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Powering Enhanced Services -- The
Applications-Enabled Softswitch
BY LAURA THOMPSON
Service providers are faced with the most significant problems of any
business: declining profits, increased competition, pricing pressure, and
customer attrition. There are promising advances in technology, such as
voice over broadband, as well as new models of enhanced services or
network-hosted telephony applications, that they have to comprehend in
order to determine how to add to their service offerings. They have to
find the right combination of technology and new models to deliver the
best overall results for their business, and then integrate that solution
into their networks. To compound these challenges, changes are happening
so rapidly with new products coming on the market it seems that there
isn't time to evaluate one solution before the next is released. Yet
ultimately, as with most advances in technology, the alternatives evolve
until one satisfies all the business and technological challenges, at
which point the industry stabilizes, profits return, and customers are
satisfied.
APPLICATIONS-ENABLED SOFTSWITCH
Today, one platform that has the capability to offer new enhanced services
business models and integrate broadband with voice has emerged and is
available. That platform, the applications-enabled softswitch, has the
promise to increase profits and create loyal customers, enabling service
providers to deliver more revenue-generating services. The
applications-enabled softswitch is unlike early softswitches, which
focused on handling functions such as Internet offload, routing data
(modem) calls from the public network to an IP network, cost-effectively
freeing up the public network for voice. Some softswitches were also used
for IP trunking, enabling transport (dial tone) at a reduced cost, but
they didn't give service providers any new opportunities for significantly
new business models or for growth in revenue or market share.
In comparison, today's more robust applications-enabled softswitches
sit at the edge of the network and serve as a platform for delivery of
last-mile enhanced services to the end user. The applications-enabled
softswitch solves very specific business objectives for the service
provider and creates the platform needed for growth. It can operate
independently of the Class 5 infrastructure or can augment legacy Class 5
switches and in the process provides the expected benefit -- cost
reduction via packet-based transport. But it also offers much more.
With a robust applications-enabled softswitch, service providers can
immediately roll out a pre-packaged superset of Class 5 features using a
hosted, value-added services model and immediately begin to generate new
sources of revenue. The applications-enabled softswitch assumes a
distributed environment so that it provides the ability to scale easily,
adapt to changing business demands and requirements for expansion, and
allows service providers to develop and deploy a wide range of new
value-added services. Lastly, it enables "e-provisioning,"
giving small and medium-sized business users the ability to provision
their own lines via a browser-based portal, reducing the demands for
customer support and simplifying the management of telephony for the user
and the service provider.
The applications-enabled softswitch platform has five logical
architectural layers: PSTN softswitch, applications and service execution,
subscriber device management, service creation, and provisioning portal.
Essential for interoperability, the PSTN softswitch layer provides the
call agent capabilities and manages the interfaces out to the PSTN in
conjunction with the media gateway devices. Using SIP, the
applications-enabled softswitch interworks with other softswitches and
application servers.
SERVICE-BASED ALTERNATIVES
Far more important for revenue generation and business expansion are the
applications that enable service providers to host and deploy new and
innovative enhanced telephony services. Many of these new applications
will represent a service-based alternative to legacy PBXs or key systems
that also transcend previously known Centrex-like services. At the same
time these hosted offerings will bring many additional and important
services that small and medium-sized business customers want.
Business customers will "rent" these new services from their
service provider, immediately generating a new revenue stream for the
providers who host these services. The possibilities are tremendous; small
and medium-sized businesses can effectively outsource their entire phone
systems, saving anywhere from $20,000 to more than $50,000 up front on the
cost of a PBX, while retaining control over their telephone services. And
service providers benefit by having applications that are ready to deploy
and will generate new sources of revenue quickly.
With these enhanced services, business users manage their telephony
through an intuitive, browser-based portal, making telephony management
much easier than it is with a PBX or Centrex. At the very minimum, the
enhanced services offer business phone features such as call hold, call
forward, call transfer, call conference, hunt groups, and click-to-call.
However the enhanced services go well beyond Centrex and PBX features,
offering (also via the portal) mobile phone-like features such as call
logs for missed calls, in-bound and out-bound calls, and the ability to
"click to return" calls or "click to e-mail" a
response. Via the portal, business users will be able to access phone
directories and integrate e-mail. Service providers can brand the portal
with their own logo or messages, using it as a communications medium to
strengthen their ties with their customer and increase loyalty.
MAKE ROOM FOR NEW SERVICES
More robust applications-enabled softswitches include entirely new
services that small and medium business customers want -- services that
are now possible because of IP technology. For example, "personalized
call treatments" allow business customers to tailor the handling of
individual incoming calls, designating some as "VIP" calls,
allowing the called party to be reached wherever they are, while sending
others automatically to a live assistant or to voice mail. Business
customers can now choose which callers reach them anytime, anywhere, while
creating other groups of callers that require different call routing or
handling.
With another entirely new enhanced service, business customers can
access all of their telephony management options, such as their contact
database, call logs, call treatments, and telephony settings via an
Internet-enabled mobile phone. The mobile phone functions like a remote
control device for the customer's desk phone, and gives service providers
a wireless presence even though they don't offer mobile phone service.
The Subscriber Device Management layer built into the
applications-enabled softswitch enables a service provider to extend these
rich applications to a wide range of end points, including legacy analog
and digital phones, and new IP phones. Using either SIP or MGCP, depending
on the end point, subscriber device management enables service providers
to leverage a phone's LCD display to communicate with the end user, map
applications to the phone's buttons, or even control the audio stream.
Because of subscriber device management, business users will enjoy many
new uses of their phones such as missed call logs, or how-to instructions
displayed on the phone's LCD, or other PBX-like features like call pick or
call park.
The buttons on the phone can be programmed for specific services, such
as reserving the second button on a subscriber's phone for a Bloomberg
streaming audio report or for the local pizza establishment. Leveraging
the phone LCD display offers service providers another revenue generation
possibility: delivery of branded content, which opens up a new range of
imaginative possibilities.
The functionality inherent in business phones today is little used and
very difficult to program. Subscriber device management turns the standard
business phone into a powerful new communication device that will satisfy
customers and generate revenue for the service provider.
FUNCTIONAL LAYERS
Robust applications-enabled softswitches have an open Service Creation
layer and published APIs. Many are using XML scripting approaches, making
service creation far easier than ever. The ability to create new services
gives service providers endless opportunities to create custom
applications that will satisfy their customers and reduce churn. For
example, a service provider serving a vertical market like the hospitality
industry could provide a custom package for hotels that offers
hotel-oriented dialing controls for guest rooms, while providing a
completely different set of business applications for front office staff.
The Provisioning layer greatly simplifies multiple provisioning
processes. A set of browser-based interfaces within this layer make it
possible for users to easily provision services for themselves. Rather
than calling a phone company or an expensive technician to make changes to
a PBX or Centrex, customers will "e-provision" their own
extensions, adding lines, making changes to hunt groups or call
forwarding, for example, via the portal.
E-provisioning enables a non-technical employee, such as an office
manager, to manage their phone services in a timely manner, with much
greater accuracy. An applications-enabled softswitch should employ
standards-based CORBA interfaces to allow integration to third party
back-end provisioning and billing systems so that data can be passed
between the systems easily. Lastly, a robust set of CDRs is expected to
enable a variety of billing approaches that the service provider may
envision.
All combined, what do these functional layers amount to? If service
providers were to write a specification for a platform that would solve
their current business challenges, they would ask for something
carrier-grade that adapted easily to existing networks, integrated the
PSTN with broadband, scaled easily, and offered new sources of revenue. If
this specification incorporated the best of other successful business
models, it would include easy-to-deploy telephony management services that
go far beyond today's legacy practices.
Fortunately, service providers don't need to wait. The platform exists.
It has been carefully architected to meet the demands of carrier-grade
networks and provide much-needed solutions for business growth and new
sources of revenue. The platform is the applications-enabled softswitch,
with its ready-to-deploy enhanced services, and it has the power to
transform telecommunications and the way businesses will access and use
new communications services in the future.
Laura Thompson is vice president, marketing and business development
for Sylantro Systems Corporation. For more information, please visit www.sylantro.com.
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