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- Charging Enabler as defined by the OMA), and implementing end-to-end communications processes such as concept-to-cash, service providers can dramatically reduce the time necessary to bring new services to market. In addition, an integrated, end-to-end solution can maximize customer relationship management (CRM) by integrating this application with the billing and OSS systems. Further, providers can monitor service adoption and usage, particularly for service level charging, in real-time or near real-time through integration with billing and revenue management (BRM) systems. Ultimately, using SOA principles, it is possible to not just develop new services faster but also to integrate those new services more quickly with existing, business-critical systems, accelerating the entire process from service creation to payment.
How It’s Done
However, understanding how to leverage SOA for next-generation communications services is only half the battle. Service providers face a real challenge and marketplace confusion as they look to deliver real next-generation services according to SOA principles. In particular, it is often difficult to separate fact from roadmap in vendor products; de facto and de jure standards compliance are often not quite the same and, above all, the business case for next-generation services is still unproven for many providers.
Fortunately, Internet-standard platforms, particularly those that leverage Java EE, provide an interesting approach that is well worth the consideration of service providers. Java has proved itself as one of the two de facto standards for building Internet applications, and is the only one that has an industry-driven consensus-based approach to evolution and standardization. There are over three million Java developers who build applications on the Internet today and a large number of these developers are familiar with SOA methodologies and principles. In addition, industry standards such as BPEL and associated design tools and execution environments enable developers and business analysts to build composite applications relatively easily. Even though in the early years Java had limitations for use in a communications environment because of issues such as dynamic memory allocation and de-allocation, such issues have been addressed quite effectively. Standards-based SDPs that leverage Java EE provide a robust and flexible SOA-based platform for next-generation communications service delivery.
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While there is little consensus on the exact form of the future service provider, it is clear that SOA will have a significant role to play in the evolution. |
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Learning from Early Adopters
British Telecom (BT) is one of the pioneers of a SOA-oriented approach to communications service delivery. While most everyone in the industry is aware of British Telecom’s 21CN network initiative for building out an IP-core network, of equal significance – but as yet less renowned – is the Innovation Platform that BT is establishing for service delivery on top of 21CN. BT has designed the Innovation Platform in conformance with the SOA principles outlined above. Working with Oracle and other industry leaders, BT’s Innovation Platform provides a set of core capabilities that can be used to dramatically expand the set of services that it can deploy on next-generation networks. By making an Internet-standard platform the basis for its Innovation Platform, BT plans to bring the full benefits of SOA principles to developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) who are developing next-generation communications services.
Conclusion
It is an interesting time for service providers, and there is little doubt that the service provider of the future will be quite different from the service provider of today. While there is little consensus on the exact form of the future service provider, it is clear that SOA will have a significant role to play in the evolution. The basics of SOA have been derived from more than 15 years of experimenting with service delivery on the Internet and proper adoption of these principles in the communications domain have the promise of bringing Internet speed and flexibility to the communications industry, without sacrificing the traditional service provider attributes around scale, reliability, and mission-criticality.
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