Pipeline Publishing, Volume 4, Issue 9

	This Month's Issue:
	New Doors, New Access

Edge/Core Collaboration:
Navigating the Ocean

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David Milham of Milham Consulting, a TMF Distinguished Fellow, is a critical asset to the TMF’s supply chain program: “recent Supply Chain Architecture work has been specifically designed to provide consistent processes, and consistent ways of tailoring the processes to specific product business models” – including application and content. “This approach supports re-use of B2B gateways that are simply configured to meet specific product needs, rather than individually designed per product.” This requires extensive new deployments of more complex B2B processes with many more trading partners: potentially every group at the edge. Again Milham: “Without a consistent B2B model for on-ramping new service providers and new service mash-ups, Service Delivery Frameworks would be yet another lab demonstration or hobby, and not an agile business operation working reliably, economically, and at high volume.”

The resources for these solutions can be closer that we think; under our noses even if out of current sight. This B2B gateway requirement reminds us of similar needs of financial networks and supply chain order flows; problems solved with rich B2B SOAs like AT&T subsidiary Sterling Commerce’s GIS infrastructure product that even today does manage such information networks.

What does the service provider have to offer which is still difficult for the Edge to grasp? One of these is management and resiliency contained in our understanding of BOSS. So we need to teach and demonstrate its critical nature – without which, networks would grind to a halt. But this means the BOSS ecosystem must embrace and learn to navigate in a wider ocean and rougher, more complex seas. Among other things, BOSS will need to scale to handle the scope of these larger seas and the policies and processes will be more complex. Thankfully, it need not be all Greenfield development; new tools like Gigaspaces can help ISVs and SPs reengineer existing platforms to meet these expanded needs.

Navigating the Reefs

Can we actually develop the managed symbiosis that we called (in the January 2008 article SDF: the Service Providers Mashup) the “Garden Club”? Can Network and Edge navigate together through the reefs to reach the clear waters of mutual profitability?

The transformation of telecom is a survival issue. Edge and Networks each bring part of the survival kit, but they need to pool resources and capabilities, or both may founder. How else are we to prevent a new tragedy of the commons, like today’s overfishing of the ocean? And avoid the punitive regulation which consequentially follows! There are still significant political and policy hurdles that need to be addressed or no amount of new collaborative technology will help.

Phil Johnston reports: “It is a real challenge to get intelligent neighborhoods and network providers to collaborate to accelerate successful growth in this market. Today’s network providers are not interested in accelerating these networks, they would

If Edge providers and Network providers are going to find a meaningful way to collaborate, then the OSS/BSS community can positively impact this great undertaking.

have to spend money and change their way of operating. Unless existing [network] service providers respond to our unique needs, new startup service providers have an opportunity to take over new neighborhoods and build a smart community taking the business away from the major network providers.”

In response to our article on OTT services, a telecom executive wrote back, “being able to charge a fee for those who produce services and content to have access to higher bandwidth on the Internet will insure that those companies benefiting from expanding benefit appropriately pay for the infrastructure that their services are consuming. At the same time, the existing infrastructure is not compromised and bandwidth is maintained and evolved for those not abusing the bandwidth. In effect, those benefiting from commercialization of the Internet through their ever expanding bandwidth consuming services and content will pay their fair share for the infrastructure.”

True, we need business models that are fair to all players, Edge and Core; and to end users who, remember, it helps to keep happy. Even Edge providers would hardly disagree with this objective – the issue is going to be over what each side believes to be “fair.”

The potential of the Edge, coupled with the right network, is greater than the Edge in contention with the Network. But this must be based on some form of partnership, seen by both Edge and Network players as a win-win model. Network service providers should not expect to deploy vast IMS systems and demand that users obey rules designed only to enrich the service provider. Instead, they need to present a convincing case for the value that IMS can bring to its customers, which includes the Edge providers.

Nor can Edge users and intranet portals expect use of a network designed and paid for by others except on reasonable commercial terms. We need new strategies and business models that will convince the Edge community that it is better to collaborate, but this requires that the telecom network community presents some convincing value propositions for services that will play to Edge providers’ real needs.

We think the time is now. As old Bill Shakespeare pointed out …

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.

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