Curtis, are you ready for another alliance?
Software developers team up with Sonus for open packet telephony
SUSAN BIAGI
Power in numbers seems to be the driving force behind an initiative backed by
Sonus Networks. At Supercomm in Atlanta last week, Sonus announced its
Open Service Architecture and the Open Service Partner Alliance. The goal is to
open the network, allow carriers to migrate to packet-based telephony and
promote competition through interoperability.
At least 15 companies have joined the alliance (see figure). The partners fall into
four areas: public network services, enhanced services, operations support
system integration, and policy and provisioning.
"We are enabling third-party [software developers] to work with our [OSA]," said
Gary Rogers, vice president of sales and marketing at Sonus. Independent
software developers will write to open application programming interfaces (APIs),
and carriers can begin deploying packet-based services. The open architecture
gives carriers the "ability to cap their investment in legacy services," he said.
"Carriers are looking at ways to improve the voice market and maintain
profitability. They are suffering from the [in]ability to deploy new services," he
said.
The OSA will drive down operational costs while putting the promise of high
margin services in packet telephony networks, Rogers said. The Sonus initiative
encourages independent software vendors to create new packet telephony
services on their hardware. Products include the GSX9000 open services switch;
the SGX2000 SS7 gateway; and the PSX6000 policy server, a high performance
database. All are carrier-class, Rogers said.
"The OSA provides for service delivery for the partners. For carriers it's a matter
of choosing the right application for their network. It's a graceful migration for
them to the packet world," Rogers said. The OSA opens networks in four ways,
he added. It provides a means to offer public network services based on SS7
service control points; it allows OSS systems to interoperate; it supports Internet
protocol-based services; and it opens policy and provisioning features so the
Sonus gateway switch can interwork with multiple systems.
"They are providing policies to their switch to enable it to do different things, to
make it a programmable element. It's a great idea, and we're exactly on track
with that point of view," said Russ Freen, vice president of research and
development with Bridgewater Systems, an alliance member. Integrating services
via APIs is "pragmatic" and hopefully will lead to a standard, he added.
It will also shake up entrenched vendors, said Bardia Saeedi, CEO of Vsys,
another alliance partner. Vsys develops policy and provisioning software that sits
on the Sonus switch. It acts as the resource control layer between the network
and the applications. Vsys joined the alliance as a result of work initiated through
a common customer.
"We come from a heavy telco background. The frustration is to have to deal with
one vendor. [Carriers] want to move away from that model," he said. "When this
settles down, we'll have a multivendor solution that supports many different
vendors at many different layers of the network." |
