tele.com article. The carrier is the computer
[More info on plans of many ASND customers]
By Carl Weinschenk, Executive Technology Editor, and
Peter Lambert, Senior Writer
teledotcom.com
Providers of local and long-distance telephony services
showed up to the Internet party late and empty-handed. That's
the general perception, and for the most part, that reputation is
deserved. But a few carriers now appear convinced that the
next several years offer a window to leapfrog, rather than
follow, those who have so far led the packet data network
revolution. Indeed, while data-centric service providers
portray telephone carrier legacy circuit-switched networks as
a barrier to data network building, carriers led by US West
Inc. and the Bell Emergis unit of Bell Canada (Toronto) are
starting to show that their legacies are an asset for creating
next-generation Internet infrastructure. Like Internext pioneers
in the cable and ISP worlds, these carriers are building
infrastructure based on the principles of localized content
storage, multicasting, class-of-service bandwidth management,
and high-speed, always-on access. Going several steps
further, they're starting to use their experience operating the
world's biggest, most intelligent networks to bring unique
assets to the IP party. In particular, Bell Emergis (Montreal)
and US West are now building strategies that translate the
architecture and mechanisms of their proven advanced
intelligent network (AIN) telephony services to the world of
IP. The result, they say, will allow them to use integrated
knowledge about users, applications, services, and network
resources to turn their carrier networks into a massive but
supple computer platform for creating new applications and
businesses virtually in real time.
In terms of IP network building, the plans of some carriers
belie their reputation as camp followers (see "Internext
Pioneers: The Carriers"). GTE Corp. sees enough promise in
IP as a delivery mechanism for voice, data, and multimedia
that its goal is no less than to replicate the public switched
telephone network with a nationwide IP network, says Chris
Brickler, director of enhanced IP service for GTE's business
development and integration group. Reading from the same
playbook, Bell companies US West and Ameritech Corp. and
new long-distance providers like Qwest Communications
International Inc. (Denver), Level 3 Communications Inc.
(Omaha, Neb.), and Williams Communications Groups (Tulsa,
Okla.) are setting out to overbuild both the Internet and the
public switched network with abundant fiber optics,
distributed data centers, and state-of-the art internetworking
technologies.
However, the most ambitious Internext plans drive toward a
vision of IP service providers as content distributors, as well
as connectivity providers. Those plans include not only fast,
intelligent fiber optic and routing equipment but also
object-oriented software, application servers, content servers,
and directory services databases. This service-layer
infrastructure, complete with AIN service provisioning
know-how, is already being built by carriers that say it will
carry them beyond the role of passively providing pipes and
into the businesses of attracting, hosting, managing,
distributing, renting, selling, and maybe even owning
repositories of content, applications, and services from the
virtual center of their networks. In concert with several unique
business communities, Bell Emergis may already have
achieved the blueprint for the carrier as master of the
network-resident application business.
Community spirit
Bell Canada is grounding its Internext strategy in the idea that
community-based, network-hosted services eventually will
extend to consumer markets through tools like Internet
appliances. But rather than rush headlong into the mass
market, Bell Canada is testing its model in vertical business
segments. One of those projects, launched in the middle of last
year, involves bringing next-generation Internet capabilities to
Canada's national health care system.
The immediate aim of Bell Emergis's Canadian Workman's
Compensation Network is to boost productivity for Canada's
national health care network. Promising shared administrative
resources, reduced paperwork, and streamlined processes,
the network is designed to cut administrative costs, which
comprise approximately 70 percent of overall claims
management dollars. The network links insurance companies,
government agencies, employers, hospitals, and other
interested parties together to manage claims. Each participant
brings its own sets of software applications and business
practices, as well as pharmacological, legal, employee history,
and other types of information, to the network. "This is a
community that requires a common repository of information
and constant updates to that information," says Jim Tobin,
president of Bell Emergis.
To develop that repository, Bell Emergis is providing not only
secure virtual private network (VPN) connections over Bell
Canada's networks but also an application development and
hosting architecture that steps beyond the extranet model of
mutually accessible but separate information, servers, and
applications. "Much thinking still falls prey to pure client-server
thinking, which won't do the job in the long run," Tobin says.
"More personalization means easy repurposing of applications
from one device to another, so you'd look for more modular
and distributable application code."
In other words, you'd look for object-oriented software like
Java, the language developed at Sun Microsystems Inc.
(Mountain View, Calif.). Developers can define software
objects, or small chunks of code, to represent any item or
function. An object might represent a small application, or
"applet," containing information about a user or information
about a component or link or circuit in a network. For easy
distribution around networks, objects tend to include far less
code than the kinds of programs that run on PCs or
workstations.
Consequently, applets lay a foundation for service providers to
become the repository of applications--that is, the hard drive
for programs that can be distributed over the network to be
run on end-user machines. In the consumer market, the
coming of network computers and other Internet appliances
likely will become the leading marketplace force that pushes
responsibility for the storage and management of applications
out of the client and into the network.
Like Bell Emergis, US West is volunteering for that duty. Its
February announcement that it will embed its network with
Java was a key endorsement of the approach, as was the
decision by Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs,
Louisville, Colo.) to include Java in the forthcoming
OpenCable set-top device. US West says it will give
certification to any developer offering 100 percent
Java-compliant applets, which, by design, will run on any
network device employing a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) or
any server employing Java.
With this move, US West is telling developers that to sell
applications to the carrier's customers, developers must write
those apps to US West's platform, and that platform requires
Java. In the bargain, theoretically at least, developers will have
to write their applications only one time for that platform. This
completes the magic of the network-hosted applications
model: The carrier hosts all applications in one programming
language, then delivers them to any user device employing
virtual machine software designed to run that language.
Sun says Java licensees have developed more than 1,000
applications, many of which were demonstrated over a host of
network computer, Internet TV screen phone, mobile phone,
kiosk, and smart card devices incorporating the JVM during
last winter's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"In the consumer space, Grandma and Grandpa may not want
to deal with a PC and application error messages, so we
propose a market for light versions of software programs,"
says Kel Jones, telecommunications business development
manager for Sun. Those ease-of-use benefits will extend to
business customers for operations like software control and
distribution, whether to disseminate the latest workgroup
software or to update Java-enabled cash registers, he adds.
"US West could now host all of that for you," Jones says.
Even more promising for the carrier is the prospect for
collaborating with developers and device makers to create
unique services, says John Charters, vice president of Internet
services for US West !nterprise Networking. "We've been in
discussions with consumer electronics makers, because some
differentiation may be accomplished at the device to allow us
to deliver unique applications that interact with the services
resident in the network," Charters says. It's a model that puts
the carrier in the position of riding herd over a community of
applications built to attract and hold a common set of users. In
other words, own the right applications, and you may better
own the customer.
Object objectives
Perhaps even more important than the ability to distribute an
application to any authorized user, object software can further
enable users to retrieve and aggregate applications to create
custom programs on the fly, says Tobin of Bell Emergis.
Another Emergis community-of-interest hothouse for
developing such possibilities is the Jazz Media Network,
which now links 15 film studios, special effects companies,
and postproduction houses in Los Angeles, Montreal, and
Toronto. A turnkey operations center managed by Emergis
handles all Jazz Media Network applications. Those
applications--including digital media transfers, online chat and
collaboration software, knowledge management (including
push news), and network load management--are written
almost entirely in Java. While the film and video content itself
resides in customer databases, Emergis hosts all the network
applications, different combinations of which users may access
from day to day.
Emergis's goal is to enable each film studio and production
house to combine and recombine media transfer,
collaboration, or other applications resident in the network
based on specific, momentary needs. The media-serving
infrastructure can "learn" to improve its services, Tobin says.
Incorporating "background recording" of user behavior, the
network's intelligence will be able to create increasingly
efficient workflow applications.
"That's a high priority for a community like this," Tobin says.
"The network determines what patterns are occurring and then
automates the patterns. It can then create a new release with
refined functions on a monthly basis or generate real-time
pricing changes based on usage."
Combined with personal profiling and filtering tools, the model
also could enable individuals and companies to search and
discover communities based on the presence in those
communities of unique network-resident applications.
Advertisers and other third parties could target communities of
interest with preferential pricing or support for services and
products, Tobin explains. "Your search agents can pursue
those opportunities for such treatment," he says. For example,
the companies that are supplying Emergis with application
development technology--Sun, Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose,
Calif.), Silicon Graphics Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), and
Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.)--are preparing to
package access to the Jazz Media Network with their
equipment and could target equipment discounts to network
users.
Intelligent edge
The extensive work required to develop these virtual private
communities promises a hard-to-displace position for service
providers. After all, who wants to leave a repository of
applications created and customized especially for them? But
the community-of-interest model also puts the onus on those
providers to get to market first with community-based
media-serving infrastructures. In that race, US West, Bell
Canada, and other carriers believe they enjoy one mighty
advantage over smaller Internet service providers: experience
with AIN services and the Signaling System 7 (SS7)
communications that provision AIN in the public switched
telephone network. This AIN/SS7 combination comprises
essentially a shadow infrastructure--one that, behind the
scenes, knows all about the user and network-resident
services and that can respond to each authorized user request
by signaling the network to provision the resources required
for each session between user and service.
"Banks and other businesses are excited about IP, but they
won't give their businesses over to an ISP that doesn't have
carrier experience," says Tobin of Bell Emergis. "They instead
will say to carriers, 'We want in IP what you give us in the
switched network.' So the challenge is applying carrier-grade
performance to data networks."
AIN experience will apply particularly to the tasks of
managing massive information about who is authorized to
access which services and of provisioning those services when
access is requested. In the voice network, established AIN
applications include intelligent call routing, visitor location
registration, virtual number service, voice-activated dialing,
voice response, speech recognition, text-to-speech
conversion, prepaid calling, voice mail, instant callback,
paging, voice mail, fax on demand, and broadcast fax. The
analogous services in the IP realm might include remote
corporate network access, unified message forwarding,
multipoint collaboration service authorization, multicast
distribution authorization, or smart card digital money
transaction processing.
Such processes are absolutely essential to creating a network
that's smart enough to handle the kinds of applications
envisioned for virtual private communities, Charters says. "The
SS7 logical voice network model provides a common
directory that looks up and proves that, yes, you are Joe
Smith, and here are the 10 services to which you subscribe,"
he explains.
Those functions in the switched network are virtually identical
to the functions of directory services in IP data
internetworking. In both AIN and directory services, customer
and service information reside not in switches or in router
tables but in the databases and the signaling devices that link to
those switches and routers. Further, both AIN and directory
services are software-based, so upgrades can be made
without replacing equipment. AIN and directory services
software developers, such as Novell Inc. (Provo, Utah), are
now working in object-oriented languages like Java to make
such AIN/directory software easily portable through the
network.
Tobin agrees that experience with AIN in the switched
network will be a big advantage for carriers as they try to build
Internext infrastructure. "Our next-generation networks will be
primarily IP-based, but a lot of the know-how will come out
of SS7 for conditional access and session management," he
says. "It will be directories plus mechanisms that approach
bandwidth on demand."
Similarly, Us West envisions what Charters calls "a tightly
integrated, directory-enabled network" that will authenticate a
user, authorize access, then actually manage the routers,
switches, and other network devices needed to provision and
manage each session. "The directory contacts the network
element and provisions the connection on a per-session,
per-user basis," he says. Indeed, according to the specific
requirements of each session, directory-enabled intelligence
could extend to very specific network resource provisioning
tasks, such as activating quality of service mechanisms in a
router for delay-sensitive applications.
To build a directory-enabled network, US West is looking to
combine the very similar functions and architectures of AIN
and directory services. When it announced its selection of Java
application support in February, US West also announced
several other deals with software leaders. Microsoft Corp. will
develop Windows NT server applications and services, such
as IP voice, collaboration, and Web commerce hosting.
Oracle Corp. (Redwood Shores, Calif.) will help develop and
deploy mission-critical applications, such as manufacturing
supply chain management, for businesses. Digital Equipment
Corp. (Maynard, Mass.) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (Palo
Alto, Calif.) will deliver service integration and management
applications.
Underneath all that, Novell will provide its object-oriented
Novell Directory Services (NDS) to tie any user to any
application and to the bandwidth and resources required to
deliver the application. In addition to objects that encapsulate
user and service information, US West's NDS library of
objects will encompass physical devices, such as routers,
modems, and servers; intranet and Internet links; operating
systems, including Java, Windows NT, and Unix; applications
that run over the network; and relationships among all those
objects. New objects can be added, moved, or dropped via
click-and-drag user interface.
That broad library of user and application objects lays the
foundation for a single sign-on for all users to all network
services--a competitive factor that will become increasingly
important with always-on services, Charters says. "For a
family of four, where Dad and Mom and the kids may have
authorization to access different sets of providers, you want a
single log-in for access to multiple networks, not a log-out,
log-in process for every network," he says.
The network device management reach of the object library
also lays the foundation for accomplishing a longstanding
dream of large enterprise network administrators: a single
point of administration for all network components, segments,
and management services. With support of NDS, as well as
Java, NT, and Unix, in place, US West expects scores of
developers to write applications for network administration
and services management, as well as for end-user applications.
How far will such applications go in the network-hosted,
object software world? Imagination probably presents the only
real limits to what value propositions might spring from the
carrier network as a repository for infinitely combinable
applets.
"You'll see a proliferation of applications that focus on utilizing
the Internet as a way of managing not just information but also
tools people use every day," says Lew Wilks, president of
business markets for Qwest. "If I want to turn on the Jacuzzi
before I leave the office, I have a mechanism to activate it
remotely. Or when the doorbell rings, the Internet device pings
me back at the office. I click on the video to find out who's at
the door or talk to them to find out why they are there.
Literally everything becomes active."
What that means is that the carrier, not just the network,
becomes the computer. In the cyclical context of historical
telecommunications industry hype, such wild visions will raise
some skeptical eyebrows. And in that context of hype, those
skeptical eyebrows should be raised. But the components of
the Internext vision, including virtual private networking,
per-session provisioning, portable application software,
network computers, and AIN signaling, are no longer dreams.
And some carriers are figuring out the power of pulling those
pieces together.
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