater return on investments and subscribers who demand customized, flexible applications. Survival in this climate hinges on the network operators' ability to deliver value-added services that satisfy both ends of the spectrum.

The traditional formula for creating value-added services has been a complex mix of technology and proprietary systems. Until now, network operators have been dogged with long development cycles and steep costs associated with new applications that are difficult to customize and laborious to launch.

From Desktop to Handset

New Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) that provide rich development tools are freeing wireless operators to create customized applications as ARPU shifts from traditional voice to enhanced voice services and new data centric services and applications. The climate in which they are created more closely resembles the PC-world than the voice centric telecom sphere of the past.

The dramatic growth of PCs was fueled by a common operating system that provided a host of development tools which unleashed creativity and improved productivity. Today, that same combination brings together the best in the developer community and the network operator community—thanks to the advent of the SDP— creating a plethora of services and applications that are easily deployed and customized.

What once was created on a desktop is now possible via the handset, and messaging is the vanguard application. Just as e-mail led the Internet proliferation, messaging in its many forms spurs the continued evolution of the wireless handset. Wireless text messaging to the handset adopted the abbreviated language of Internet instant messaging. The route from desktop to handset and back was also cemented, setting the stage for multimedia messaging and the transmission of images and video streaming.

Products such as Telenity's Canvas CSP enable network providers to deliver the wide range of text and multimedia messaging along with video and still images. It also builds on the subscribers' comfort level with their device, for instance, offering services that include personalized ring tones and ring back tones—the subscriber can easily greet (and identify) each individual caller with unique music or sounds that he or she has selected when the caller first dials the subscriber's phone number. The key to these products is that they are easily customized and quickly adapted by both the network operator and the subscribers. The result is a quicker time to market and an enhanced potential for increasing ARPU.

A Canvas of Content

SDPs are usurping the old bastion of cumbersome design elements and bridge the gap between the network and content delivery. Standardized SDP interfaces easily port applications between networks and platforms, quickly and cost effectively.

Telenity's Canvas CSP ensures five 9s performance through an open architecture that not only adapts to existing legacy networks, but also can be scaled up or down to fit both the needs of the network operator and the specific applications to be deployed. Its graphical service creation environment and other standards-based interfaces simplify and accelerate the introduction of new services and minimize integration programs with switches, billing systems, portals and databases. What also makes the Canvas CSP exciting is that it frees network operators to work with any content provider they choose, by providing an open, secure programming interface to open development of interactive multimedia services. This flexibility unleashes the creative energy while it significantly cuts the costs that too often inhibit new development.

The Safe Approach to Change

Some carriers sit on the sidelines of application development, waiting for new offerings to gain mass appeal. Then, if a new product or service takes off, they jump on the bandwagon. But this so-called safe approach actually proves more destructive in the end because it puts carriers in a reactive mode. By the time they launch the latest trend, the revenue has been captured by competitors. In a market driven by innovation, this philosophy is risky business.

In actuality, the safe approach is to find avenues for rapid development that are easily deployed in a cost-effective manner. Telenity's Canvas product family represents the wireless future, where integrated capabilities for voice-enhanced messaging, location information and content management ensure network operators can easily create and rollout scaleable services within weeks as opportunities arise.

From this secure vantage, network operators can deliver value-added services and applications that increase revenue and satisfy their most demanding customers.

For a listing of leading edge products developed via service delivery platforms (SDPs), see the Canvas product family at www.telenity.com