A framework for abstracting complexities in service delivery platforms

The telecommunication (telco) and Information Technology (IT) industries are converging into a single highly competitive market, where service diversity is the critical success factor. To provide diverse services, the telco network operator must evolve the traditional voice service centric network into a generic service centric network. An appropriate, but incomplete, architecture for this purpose is the Service Delivery Platform (SDP). The SDP represents an IT-based system that simplifies access to telco capabilities using services. SDP services offer technology independent interfaces to external entities. The SDP has vendor-specific interpretations that mix standards-based and proprietary interfaces to satisfy specific requirements. In addition, SDP architectural representations are technology-specific. To be widely adopted the SDP must provide standardised interfaces. This work contributes toward SDP standardisation by defining a technology independent and extendable architecture, called the SDP Framework. To define the framework we first describe telecom-IT convergence and a strategy to manage infrastructure integration. Second, we provide background on the SDP and its current limitations. Third, we treat the SDP as a complex system and determine a viewpoint methodology to define its framework. Fourth, we apply viewpoints by extracting concepts and abstractions from various standard-based telecom and IT technologies: the Intelligent Network (IN), Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture (TINA), Parlay, enhanced Telecommunications Operations Map (eTOM), Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Fifth, by extending the concepts and abstractions we define the SDP framework. The framework is based on a generic business model and reference model. The business model shows relationships between SDP, telco and external entities using business relationships points. The reference model extends the business model by formalising relationships as reference points. Reference points expand into interfaces exposed by services. Applications orchestrate service functions via their interfaces. Service and application distribution is abstracted by middleware that operates across business model domains. Services, interfaces, applications and middleware are managed in Generic Service Oriented Architectures (GSOA). Multiple layered GSOAs structure the SDP framework. Last, we implement the SDP framework using standard-based technologies with open service interfaces. The implementation proves framework concepts, promotes SDP standardisation and identifies research areas

Service creation and deployment on an intelligent network

Active competition in the telecommunications industry has caused a dramatic shift in focus for public network operators. Service designers need to be able to easily and rapidly create services according to the customer’s requirements. This is achievable by using Intelligent Networks (INs). Two primary goals of service development under the Intelligent Network paradigm are rapid service crcation using new software technologies and the minimisation of service development costs through switch vendor independence. This thesis examines the development of an IN architecture and the deployment of two call control services on it using the ITU-T Service Independent Building Block (SIB) methodology. The services are deployed on a narrow-band Excel switching platform. Various aspects of the IN Conceptual Model (INCM) are examined with a particular emphasis on the middle two planes: the Global Functional Plane (GFP) and the Distributed Functional Plane (DFP). Representations of these planes are designed using the ITU-T Specification and Description Language (SDL) [SDL89] and implemented using Telelogic’s SDL Development Tool (SDT). SDL provides capabilities to allow logical structuring of the INCM into its constituent entities, the modelling of communication between these entities and the processing within them. The Intelligent Network paradigm was developed with a view to extendibility. Two call control services, Ringback and Group Call Pickup, are implemented using the SIB methodology. Further services may be created by rearranging the order of execution of the existing SIBs or, if necessary, by adding new SIBs to the architecture. Given the demand for multimedia applications to run on top of emerging broadband networks it is becoming increasingly more important for network operators to study the enhancement and evolution of their IN service platforms in order to cope with new customer requirements. TINA is the leading architecture for multimedia service control and delivery, which defines an emerging open service platform. Migration from IN to TINA is explored in this thesis by considering two individual paths of migration. The first path involves the replacement of the IN service control and management elements (SCF, SMF, SDF) with appropriate TINA Computational Objects while the switching elements (SSF, CCF) remain IN compliant. As there is no one-to-one mapping of IN functional entities to TINA computational objects, an Adaptation Unit is required to facilitate interaction between the legacy IN entities and the TINA Computational Objects. The advantage of this step is that it is possible to keep the investment of deployed IN SSPs while taking advantage of TINA service modelling. The second step involves the introduction of TINA into the switch. In this approach the switch and its switching capabilities may be viewed as a TINA object in itself. Interworking between IN and TINA (as a step towards full migration to TINA) yields a much richer service platform. This service platform facilitates the creation of services that incorporate both IN and TINA features. A TINA service may use pieces of IN functionality and IN services may also use TINA functionality. It is possible to invoke these hybrid services from either a PSTN or a TINA terminal. Three hybrid IN/TINA services were designed to demonstrate the increased resources available to the service designer using such a platform. A user connected to the IN switch invokes the Freephone Service. This service uses a TINA database to convert the 1-800 number to an extension number. The call is then connected using IN switching functionality. The Audio Video Conference, uses TINA computational objects to set up a video stream between participating users while the audio connection is handled by the IN switching functionality. This service is invoked from a TINA terminal. A user connected to the IN switch invokes the Ringback Service but it runs in the TINA domain using both TINA and IN functionality. Therefore, as well as presenting an application of the IN technology, this thesis proposes possible steps towards migration to the TINA architecture

Managing Next Generation Networks (NGNs) based on the Service-Oriented Architechture (SOA). Design, Development and testing of a message-based Network Management platform for the integration of heterogeneous management systems.

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) aim to provide a unified network infrastructure to offer multimedia data and telecommunication services through IP convergence. NGNs utilize multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies, creating a converged packet-switched network infrastructure, where service-related functions are separated from the transport functions. This requires significant changes in the way how networks are managed to handle the complexity and heterogeneity of NGNs. This thesis proposes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based management framework that integrates heterogeneous management systems in a loose coupling manner. The key benefit of the proposed management architecture is the reduction of the complexity through service and data integration. A network management middleware layer that merges low level management functionality with higher level management operations to resolve the problem of heterogeneity was proposed. A prototype was implemented using Web Services and a testbed was developed using trouble ticket systems as the management application to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed framework. Test results show the correcting functioning of the system. It also concludes that the proposed framework fulfils the principles behind the SOA philosophy

An Architecture for the Integration of Internet and Telecommunication Services

In this paper, we propose an architecture for hybrid services, i.e., services that span many network technologies, especially the PSTN and the Internet. These services will play an important role in the future, because they leverage on the existing infrastructures, rather than requiring brand-new and sophisticated mechanisms to be deployed. We explore a few issues related to hybrid services and propose a platform, as well as a set of components, to facilitate their creation and deployment. The existing infrastructure is only required to generate specific events when requests for hybrid services are detected. We present the design of s service layer, based on Java, that handles the treatment of these special requests. Our service layer is provided with a set of generic components realized as Java Beans. Hence, we can provide hybrid services without changing the existing infrastructure. We illustrate this strength of our architecture by discussing the call forwarding service

Integration of Internet and Telecommunications- An Architecture for Hybrid Services

In this article, we propose an architecture for hybrid services, i.e., services that span many network technologies, such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), cellular networks and networks based on the Internet Protocol (IP). These services will play an important role in the future because they leverage on the existing infrastructures, rather than requiring new and sophisticated mechanisms to be deployed. We explore a few issues related to hybrid services and propose a platform, as well as a set of components, to facilitate their creation and deployment. The existing infrastructure is only required to generate specific events when requests for hybrid services are detected. We present the design of a service layer, based on Java, that handles the treatment of these special requests. Our service layer is provided with a set of generic components realized according to the JavaBeans model. We illustrate the strength of our architecture by discussing two hybrid-service examples: a calendar service and a call forwarding service

SIP servlets-based service provisioning in MANETs

Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) are a part of the fourth generation networks vision. They are new wireless networks having transient mobile nodes with no need for a pre-installed infrastructure. They are of utmost interest for the future networks owing to their flexibility, effortlessness of deployment and related low cost. They come in two flavours: standalone MANETs and integrated with the conventional 3G network. Providing value-added services is the core concept of several paradigms and has been extensively studied in legacy network. However, providing such services in MANETs is a challenging process. Indeed, MANETs are known for their heterogeneous devices, limited resources, dynamic topology and frequent disconnections/connections. New SIP based solutions for signalling and media handling in these networks are emerging. Furthermore, SIP is the primary protocol for 3G networks. Therefore, SIP servlets become a promising paradigm for service provisioning in MANETs. This thesis addresses the service provisioning aspects in both standalone MANETs and integrated 3G/MANETs. The SIP servlets framework is considered as the starting point while Multihop Cellular Networks (MCNs), the widely studied networks, are used as an example of integrated 3G/MANETs. Background information is provided, architectures requirements are derived and related work is reviewed. A novel business model is proposed for service provision in standalone MANETs. The business model defines the business roles and the relationship and interfaces between them. We also propose a service invocation and execution architecture implementing the business model. The solution is based on overlay network and a distribution scheme of the SIP servlets engine. The overlay network enables self-organization and self-recovery to take into account MANETs characteristics. As for the integrated 3G/MANETs we propose high level architectural alternatives for service provisioning in MCNs. We identify the most interesting alternatives from the network operator point of view and proposed a detailed and concrete architecture for the promising alternative. Overall architecture, functional entities and procedures are presented. During this work, we built prototypes as proof-of-concept and made preliminary performance measurements, used SPIN as protocol validation tool and adopted OPNET for simulation. The results show that we can provide services in MANETs as we do in conventional networks with reasonable performance

A Consumer Premises End User Interface for OSA/Parlay Applications

Student Number : 9812990V - MSc project report - School of Electrical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built EnvironmentThe NGN is a multi-service network which inter-works with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), the voice network and the data network provided by Internet. Through network independent APIs such as OSA-Parlay, the NGN slowly migrates and converges Telecoms and IT networks, voice and Internet, into a common packet infrastructure. The OSA/Parlay group defines a softswitch architecture which provides network independent APIs or SCFs that enable cross network application development The Parlay softswitch provides connectivity to underlying transport networks for application providers. The standard specifies the interaction between application providers and the softswitch. However, the standard does not specify an interface to regulate the interaction between service providers and the consumer/end user domain. This means that applications housed in the service provider domain have no defined interfaces to manage service delivery to the consumer domain. For most service providers, the lack of a non-standardized API set impedes efforts to decrease application creation and deployment time. This research investigates the design and implementation of a standard consumer interface which can be used by application providers within an OSA/Parlay system to deliver service content to end users. The main objectives with regard to the functionality provided by the interface include the integration of facilities which will assist application providers to manage end user access and authentication (to enable users to establish a secure context for service usage), subscription (to handle the subscription life cycle), and service usage management (to enable the initiation and termination of services). The TINA-Consortium (TINA-C) has developed a service architecture to support the creation and provisioning of services in the NGN. The TINA architecture offers a comprehensive set of concepts and principles that can be used in the design of NGN services. The architecture consists of a set of reusable and interoperable service components encapsulating a rich and well defined set of APIs aimed at supporting the interaction between application providers and consumers. TINA’s session concepts, information structures, interfaces and service components can be used to support the design of a consumer premises end user interface for OSA/Parlay. This research also aims to explore the feasibility of using the TINA API within an OSA/Parlay system to support consumer domain service delivery. In order to implement the consumer interface for Parlay applications, the ability of the TINA service architecture to provide Access and Authentication management; Subscription and Profile management; and Service Usage management was investigated. The report documents the design and implementation of an OSA/Parlay consumer interface utilizing TINA service components and interfaces

Performance controls for distributed telecommunication services

As the Internet and Telecommunications domains merge, open telecommunication service architectures such as TINA, PARLAY and PINT are becoming prevalent. Distributed Computing is a common engineering component in these technologies and promises to bring improvements to the scalability, reliability and flexibility of telecommunications service delivery systems. This distributed approach to service delivery introduces new performance concerns. As service logic is decomposed into software components and distnbuted across network resources, significant additional resource loading is incurred due to inter-node communications. This fact makes the choice of distribution of components in the network and the distribution of load between these components critical design and operational issues which must be resolved to guarantee a high level of service for the customer and a profitable network for the service operator. Previous research in the computer science domain has addressed optimal placement of components from the perspectives of minimising run time, minimising communications costs or balancing of load between network resources. This thesis proposes a more extensive optimisation model, which we argue, is more useful for addressing concerns pertinent to the telecommunications domain. The model focuses on providing optimal throughput and profitability of network resources and on overload protection whilst allowing flexibility in terms of the cost of installation of component copies and differentiation in the treatment of service types, in terms of fairness to the customer and profitability to the operator. Both static (design-time) component distribution and dynamic (run-time) load distribution algorithms are developed using Linear and Mixed Integer Programming techniques. An efficient, but sub-optimal, run-time solution, employing Market-based control, is also proposed. The performance of these algorithms is investigated using a simulation model of a distributed service platform, which is based on TINA service components interacting with the Intelligent Network through gateways. Simulation results are verified using Layered Queuing Network analytic modelling Results show significant performance gains over simpler methods of performance control and demonstrate how trade-offs in network profitability, fairness and network cost are possible

Quality modeling in electronic healthcare: a study of mHealth Service

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to radically transform health services in developing countries. Among various ICT driven health platforms, mobile health is the most promising one because of its widespread penetration and cost effective services. This paper aims to examine Quality Modeling in Electronic Healthcare by using PLS based SEM

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Strategic Corporate Research Report

[Excerpt] Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (hereinafter Wal-Mart) is the second-largest company in the world. It has more annual revenue than the GDP of Switzerland. It sells more DVDs, magazines, books, CDs, dog food, diapers, bicycles, toys, toothpaste, jewelry, and groceries than any other retailer does worldwide. It is the largest retailer in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, the second-largest in the United Kingdom, and the third largest in Brazil, With its partners, it is the largest retailer in Central America. Wal-Mart is also the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and it has 1.8 million employees around the globe. Wal-Mart is so huge that it effectively sets the terms for large swaths of the global economy, from retail wages to apparel prices to transoceanic shipping rates to the location of toy factories. Indeed, if there is one single aspect to understand about the company, it is the fact that Wal-Mart is transforming the relations of production in virtually every product category it sells, through its relationships with suppliers. But its influence goes far beyond the economy. It sets social policy by refusing to sell certain types of birth control. Its construction of supercenters molds the landscape, shapes traffic patterns, and alters the local commercial mix. The retail goliath shapes culture by selling the music of patriotic country singer Garth Brooks but not the critical (and hilarious) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (the Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. It influences politics by donating millions to conservative politicians and think tanks. Wal-Mart is, in short, one of the most powerful entities in the world. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart has developed a long list of critics, including unions, human rights organizations, religious groups, environmental activists, community organizations, small business groups, academics, children’s rights groups, and even institutional investors. These groups have exposed the company’s illegal union-busting tactics, its many violations of overtime laws, its abuse of child labor, its egregious healthcare policies, its super-exploitation of immigrant workers, its rampant gender discrimination, the horrific labor conditions at its suppliers’ factories, and its unlawful environmental degradation. They have also chronicled the deleterious effect Wal-Mart has on the public coffers and the quality of community life. New Wal-Mart stores and distribution centers often swallow up government subsidies and tax breaks, take public land, create more congestion, reduce overall wages, destroy retail variety, and increase public outlays for healthcare. To its critics, Wal-Mart represents the worst aspects of 21st-eentury capitalism. Wal-Mart usually counters any criticism with two words: low prices. It is a powerful mantra in a consumerist world. The company does make more products affordable to more people, and that is nothing to sneeze at when wages are stagnant, jobs insecure, pensions disappearing, and health coverage shrinking. With low prices, Wal-Mart helps working men and women get more from their meager paychecks, more necessities like bread, and more luxuries, like roses, too. It is a brilliant and incontrovertible argument, and Wal-Mart’s most ardent defenders take it even farther. They say its obsession with low prices makes the entire economy more efficient and more productive. Suppliers and competitors have to produce more and better products with the same resources, and that redounds to everyone. In the micro, it means falling prices and rising product quality. In the macro, it means economic growth, more jobs, and higher tax revenues. To its defenders, Wal-Mart represents the best aspects of 21st-century capitalism. Despite their radical opposition, critics and defenders of the world’s largest corporation agree on one thing: Wal-Mart represents 21st-century capitalism. It symbolizes a system of increasing market penetration and decreasing social regulation, where more and more aspects of life around the world are subject to economic competition. Wal-Mart’s success rests upon the ongoing destruction of social power in favor of corporate power. It takes advantage of the conditions of the neo-liberal world, from the availability of instant and inexpensive global communication to the continuing collapse of agricultural employment around the world to the rapid diffusion of technological innovation to the oversupply of subjugated migrant labor in nearly every country to the continued existence of undemocratic and corporate-dominated governments. For some, this is as it should be, all part of capitalism’s natural and ultimately benign development. For the rest of us, Wal-Mart is at the heart of what is wrong with the world