Integrated solutions for the telecommunication industry October Telecoms take network transformation to a higher plane

Transcription

1 Integrated solutions for the telecommunication industry October 2004 Telecoms take network transformation to a higher plane

2 Page 2 Contents 2 Introduction 3 Maximizing value, minimizing complexity 5 Leveraging the right expertise 6 Network transformation on demand 8 The tools for transformation Cutting costs Rapidly deploying new services Retaining current customers and acquiring new ones Pre-integrated platform supports faster convergence 11 Summary Introduction From their work on network transformation projects with telecommunications clients and partners worldwide, IBM industry specialists are reporting that an even more far-reaching transformation is underway. In short, a growing number of telecommunications executives have recognized that as advances in network technologies have cleared the way for sweeping infrastructure transformation and dramatic performance improvements across their enterprises, they ve gained powerful new abilities to achieve their most critical business objectives. Though objectives and tactics may vary, these initiatives gain their strength from the way they target obstacles that have long plagued telecommunications companies seeking faster, less costly and more profitable ways of doing business. This paper will describe how telecommunications companies are conquering these obstacles and, as a result, gaining access to greatly expanded choices in systems, solutions, services and suppliers thus enabling them to accelerate growth and increase efficiency in today s on demand environment.

3 Page 3 Business Drivers Rapidly developing and delivering new, innovative products and services to grow revenue Being more responsive to customers, market changes and competitive threats Improving resource utilization to reduce time-to-market, costs and TCO Establishing variable cost structures and new business models Leveraging widely deployed economy of scale technology Becoming focused, resilient, responsive, variable Maximizing value, minimizing complexity Until recently, large and medium-sized telecoms had few alternatives to laboriously grafting IP solutions onto legacy networks. And they were outpaced by non-traditional, emerging competitors who were aggressively delivering their own innovative solutions to the marketplace in response to new, revenue-generating opportunities. Now, however, IT and IP technologies from companies such as IBM technologies that have long supported complex, far-reaching enterprise networks with outstanding performance and cost-efficiency have helped ease the evolution to high-performance, easily integrated systems and solutions designed to meet the toughest carrier standards. These technologies can help the industry overcome the barriers that vertically integrated technologies present to rapid application development and deployment for both new and existing services. Business Barriers Proprietary technologies Complex, difficult-to-integrate infrastructures and components Slow pace of application development Limited internal resources What give these new technologies such tremendous impact are designs based on open standards that offer interoperability, and open source architectures that help enable vendor and developer independence. Combined, these design elements can transform network technology in two ways: By enabling carriers to spend far less time managing hardware and operating system integration issues and more time on developing and launching new value-added services leveraging open-technology, off-the-shelf applications and middleware. By exposing carriers to a dynamic ecosystem of developers exponentially increasing their ability to acquire innovative, carrier-grade applications at high economies of scale, while maximizing their resources by freeing them from the need to act as developers themselves.

4 Page 4 All told, the abundance, interoperability and cost-efficiencies of these technologies now offer telecoms the chance to eliminate historical obstacles and direct their resources at achieving: Faster, more flexible deployment of innovative new services Lower capital and operating costs Easier customer recruiting and retention via innovative services that help them respond more effectively to their own changing needs and expectations Tighter process integration across the business Greater resilience to rapidly fluctuating demands and a changing competitive landscape, thanks to infrastructures that allow services to be quickly activated or de-activated as situations warrant A sharper focus on core business issues through more easily managed technologies and/or outsourced services. Improved resource utilization Access to wider recruitment pools for simplifying internal skills acquisition and lowering training costs Broader access to external skills and resources Project financing to keep costs aligned with changing revenue streams Alliances with other companies and mutual offerings that can deliver even greater value to customers

5 Page 5 Leveraging the right expertise One of the most critical decisions in a telecommunications company s move to next-generation networks is its initial choice of a strategic partner or partners. Of course, by adopting an open standards- and open source-based approach, telecoms gain more freedom to change partners reducing much of the long-term risk once involved in that decision. Telecoms can and should align partner selection criteria with their highest objectives. The more the criteria correspond to the desired benefits, the more the network transformation project can achieve. Suggested criteria would include: A deep commitment to open standards and open source technologies Strong experience in systems integration A proven track record in serving telecommunications companies World-class, carrier-grade platforms and solutions Comprehensive IT and networking skills and resources, such as network planning, design, deployment and management An extensive partner ecosystem, including relationships with major network equipment suppliers and leading industry software vendors Flexible financing and delivery options Global presence IBM s proven abilities across all these criteria have earned it a rapidly growing role in network transformation projects for carriers pursuing maximum returns. Whether a company is looking for a single, discreet service to launch network transformation, or a complete, end-to-end, multi-vendor solution, IBM is ready and equipped to assist.

6 Page 6 Advantages of an on demand telecommunications provider Responsive Capable of quickly sensing and responding to emerging opportunities. Resilient Utilizes a flexible, reliable, autonomic, self-healing infrastructure. Security is maintained end-to-end from the network to applications to processes to business operations for maximum availability. Focused Directs resources at creating customer value, rather than dealing with disparate proprietary systems or less-thanoptimal availability. Variable Optimizes dynamic, variable cost structures and service delivery models for IT resources, applications and processes. Network transformation on demand The articulation of what a Next Generation Network should consist of, as well as the process for network transformation itself, evolved from major leaps forward in IT and networking hardware, software and services. Many of these advances originated in IBM labs. IBM has decades of experience working with the telecommunications industry, much of it rooted in providing telecoms with high-performance, seamlessly integrated technologies including those in the enterprise network arena. As these technologies evolved to take on increasingly mission-critical responsibilities, IBM began developing and offering a variety of carrier-grade, industry standards-compliant systems and solutions to simplify service deployment networks. For years, IBM has worked closely with the telecommunications industry to develop the new standards and solutions that now make network transformation not only achievable for any telecom regardless of its starting point, but also powerful in its effect on the telecom s business. For example: IBM is an active participant on standards-setting boards within the industry, such as Parlay and the Open Mobile Alliance. IBM is a founding member of the Open Communications Architecture Forum (OCAF). IBM worked in partnership with telecoms, network equipment providers and other key industry players in the delivery of the Carrier Grade Open Framework (CGOF), a structure for the end-to-end integration of open, next-generation telecommunication enterprise solutions. CGOF enables service providers to quickly align end-to-end, multi-vendor components into a complete value chain. As a founder of the Open Standards Development Laboratory (OSDL), IBM was a leader in developing Carrier Grade Linux, which is now enabling telecoms to capitalize on the stability, flexibility and other benefits of the world s fastest growing server operating system. IBM s Linux Technology Center employs more than 600 engineers dedicated full-time to Linux support, with thousands of other IBM professionals available to help clients make the most of Linux solutions.

7 Page 7 The Carrier Grade Open Framework (CGOF) is a strategic platform for network transformation, delivered by IBM in partnership with service providers, NEPS and other key industry players. CGOF is designed to serve as a structure for the end-to-end integration of open, next-generation telecommunications and enterprise solutions.

8 Page 8 The tools for transformation Building on its telecom industry experience, IBM and its Business Partners offer a broad range of off-the-shelf products and services designed specifically to advance network transformation both inside of and surrounding the core network. By overcoming the traditional barriers to transformation, IBM can make it far easier and more practical for telecoms to reduce infrastructure costs, accelerate the deployment of services, and raise the satisfaction levels of customers old and new. The examples presented below are just a sampling of the network transformation products and services available from IBM. Cutting costs Time is money. Many of IBM s network transformation solutions and services help reduce costs for telecoms by accelerating the deployment of cost-saving technologies for example, through the ability of many to run on Carrier Grade Linux operating systems. Others save money by lowering the costs of developing, deploying, maintaining and managing solutions. And many trim downtime costs through robust designs with self-configuring, self-diagnosing, self-healing autonomic features. The IBM Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) is an open, standards-based framework that accommodates a wide range of solutions that can help telecoms protect their investments in legacy systems while lowering the costs of integrating new systems and applications. Based on informal internal testing by IBM, results have shown that SPDE can enable cost savings of up to an estimated 20 to 30 percent compared to proprietary or internally developed legacy solutions. The IBM Network Transformation Solution Portfolio includes services that can also help telecoms lower costs more quickly by providing resources to augment internal capabilities while keeping internal staffs focused on core business issues. With technologies such as the IBM ^ BladeCenter TM T and IBM ^ xseries 335/x336/x343 systems, telecoms can more dynamically meet the demand for new applications while leveraging the economies of commercial off-theshelf (COTS) platforms and lowering the costs of space, power, cabling and cooling. On many IBM servers, Capacity On Demand features enable telecoms

9 Page 9 to avoid paying for capacity they don t need but acquiring it the instant it is required. The IBM WebSphere Application Server for Telecom can dramatically help reduce the costs of competing in an on demand environment by simplifying the way new services are launched. IBM Global Financing uniquely offers flexible financing plans that can help reduce capital expenditures and align costs with the revenue stream generated by new systems and applications. Rapidly deploying new services All too often today, the carrier who hesitates is lost. Today s discerning customers have the ability to easily change providers in order to improve service quality, availability and pricing. IBM s commitment to open source- and open standards-based products enables telecoms to quickly respond to marketplace challenges with innovative services and to also quickly withdraw services that are no longer contributing value. Carrier Grade Linux can make deployment delays even more obsolete through the responsiveness it provides to the development community and the ease with which Linux-based applications can be integrated into a network. The IBM Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE), an open, standards-base framework lays the groundwork for quickly deploying new, revenue-generating services while minimizing disruption to the infrastructure that supports current income. Linux is the enabling technology providing faster application development and deployment. The IBM BladeCenter T and xseries 335/x336/x343 systems offer the processing power, memory and scalability to quickly support today s increasingly demanding marketing initiatives and their compact designs fit in central offices or data centers of virtually any size, further hastening time-tomarket. The IBM WebSphere Application Server for Telecom can help reduce the costs of developing new services by leveraging open standards-based interfaces and tools, like Parlay, to integrate and interface new IP-based applications to the traditional analog network, simplifying development and compressing service deployment times from months or years to weeks or days. IBM WebSphere Business Integration for Telecommunications provides best of class telecom-specific processes based on the etom model and pre-integration to leading OSS/BSS vendors which enable telecoms to provision new services more rapidly and

10 Page 10 speed their time to market. Based on open industry standards, IBM Software Development Platform provides a business-driven lifecycle process and integrated tools enabling service provider and third-party teams to develop, integrate, deploy, and manage the lifecycle of high-quality next generation applications quickly, cheaply. Retaining current customers and acquiring new ones Customers have never expected more from telecoms. Network transformation solutions, products, and related services from IBM and its Business Partners can enable carriers to raise customer acquisition and satisfaction by adding more value to their offerings and achieving greater competitive differentiation. In addition to the benefits already mentioned, SPDE can assist telecoms in providing improved, better-informed customer service capabilities, in part by giving telecoms ready access to a single, comprehensive view of their customers, as well as the ability to quickly act on the insights that view makes possible. With IBM Global Services, telecoms can tap into the skills and experience they need to facilitate the introduction and integration of new, high-value, high-availability services and support platforms. Self-diagnosing, self-healing and other autonomic capabilities built into IBM ^ systems combine with redundant components and high-availability features to provide the performance and reliability levels that telecoms need to ensure maximum availability of applications and services. WebSphere Application Server for Telecom improves the return on investment of new revenue-producing applications by leveraging legacy network resources to their fullest extent through simplified industry standard interfaces. A number of telecoms are using the IBM Telecommunications Data Warehouse Solution to improve service and customer retention by merging disparate customer records and product portfolios. And IBM has developed a comprehensive ecosystem of IBM PartnerWorld members leading companies such Ubiquity, Sylantro, jnetx, Leapstone, Arbor Networks and scores of others to offer telecoms a wealth of software solutions to support new, innovative customer services.

11 Page 11 Pre-integrated platform supports faster convergence To simplify next-generation infrastructure deployment for telecoms, IBM offers the IBM Integrated Platform for Telecommunications (IP-T) designed to support the rapid, cost-effective deployment of leading-edge applications. Available in basic or extended versions, IP-T consists of a comprehensive, carrier-grade, pre-integrated off-the-shelf platform incorporating best-in-class IBM hardware, Carrier Grade Linux, plus IBM software and middleware. It also includes technical assistance from IBM Global Services and applications from the worldwide network of IBM Business Partners. With IP-T, telecoms can quickly and economically converge voice, data, IP and enterprise technologies to reduce time-to-market, cost and complexity for delivery of new, revenuegenerating services. Summary The first steps can seem the hardest when attempting to converge and transform network infrastructures. They are also the most critical. As a trusted industry partner, IBM has unmatched resources and experience in helping service providers define and quickly execute a far-reaching transformation vision that can avoid the proprietary technology pitfalls of the past and literally open the way to potential simplified operations, lower costs, new revenues and more satisfied customers. For more information, contact your IBM representative, or go to: ibm.com/industries/telecom

12 Copyright IBM Corporation 2004 IBM Corporation New Orchard Road Armonk, NY U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America All Rights Reserved IBM, the eserver logo, the On Demand Business logo, BladeCenter, WebSphere and xseries are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. GC