Sonus In Session

The 4 Hidden Costs of Maintaining a TDM Network

  

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By Ali Kafel Product Marketing & Business Development at Sonus Networks

Reducing the cost of network operations and administration is one of the leading business drivers behind the migration from TDM to SIP. Ironically, fans of the status quo use cost reduction as an argument against migration, citing that:

1. Their TDM equipment is already paid for;
2. It continues to generate revenue; and
3. It has minimum capex needs and stable opex requirements.

While this sounds like a solid argument, in reality it’s a lot more like saying I drive this old beater and it’s not fast or pretty but it’s paid for and gets me where I need to go—all it needs are gas and oil.

What some network operators don’t realize is that four hidden costs lurk in every TDM network, and they’re draining money and performance as slowly and steadily as an engine with a leaky gasket.

Hidden Cost #1: Power Consumption
Given their history in the days of the telco giants, it’s not surprising that TDM installations have massive footprints with extremely high power consumption.  While the size of the network certainly impacts its energy cost, so does the location.  In Los Angeles, for example, the KwH cost of electricity has nearly tripled since 1990, when many of those TDM switches were first deployed.  And energy costs are expected to increase in the future as the power grid is modernized and a new per-hour/peak usage billing model is introduced.  As a result, some markets (such as the European Union) have issued target reductions that businesses must meet continuously or they will be forced to do so through carbon offset programs.

By contrast, IP softswitch architectures use far less energy to support one million busy-hour call attempts (BHCAs) in a single, standard telco frame.  A TDM switch, excluding line peripherals, would require 10 to 12 telco frames and still support fewer BHCAs.  The message for TDM champions?  That old car of yours may be paid for, but the mileage is terrible and it’s burning oil steadily.

Hidden Cost #2: IMT Costs

TDM networks typically utilize Inter-Machine Trunks (IMTs), which provide a direct circuit path between each TDM switch in the network (e.g., 10 switches would require 45 unique IMTs).   Each IMT needs to be maintained and managed to function properly. With IP switches, you can replace these circuit paths with an IP cloud architecture and shrink your interconnection  costs by 70%.  For TDM operators, that’s like replacing an old car that’s in the repair shop every month with a new car that only needs an oil change twice a year.

Hidden Cost #3: Skill Set and Spare Parts

TDM switches require spare maintenance parts because they’re old; it’s a fact of life. Yet the primary TDM vendors have ramped down the production of spare parts.  That presents TDM operators with a double whammy:  the challenge of finding maintenance spares for their aging TDM products and paying more for the ones they find.  Spare parts for TDM switches will become a bigger issue over time for telcos that continue to rely on a technology that’s at the end of its design life.   Also, just as TDM spare parts are becoming a scarce commodity, so are TDM engineers with the skill sets to administer these legacy networks. While this is perhaps a less visible immediate issue than a depleted warehouse of backup spares, a shortage in skill sets can have critical impacts when network failures do occur. In other words, your out-of-warranty car could cost you a small fortune in specialty replacement parts and service if you want to keep it on the road.

Hidden Cost #4: Opportunity Cost

Perhaps the strongest driver for VoIP lies beyond operational efficiency and cost savings. Competing service providers have been offering VoIP as standard or enhanced telephony service as a way to drive new revenue streams for their businesses (especially by stealing customers from the incumbents).  This is especially true for Cable Operators and other competitive ‘local carriers’ that are taking customers away from the incumbents. For example, Comcast in the US now has about 9M digital voice subscribers, taken primarily from incumbents Verizon and ATT. In Europe, Talk Talk, a competitive local carrier, has taken about 4M residential voice customers away from BT. Enterprises that don’t offer the compelling IP services that their employees demand are bypassing their IT departments, and going directly to cloud providers that offer such services. This comes at a huge cost in terms of lost revenue and customers. That old car of yours may be paid for, but your customers may not want to ride in it because the ride is uncomfortable or it may not be able to take them where they want to go.

None of this should be news to TDM network operators.  After all, these switches have been deployed for over 25 years and are now operating at the extreme end of their design life.  It’s true that human beings tend to resist change, but trusting your network to equipment that’s nearing its end of life is no less risky than driving for months with the Check Engine light on.  Sooner or later, something is going to break – and you can only hope it’s a small repair this time.

In my next blog, I’ll deal with three more reasons to make the move to SIP.

It’s Never Too Late to Learn Your ABCs

  

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By Dave Connolly, Marketing Communications at Sonus Networks

With the last days of 2011 inching into our collective rearview mirror, our minds turn to what we learned in the last year. As an industry, it was a year with some significant milestones. We said hello to Siri and said goodbye to Steve Jobs. And there were milestones that turned out to be a mirage, like the proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. Perhaps tellingly, it was on those occasions where I tried to teach others that I learned the most. After a colleague asked me to write a high-level introductory document for SIP (“something like the ABCs of SIP,” he said), I began on a series of ABCs that tackled other troublesome topics (for telco neophytes anyway), such as The ABCs of SBCs, SIP Trunking, IPv6, etc.

In case you missed them the first time, I’ve included the first installments in what I hope will one day constitute a library of introductory docs that demystifies the more daunting abbreviations and acronyms in the world of SIP communications. They are as short and simple as I could make them—easy to read (I hope) and handy to reference. You’ll be seeing a lot more of SIP in 2012, so what better way to start the year off than by getting up to speed on SIP?

The ABCs of SIP

The ABCs of SBCs

The ABCs of PCI DSS + VoIP

The ABCs and 123s of IPv6

The ABCs of SIP Trunking

Santa Has Elves, the Marines Have Sonus Networks

  

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This year contributions to the Toys for Tots program from Sonus Networks will brighten Christmas for many children who might otherwise have thought that Santa passed them by.  The United States Marine Corps sponsors the Toys for Tots program with a single, simple goal: “To deliver, through a new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to less fortunate youngsters that will assist them in becoming responsible, productive, patriotic citizens.” 

Sonus employees responded with great generosity, donating five tall boxes filled with games, dolls, crafts, trucks, books, basketballs, sleds and many other toys.  Also included—but too big to fit into a box—were four 16” bicycles.  Some people shopped on their own time and brought in the gifts while others donated nearly $1,000, which we used to purchase more gifts.  On December 16, Marine First Sergeant Paulette Newcomb came to our Westford headquarters to collect the gifts and said that they were very thankful for our generous donation as contributions to the program were down from previous years.  Thank you to everyone who contributed time, money, thought, concern and holiday spirit to make this toy drive successful. 

Session Border Control and Security, Part 2: Protecting the Quarterback

  

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By Bob Bradley, Product Line Manager, Security Solutions at Sonus Networks

Just as an offensive lineman in football must protect the quarterback at the line of scrimmage, a Session Border Controller (SBC) must protect core network elements at the network’s edge. And just as in football, an SBC’s opponents have a multitude of defensive plays in their book, ranging from blitzes of brute force (e.g., a Denial of Service attack) to sneakier strategies (e.g., Rogue RTP attacks). To mitigate these plays, SBCs have six different counterdefensive moves that they can use to guard the border from all opposing forces:

• Topology hiding
• Access control
• DoS/DDos protection
• Signaling and media encryption
• Fraud protection
• SIP normalization

Counterdefensive Move #1: Topology HidingTo protect the IP identities of the network elements (i.e., their IP addresses), a secure network  hides those addresses from the outside world. This defensive move, known as topology hiding, is a common practice of both SBCs and firewalls. Topology hiding presents a unique challenge for SIP session communications, however, because SIP sessions require a direct connection to specific IP address for a period of time. Fortunately, SBCs have a workaround to this problem, known as Network Address Translation (NAT) or Network Address Port Translation (NAPT) traversal—but an explanation of how that works is a discussion for another day. 

From a protection standpoint, an SBC hides the network topology by acting as a back-to-back user agent (B2BUA). Sonus SBCs, including both the NBS9000 and NBS5200 SBC, can perform this B2BUA role in one of two ways: as a De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) Host or as a Bastion Host.

Dealing with Zone Coverage: The Sonus SBC in a DMZ Host Configuration

In this configuration, the Sonus SBC acts as a DMZ host and uses the local IP routers (where the Access Control List is often stored) to perform the filtering functions of a dedicated DMZ router. This combination of DMZ router and DMZ host provides a layered security model that reduces the risk of increased latency and/or jitter that often occurs with standalone firewall solutions. The SBC/router tandem also permits other services, such as media transcoding, to share the physical packet-peering connection.

Dealing with Man-to-Man Coverage: The Sonus NBS in a Bastion Host Configuration

In this configuration, one set of Sonus NBS packet interfaces supports external connectivity to/from the trusted network, while a physically separate set of interfaces supports external connectivity to/from the untrusted network. The external interfaces will generally employ public IP addresses to avoid any risk of overlapping with a peering partner's numbering plan. Since the Sonus NBS is explicitly aware of the traffic associated with each interface, it can apply different and more rigorous security policies to packets that originate from untrusted sources. 

Counterdefensive Move #2: Access Control Lists
To protect the network from excessive and/or unnecessary traffic, an SBC should utilize packet rate limiting at the IP layer.  This rate limiting is usually based on IP Access Control Lists (ACLs), which control the whitelisting and blacklisting of peer networks.  (Sonus SBCs also perform dynamic whitelisting of specific endpoints based on their registration status in the network.) Much like a screen play in football, the SBC will use the information in the ACLs to either discard packets from blacklisted sources or accept packets from whitelisted sources. In order to match packets with the correct source in the ACL, the SBC will examine the following packet information:

• Address Context, LIF Group, LIF ID
• Protocol (ex: UDP, TCP, ICMP), Source IP address (IPv4 and IPv6) + network prefix length, source transport port
• Destination IP address (IPv4 and IPv6) + network prefix length
• Destination transport port

Counterdefensive Move #3: DoS/DDoS Protection
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks can freeze a network faster than a pair of 300-lb pass rushers. Sonus SBCs identify and block DoS/DDoS attacks by matching traffic against ACLs in real time (and discarding traffic that matches blacklisted parameters), policing traffic for each zone based on priority and capacity, and using micro-policers to examine application-to-application packet flows.

Counterdefensive Move #4: Signaling and Media Encryption
To ensure the security and integrity of SIP communications as they enter and exit the network, an SBC must encrypt both the signaling packets (using TLS and/or IPsec) and the media packets (using SRTP).  This is much like a quarterback changing signals and plays at the line of scrimmage to confuse the defensive players. When setting up a SIP session, X.509-based digital certificates can also be used for strong endpoint authentication (think of it as a “hard count”). Given the growing need for secure communications, Sonus SBCs feature a unique architectural design that performs much of the signaling and media encryption using dedicated hardware and processors within the SBC device itself, so that encryption does not affect other aspects of SBC performance such as call processing or transcoding.

Counterdefensive Move #5: Fraud Protection
Like the strong safety who suddenly blitzes, not everyone in the world of SIP communications is who they appear to be. Rogue RTP streams are an example of this: media that comes from a non-trusted source masquerading as a trusted source. Why would anyone do this? To steal bandwidth, get network services without paying for them, or to sneak malware into your network. Fortunately, SBCs protect against Rogue RTP streams through a combination of encryption, endpoint authentication and traffic policing.

Counterdefensive Move #6: SIP Normalization
Just as every football team has its own audible codes, each SIP device manufacturer seems to have its own way of “speaking” SIP. To correctly understand and interpret the SIP messages from peer networks and multivendor network equipment, SBCs should provide robust SIP interoperability. Sonus SBCs use SIP Message Manipulation (SMM) to manipulate SIP headers and parameters and normalize the SIP conversation between different devices. In this way, a “SIP of the tongue” doesn’t prevent SBCs from doing their job of accurately policing and protecting the network.

As you can see, with an SBC on the job, our network should have no trouble connecting with the endzone on every call. But who’s got the SBC’s back? Find out in our next team walkthrough.

Session Border Control and Security, Part 1: Your Defensive Line

  

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By Bob Bradley, Product Line Manager, Security Solutions at Sonus Networks

In my last blog, I likened the selection and deployment of a Session Border Controller (SBC) to a football team preparing for Opening Day. Now that we’re at midseason in the football schedule, I thought I would write about the need to review your SBC’s performance, particularly as it relates to your network’s defensive line.

In the early days of Voice over IP (VoIP), carrier networks were protected only by SBCs at their peering points. (You can think of the peering point as the line of scrimmage between a carrier and the outside world.)  These SBCs were standalone devices that were each provisioned with local routing information, served a very limited and specialized role in VoIP applications, and were not integrated with the rest of the network elements.  And carriers believed their networks would remain secure because the SBCs created a defensive line against attacks. As VoIP became more popular and VoIP-based network attacks became more sophisticated, however, the standalone defense-perimeter-only model created by these SBCs proved inadequate.

Just as a football team’s defensive line is made up not just of different players but different roles, the SBC plays a specific role in an overall VoIP/Unified Communications network security architecture.  In today’s world, a holistic security architecture enforced by best defensive practices is mandatory.  This holistic security strategy is known as “defense-in-depth,” and provides an overlay of security (i.e., a defensive game plan) beyond the front-line defense of SBCs to create a meshed security architecture with no holes.  This approach ensures that carriers can continue to provide carrier-class reliability and integrity play after play in the IP-enabled world.

There are many reasons behind the increasing popularity of the defense-in-depth model for VoIP networks.  From the network operator’s perspective, as the Defensive Captain, the most significant advantage is the newfound ability to detect and mitigate targeted threats in real time against any core network element, regardless of attack vector. In football terms, we would think of it as an offensive team sending their receivers on different patterns to stretch the field in order to weaken the security at key points. Choosing a more holistic approach to network security represents a coming of age for VoIP communications as more carriers (and, increasingly, enterprises too) are selecting and deploying multiple security products with unique but complementary roles to fortify their network defense against just these sorts of attacks.

Choosing The Holistic Approach

So what does it take to build a holistic network defense?  Start by examining your security needs across these three dimensions:

1. Security and access control at the network border (your defensive linemen)
2. Security and integrity of the network border element itself (your linebackers)
3. Hardened core elements such as media gateways, route servers, feature servers, management systems, etc. and their inter-element communications (your defensive backs)

By addressing these three areas, VoIP network operators can build an overall security architecture that provides threat detection, prevention and mitigation across their entire network.  At Sonus, we encourage our customers to “look beyond the box” and consider holistic security not just as a defensive strategy but as a way to score points with customers (better voice quality, commerce enablement, etc.).

For more on this subject, stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog, where I tackle the need for topology hiding, fraud protection and more.

Of Earthquakes, Clouds and Auld Lang Syne

  

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By Dave Connolly, Marketing Communications at Sonus Networks

On the twenty-third day of August, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake rattled the Eastern Coast of the United States. I’m not sure what the first thing is you’re supposed to do in an earthquake—probably hide under a desk or grab the hand of your Earthquake Buddy—but here on the East Coast the first thing people did was reach for their phones. The result was a huge spike in call activity. Just one of our customers, for example, registered 2,000 call attempts on their East Coast-based GSX9000 gateway in a single second and nearly 1,500 Call Attempts Per Second (CAPS) over a five-minute period right after the earthquake.

Of course, it’s no surprise that natural disasters put a lot of stress on communications systems. In fact, we built our VoIP architecture around the need for geo-redundant telephony switches and centralized routing.  The benefits of this approach became increasingly apparent in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. What is surprising is that the spikes are no longer isolated anomalies—or connected only to natural disasters—but are becoming part of the regular fabric of communications.  Take a look at the two charts below:

The chart on the left depicts the post-earthquake call spike. The chart on the right depicts the calling patterns in the hours leading up to New Year’s Eve. Of course, they’re very different events: one is highly predictable, the other highly unpredictable. But to a communications network, they’re both a cause for alarm.

When Nature Calls: Session Management Gone Wild
As much as the communications industry could do with a little less turbulence, the spikes are here to stay. And it’s not just earthquakes or hurricanes or champagne-fueled brotherhood that service providers need to watch out for. We live in a hyper-connected world where, instead of mass communication, we have communications en masse: everyone talking about the same thing at once. These spikes in traffic place a tremendous strain on network session management, which means that border elements like gateways and SBCs need to become spikeproof or risk getting spiked. 

What do I mean by spikeproof? Well, I don’t mean planning high capacity for the spikes and running at 1% capacity the rest of the time. During a spike, sessions will be rejected . . . sometimes a lot of them. But the network needs to keep processing calls normally before, during and after the spike in order to mitigate the spike’s effects. That’s what I mean by spikeproof. You can also think of it as uber-overload control: How does a border element behave when it’s overloaded with requests?

One solution is to separate the session management (in this case, the overload controls) and call processing planes so that the border element keeps working at full capacity even when it’s being flooded by requests. That’s what we’ve done with the NBS5200 and NBS9000 session border controllers and they get consistently high marks in performance under stress, which is a compelling argument if you’re a service provider responsible for giving your customers a reliable communications network experience. For enterprises, however, the solution may be even simpler: get as much (or as little) network capacity as you need from the cloud on a “pay-per-byte” basis. Our service provider customers have already started to sell this kind of flexible cloud-based capacity to their enterprise customers.

The idea is that enterprises have their own unique spikes which, taken together, can be managed more easily by a cloud service provider. For example, an online retailer might have their biggest call spikes on Cyber Monday and December 23rd. For an online flower delivery service, those spikes may occur on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. In these cases, the service provider can shift their network capacity to the enterprise customers who need it most at a particular point in time and “flatten” the spikes from their own internal network perspective. This is a very attractive cost model for enterprises, who avoid paying for capacity they don’t need, and an attractive revenue model for service providers, who move from being “invisible” bit-pipe providers to mission-critical cloud providers.

If you attended Connexions2011, you heard Hewlett Packard’s Joe Weinman and Korea Telecom’s Hong-jin Kim talk about the cloud-based future of communications. It may well be that these spikes are what drive the adoption of cloud communications, much as the potential flood of online visitors has driven the adoption of highly scalable, cloud-based, Web 2.0 app hosting platforms. So where do you stand? Are your eyes on the clouds, or do you think cloud-based communications are just so much smoke?

Rich Communication: Sweet or Sour?

  

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by Sattwik Gavli, Associate Product Manager at Sonus Networks

The telecommunications industry seems to have a love/hate relationship with Rich Communication Suite (RCS). Like another well known set of letters, IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), there are supporters who believe it’s part of the future of communications, and detractors who think it’s a  distraction from the real solution. [You can read more on this in Mohan Palat’s blog, “IMS – The Struggle to Stay Relevant in an OTT World.”] For my part, I’ll try to keep this an objective discussion of the pros and cons of RCS.

First, a little history. RCS began in October 2008 when the GSMA, an association that represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, announced the RCS program as a means to facilitate “the rapid adoption of applications and services providing an interoperable, convergent, rich communication experience both in mobile and fixed environments.”  Today, the RCS-e (RCS enhanced) standards seek to do this through three significant enhancements:

• Enhanced Address Book, which provides service capabilities seamlessly out of the box
• Enhanced Messaging, which enables a large variety of messaging options including chat and messaging history
• Enriched Call, which enables multimedia content-image and video sharing during a voice call

These enhancements are loosely defined by design because the GSMA did not want to limit the scope of RCS by defining everything at a micro level. The expectation is that the communications industry as a whole will explore the infinite possibilities of this rich service.

Yet, many of these enhanced features are already available in over-the-top (OTT) applications at no cost. An RCS advocate would ask whether these OTT apps depend on particular devices, platforms and software versions? The RCS vs. OTT discussion is an interesting one, however, so I created the following table to sum up the strengths/weaknesses of each:

As you can see, there are arguments for both. Now let’s look at some of the research data on RCS.  A report issued early this year by Infonetics Research estimates that there will be 6.8 million RCS users by the end of 2012 (see chart).

What’s interesting to note is that only Asia Pacific and Europe show confidence in RCS. RCS subscribers in North America are not expected to reach 5 million even by 2014, whereas Europe and APAC are expected to have 50-60 million subscribers by then.

Although client applications for RCS have had a promising start with Megafon and China Mobile, it’s still not a big market, with  only $10.7M revenue expected in CY15.

RCS, of course, depends heavily on IMS because it re-uses the capabilities of the 3GPP-specified IMS core system as its underlying service platform.  IMS addresses issues such as authentication, authorization, registration, charging and routing. With its fortunes tied to IMS, however, RCS may be in for a bumpy ride. According to a recent Infonetics study (see chart below), IMS will still not reach 100 million subscribers in North America by 2015, with EMEA and especially APAC representing the bulk of IMS subscribers. Despite that, at least half of the service providers surveyed by Infonetics planned to launch RCS and video services over the next two years.By the end of 2011, other service providers plan to launch RCS commercially, including Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone. Some service providers plan to charge their customers an extra fee for RCS apps while others will charge subscribers indirectly.

An important consideration, interoperability, applies to any feature application whether RCS or OTT, with neither having an immediate advantage. And to date, RCS apps have been developed primarily for the mobile market. If service providers can develop some interesting RCS apps in the wireline market, it may gain more traction than OTT services in that market. While it’s still too early to pick a winner, we can expect the RCS vs. OTT discussion to stay heated over the next few years, if only to give IMS a break from the hotseat.

So do you think the Rich Communications Suite is the candy that will attract subscribers in the future, or is it just empty calories? Let our readers know by posting a comment below.

Cloud Computing and the Transformation of Telecom: An Example

  

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By Ali Kafel Product Marketing & Business Development at Sonus Networks

On October 20^th, 2011, my friend from KT Corporation in Korea, Hong-jin Kim, gave a riveting talk at the Sonus Connexions2011 Leadership Conference in Coral Cables, Florida.  Mr. Kim, the Senior Executive Vice President of Service Transformation at KT Corporation, talked about the common problem that all telcos, including KT, are facing:  the exponential growth of network traffic versus the anemic growth of revenue.  He made a case that the old ways of doing business are no longer sustainable and, to thrive in the future, telcos need to do three things:

• Optimize costs
• Monetize infrastructure investments
• Innovate in a rapidly changing environment

He presented the transformation taking place at KT Corporation as a journey of reducing costs and improving revenues and profits.  Rather than just cutting people and changing its service offerings, KT Corporation developed a compelling model for transformation across several dimensions: brand, strategy, network architecture, IT systems and the corporate culture.  He shared some specific changes that KT has made in simplifying its network architecture to reduce operational management and its move from dumb pipes to a smart network.  KT has embraced the idea of becoming a converged telco and IT service company through its use of a simplified network architecture and cloud computing to increase operational efficiencies, innovate with new service models and stay relevant to the future.  One might argue KT has become a next-gen Managed Service Provider (MSP).

Regarding its people and corporate culture, Mr. Kim was adamant that KT does not believe in laying off employees.  Instead, the company has spent a lot of time implementing programs and processes that re-train people, detect and correct organizational problems and increase employee engagement.  This investment in employees has led to greater trust, increased engagement, improved collaboration and growth in innovation.   Although this transformation is still less than one year old, it is clearly paying dividends.  KT’s “Olleh” brand has improved visibility by over 3X, helping to make KT one of the five most valuable brands in Korea behind Samsung, LG and Kia.  The company  was also selected as the world’s most sustainable communications company in 2011 by Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes(DJSI).

Another great speaker that followed Mr. Kim was Joe Weinman from HP. Joe, who leads HP’s Communications, Media and Entertainment Worldwide Industry Solutions, did a fantastic job of describing the different opportunities that Communications Service Providers (CSPs) have to deploy innovative services. Avoiding the technical features that vendors often use to sell “cloud” solutions, Joe explained the benefits of cloud computing in simple English and explained how it is not always the right answer to deploy services. His position was very clear: “All other things being equal: If cloud services cost less than enterprise IT, then…use them.  If cloud services cost more than enterprise IT, then… …don’t……jump to conclusions.” He went on to explain when dedicated IT resources (private cloud) would make sense for a company versus using a public or hybrid cloud.  Both Joe and Mr. Kim were very well received by the Connexions2011 audience.

Connexions2011 Postscript: Thoughts on Opportunities for Telecom Providers Worldwide

It seems that telcos worldwide have started to embrace cloud computing, at least in terms of offering it as an Infrastructure-as-a Service (IaaS) solution that povides virtualized servers in the cloud to quickly turn processing capacity up when it’s needed and down when it’s not.  This model competes with incumbent cloud leaders, however,  such as Amazon, Google and Rackspace. What I have not seen, and what I believe are the real opportunities for the telcos, are Platform-as-a-Service and possibly Software-as-a-Service models. I think the opportunity in Platform-as-a-Service could be a real winner for the telcos if they integrate cloud computing with service delivery platforms and smartdevices.  Imagine an environment where a developer or a user (yes, you heard me right, a subscriber) could easily create new apps or features.  For example, all smartphones today have location information that is accessible by the subscriber.  I can easily track the location of my youngest son who has an iPhone. So why can’t I create a “policy” that generates an email or SMS (based on my preference) when my son stays out past his curfew? Another example is the recent home monitoring service introduced by Verizon. Yes, it allows me to monitor and control activities using a prebuilt app on my phone, but I still can’t customize and define my policy. How is this service different from what the alarm company offers?

In my view, telcos need to adopt the Web 2.0 model and implement Telco 2.0, which is about empowering the users to customize and personalize their services.  Telcos don’t need to build all these tools themselves: they can get third parties to build them and simply share the revenue.  This, to me, is the true value and power of cloud computing for the telcos.

Do you have comments or other examples of how telcos are transforming their business through cloud computing? Please let me know by entering a comment below.

For other thoughts on technology solutions and tools that increase business effectiveness, improve our lives and bring us joy, you can personally follow me at www.twitter.com/akafel or at Sonus on www.twitter.com/sonusnet.

Cloudbursting & Sunshine: Day Two @ Connexions2011’s Leadership Conference

  

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By Dave Connolly, Marketing Communications at Sonus Networks

The sun finally made an appearance at Connexions2011 during a day when everyone wanted to talk about clouds.

On an idyllic morning, leaders from telecom providers around the world settled into the grand Country Club Ballroom to hear Korea Telecom’s Senior Executive VP and COO Hong-jin Kim talk about the amazing transformation underway at his company. Likening his role in the company to that of a hammer, Mr. Kim explained how KT had made the transformation from a staid telco company to one of the country’s most recognized and profitable brands by fearlessly rebuilding the company’s image, culture and services. At the core of that change is KT’s Cloud Communications Center, which has allowed them to move beyond voice into multimedia using a cloud-based architecture rather than more costly, traditional network models.

KT’s story segued perfectly into the next presentation from Joe Weinman, HP’s worldwide lead for communications, media and entertainment business solutions and founder of Cloudonomics. Possessed of an appreciably dry sense of humor for someone who spends most of his time with his head in the clouds, Joe dedicated the first half of his presentation to bursting some of the myths and hype around cloud computing. Then he explained how the cloud’s ability to cost-effectively scale and handle capacity spikes made it a natural platform for the future of communications; a future, incidentally, that was not open simply to the Googles and Amazons of the world, but to today’s telco providers too.

Despite the lure of the lovely weather, many Connexions guests took advantage of the final day’s breakout sessions to enjoy lively panel discussions on topics like SBCs, DIAMETER, PBXs, Voice as a Service, SIP session evolution and IPX. While the sessions revealed that not everyone envisions the future in exactly the same way, all agreed that the road ahead for communications service providers is an exciting and transformative one.

As with any good discussion, we leave with more questions than answers:

• Can Voice as a Service become a PBX killer?
• Will HotSpot 2.0 drive the adoption of DIAMETER?
• How do service providers innovate around the trend of growing traffic and flattening revenues?

Although Connexions is over, the discussion goes on. If you have any opinions about the future of VaaS, DIAMETER, cloud computing or other topics, send us your comments and start a discussion here.

Hope to see you in the future at Connexions! And to all of our customers, guest speakers and industy panelists, thanks for making Connexions a great event.

Sonus Takes Center Stage: Day One @ Connexions2011’s Leadership Conference

  

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By Dave Connolly, Marketing Communications at Sonus Networks

Outside the stately Biltmore Hotel, the rain came down in buckets. Inside, however, optimism reigned as leaders from around the world gathered to talk about the future of communications. They talked of Disruption. Of Transformation. Of Innovation.

The Sonus Leadership Conference brought a message of inspiration and determination from a newly energized Sonus and its fresh leadership team, many of whom are appearing at their first Connexions event. One of those key arrivals, Todd Abbott, Senior VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Sonus Networks, kicked off the day with a warning and a challenge: SIP is a disruptive technology that could change communications much as the Internet before it. In his leadership roles with IBM, Cisco and Avaya, Todd has held a clear vantage point from which to witness the IP revolution. His opinion that communications would move from circuit/line-based to session/user-based resonated with many in the audience and signaled that Sonus has fundamentally shifted its market strategy and focus.

Sonus CEO Ray Dolan, who arrived at last year’s Connexions on only his second day on the job, clearly relished addressing the audience on his 367^th day on the job. Ray described the profound transformation at Sonus over the last 12 months, which he characterized as People, Products and Process. “People” referred to the new (and, in some cases, returning talent) that have joined Sonus under his watch, including a hand-selected executive team that brings a wealth of enterprise and wireless experience to Sonus’ core skill set. “Products” referred to the new products being developed by Sonus Networks. Lastly, Ray talked about the new “Processes” in place to make Sonus a more responsive and quality-focused company.

The day’s third speaker, acclaimed author and co-founder of Fast Company magazine, Bill Taylor, dared the audience to innovate by being different. Using examples from across the business world, Taylor showed how innovation and passion create opportunities in any market and any economy. When Bill pointed out that “the only way to win big is to change the game,” it brought full circle the message of change that Todd and Ray delivered in their presentations. Drawing from case studies that appeared in his best-selling books “Practically Radical” and “Mavericks At Work,” Taylor showed how every industry—from airlines to gold mines—benefits by challenging preconceived notions of industry best practices and focusing instead on being indispensable and unique.

Sonus then introduced an all-star analyst panel featuring respected analysts from Gartner, Current Analysis, Heavy Reading and Infonetics. Gartner’s Debbie Kish discussed the drivers for SBCs (#1 driver? SIP trunking) and its key requirements (scalability/session capacity came out on top). Infonetics’ Diane Meyers provided the audience with a sneak-peek at new research on Enterprise communications (sorry, we’re sworn to secrecy), while Heavy Reading’s Jim Hodges discussed the drivers behind TDM replacement. Current Analysis’ Joe McGarvey added his perspective on the factors driving the IMS market (which, predictably, generated a lively debate among the Panel members) and Gartner’s Akshay Sharma rounded out the discussion with his insight into the burgeoning DIAMETER market.

After a lunch break with the analysts (where the table topics ranged from H.323 to Area 51), the Connexions audience was treated to presentations from Disruptive Analysis founder Dean Bubley and customer presentations from TW Telecom and Societe Francais Radio (SFR) that showed how Sonus technology is helping them explore new markets like cloud-based service brokering and quadruple-play (voice, Internet, video and music) packages.

 The last speaker of the day, Scott Corson, who recently joined Sonus from Qualcomm to head up the Network Architecture team, gave a forward-looking presentation on the growth of mobile video and the need for a close-looped, core-based policy solution to manage network congestion. Scott’s unique view into the challenges facing the mobile industry and the need for “proximal” solutions like femtocells to deliver bandwidth in the physical proximity of the user are definitely “food for thought” in today’s bandwidth-starved mobile networks.

Speaking of starving, it’s time for a snack at the open sake bar before another great dinner. Cheers!