By Ken Lee

As the worlds of Web, communications and entertainment converge from multiple dimensions, end-user and market demands are forcing transformations and changes in the definition of what a “service provider” is.

To better compete and monetise in this converging market dynamics, operators of mobile, fixed and broadband communication networks are upgrading and evolving their existing service delivery platform (SDP) infrastructures using open, IT industry standards-based technologies, such as Web Services, SOA, and Web 2.0.

Non-telco third party partners and developers are fast becoming the new battleground where telco and non-telco service providers are competing for mindshare and revenue-enhancing services.

An example of this struggle between telco and non-telco service providers for third party developers is Apple’s App Store and the thousands of iPhone developers, which provide over-the-top (OTT) applications to millions of iPhone users globally, where Apple is bypassing the mobile operator’s service delivery infrastructure to deliver applications directly to the end-user.  This business model puts the device manufacturer in the leading role in terms of defining the applications delivered to the handset.

To compete, some operators have focused on value added services, but with the key difference being that the applications and services offered are “exposure-enabled”.  These capabilities can include the ability for developers to embed SMS, location or presence capabilities into their applications, using those capabilities in the operator’s networks. This allows the third parties to seamlessly charge subscribers for downloading and using their applications without having to deploy a charging infrastructure of their own.

This becomes the key differentiating aspect of a carrier-centric app store versus the device-centric app store.  With carrier-centric app stores, they will contain applications that rely on having access to the carrier’s network for the application’s core features, such as offering presence information, or SMS capabilities with a picture attachment.

There are some key challenges many telco operators face with their existing SDP infrastructures that pose an obstacle to achieve the above said business model:

1. Current SDP is slow.  There are a lot of point-to-point, custom, and proprietary interfaces and integrations between the operator and third party partners. This requires a lot of manual third party integration into the operator’s SDP.
2. Current generation of SDP tends to be unattractive to third party developers.  The target developers are predominantly in the Web domain, and not in the telecom domain.
3. Current SDP infrastructure is risky and unreliable. The non-centralised nature of point-to-point integrations and point-to-point policy enforcement leads to unpredictability and unreliability in the SDP access, usage and control process.
4. Current SDP infrastructure makes it difficult for the operator to scale profitably. As operators implement third party exposure layers using a manual, custom integration process, it leads to higher costs.

In order to address and resolve these challenges, operators have to upgrade and evolve their service delivery platform infrastructures; make themselves more attractive to third party developers; and increase the speed with which they are able to on-board third parties and their respective applications and to be able to launch those applications as new services very rapidly.

There are some critical attributes that operators need to implement in their SDP evolution to better monetise their network assets by leveraging third party partners.  By implementing these critical attributes, operators will deploy a centralized service exposure platform within their SDP, and will be able to resolve the key challenges in their current generation of SDP infrastructure.  This results in transforming the operator’s SDP infrastructure to be faster, more attractive to third party developers, as well as more controlled and to scale profitably.

Core to the operator’s SDP evolution is their ability to selectively, securely, and profitably expose some of their “crown jewel” network assets to untrusted third party partners and developers.  Unless the exposed capabilities, and the associated application programming interfaces (API) are highly compelling to the third party developers, it will be difficult for operators to attract a large number of third parties to their ecosystem.

• A comprehensive service exposure platform should provide:
• A powerful policy enforcement engine,
• A converged Web-Telecom service exposure layer,
• A highly scalable and automated partner relationship management module,
• A wide range of re-usable value-added service enablers, and
• A network abstraction layer which bridges the world of legacy Intelligent Networks (IN) with next-generation IMS networks.

This way, customers gain access to a proven set of value-added service enablers, which can be re-used across multiple partners and their applications, across multiple network types, and across multiple device types.  These service enablers include SMS, MMS, WAP Push, call control, presence, location, charging, and subscriber profile, among others.

The business model of leveraging third party application and content developers to drive very significant data revenue has been successfully proven by non-telecom service providers, such as Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

The world of Web 2.0 applications and social networks, coupled with OTT service providers, are clearly energising mobile network operators, as well as fixed and broadband operators, to invest aggressively in building out service exposure platforms.

As operators evolve, extend and transform their SDPs to meet this challenge, they should increasingly turn to powerful, proven, carrier-grade service exposure platforms to help them become faster, more attractive to third party developers, gain more control and greater reliability, and help them scale more profitably.

Ken Lee is , Product Marketing Director, Oracle Communications