Luc Ceuppens Blog  

Luc Ceuppens
Senior Director, Head of Marketing
High-End Systems Business Unit

As new network applications are introduced almost on a daily basis, Internet traffic is continuing to grow. While you would think this is a good thing for service providers, the opposite is actually true. As I mentioned in my last blog, there is a symbiotic but unhappy relationship between content providers with compelling applications (which drive customers to the network), and the network service providers whose infrastructure actually delivers this content. Too often, traditional service providers find themselves caught between declining revenues and the increasing cost of network infrastructure, driving them to explore new network models that transform their infrastructure once again into a profitable business asset. The new model has to evolve the network from simple connectivity pipes to a multifaceted tool capable of delivering diverse applications and services to their customers, whether they develop these applications internally or through partnerships.

A Jan. 6, 2009, report from Gartner on the future of telecom services captures this very well in stating: “Communications service providers, especially those in mature economies, must develop new services to grow. Beyond pure network capacity, innovation should focus on user experience, services features and functionalities concerning context awareness, personalization and communities.” Rather than focusing on port densities, fiber capacities, throughput and the like, carriers have to optimize their infrastructure for new concepts like cloud computing, software-as-a-service (SAAS), video streaming, managed services, IPTV, content delivery networks, location-awareness and personalized advertising. At the same time, operational costs must be reduced in order to improve profitability: this can be achieved in a variety of ways:

• Multiple services access networks such as fiber, DSL and radio can be consolidated into a common transport and subscriber management infrastructure
• Legacy TDM can be switched off and migrated to new IP infrastructures
• Transport and routing can be combined, collapsing multiple network layers
• Virtualization tools and policy management can be leveraged to increase capacity utilization
• Common OSS and BSS platforms and SDPs across multiple services can be used for automating provisioning and customer support

This “New Network” must meet six primary criteria:

• Resiliency: It must replicate “carrier-grade” availability in the new world of multiple access-agnostic IP services.
• Multi-Dimensional Scalability: It must be scalable enough to support increasing traffic loads from a growing number and type of end devices, services and subscribers.
• Multilayer-Security: It must be secured with a multilayer approach that includes secure tunnels for application and endpoint communities, enforceable access policies, and protection for the network’s own service layer elements.
• Dynamic Resource Management: It must enable Quality of Experience (QoE) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) even with scarce bandwidth, direct network resources in real time to flow to the most profitable opportunities, and include a policy-based mechanism for real-time resource allocation to ensure long-lived service relationships.
• Openness: Network and policy management layers must be based on common standards that offer open APIs to potential partners.
• Energy Efficiency: The new network must function at unprecedented levels of energy efficiency.

Once this New Network is implemented, it offers a suite of new business models for the next-generation service provider. While revenues used to be earned from delivering basic connectivity services and walled-garden applications, the New Network will be much more flexible and dynamic. It will allow providers to create key elements, or “servlets,” that are the basis for a broad selection of valued services and customer experiences. Examples include multilayer security, assured QoE and SLAs, dynamic resource allocation and CDN services. Other examples are network APIs that allow applications to pull in user identity or location information, or the ability to assure session continuity across devices and access technologies. Not only can network service providers leverage these elements for their own walled-garden services, but they also can wholesale them to partners, such as content providers, SaaS companies and device OEMs. Finally, they can make them available to the developer community at large. Developers can then build on these elements to create applications which are in turn valuable service components.

By taking these two steps – deploying the New Network and adapting their business model – the next-generation service provider will be equipped to maximize its revenue potential and lead the charge into the next decade.

Luc Ceuppens is vice president of product marketing, High-End Systems Business unit at Juniper Networks (JNPR).