All-IP telecoms networks give opportunities for all

Rethink IT, April, 2005

The move towards converged, all-IP telecoms networks is throwing up a wide range of opportunities for vendors that have traditionally been focused on enterprise IT, and played only on the fringes of the carrier market. IP-based wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi are oriented around the PC and the router-based internet, rather than cellular systems, and so benefit the likes of Intel and Cisco. But there are many opportunities on the software side too, with vendors like IBM and Microsoft looking to translate their enterprise platforms for a telco sector that increasingly needs strong middleware and management tools to keep control of its ever more complex networks.

IBM PUSHES WEBSPHERE

IBM has been pushing its WebSphere platform into telecoms doggedly over the past year. It has created specific versions of the database/middleware/web services range for the industry and is active on many standards committees looking at issues such as common management of, and roaming over, mixed networks.

Recently, web services challenger BEA Systems followed suit, announcing implementations of its application server and middleware for telcos. Carriers have ventured into Java app servers for back office systems such as billing, but now they need to adopt them for customer facing applications and to help deliver multimedia IP services such as VoIP, video and messaging more effectively.

Like Microsoft with its new Converged Services Framework, BEA is promising a solution for managing a complex mesh of IP-based services over different wired and wireless networks, that is simpler and lower cost than the fully fledged IP Multimedia Subsystems that the largest carriers are starting to implement, at huge investment in software and skills.

ADAPTING TO NEW MARKETS

The companies from the IT world are bringing their enterprise approach and adapting it to a new market, in a world where the formerly specialized telecoms server can start to look and behave far more like a corporate applications server, using enterprise technologies such as Java and XML. Such a shift is likely to take place mainly among tier two carriers--we do not believe the Java/XML approach is yet complex and robust enough in the real world to support tier one converged network roll-outs. But the medium-sized telcos, and those in developing nations, represent a huge market and could be a useful back door through which to push IT-oriented platforms and prove their worth in telco land.

Mark Carges, chief technology officer of BEA Systems, said: "The line is blurring between the application server and the telecommunications server", as he introduced the company's WebLogic SIP Server. SIP underpins most IP-based multi-service roll-outs because, unlike switching protocols, it can respond to varied software events and initiate a communications connection based on voice, video, instant messaging, images, or many other means of expression--regardless of the end device or connection type.

BEA also announced the WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, which will allow a service provider to set and enforce policies that control access to and govern sets of services, and ensure quality of service.

Such products will put the traditional telco software providers and integrators under huge pressure to simplify their offerings and adapt to formerly unfamiliar standards. And, of course, the experience that IBM, BEA and others gain among the carriers will also be valuable in their enterprise heartlands, where companies will face the increasingly complex task of managing their own converged networks, delivering a widening range of services to employees and customers over a mixture of wireline, Wi-Fi, cellular and broadband wireless.

NEW WORLD EMERGING

BEA's CEO Alfred Chuang summed up the opportunity for IT software houses, as telcos compete on the basis of offering tailored sets of multimedia services to different customer groups. "A new world order is emerging and the whole thing is running on a software platform," he said.