Executive Summary. The Value of Policy Control to System Integrators and Service Providers s >

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1 The Value of Policy Control to System Integrators and Service Providers s > Executive Summary Contents Environment and Problem Statement A Model For Service Providers and Systems Integrators Service Provider and System Integrator Sample Use Cases The Benefits for Systems Integrators To Partner With Sandvine The Benefits for Service Providers to Partner with the Combination of Systems Integrators and Sandvine Service Providers are facing daunting challenges. Their traditional customers including consumers, enterprises, and third parties are more demanding than ever before and have a bewildering array of choices. Rapidly changing usage patterns, and end-users willingness and ability to communicate and network in new ways, are forcing Service Providers to react or risk irrelevancy. While Service Provider s physical infrastructure continues to perform a vital role, the role of operations has increased in comparison to its second class treatment in the past. Following staff expenses, the largest Service Provider expenditures are operations and business software, applications creation systems, service delivery capabilities, and supporting IT infrastructure. Systems Integrators address a wide scope of Service Provider IT requirements. Light /Heavy Reading has broken down the software portion of the Service Provider IT market into 14 major building blocks and platforms. One of the most important new technologies that Systems Integrators need to leverage for their offerings in Service Provider IT is the emerging area of policy control. Sandvine has created a model and reference architecture for the evolution of network policy control in networks and Service Provider IT systems, and found that four key areas are impacted in improving the end-user quality of experience and Service Provider IT environment. These include Service Creation, Operations Management, Traffic Optimization, and Business Intelligence. There are a multitude of real life use cases where System Integrators and Sandvine can work together and enable Service Providers to optimize their operations, offer new revenue generating services and defer capex costs by leveraging advanced network policy control capabilities. The collaboration between System Integrators and Sandvine is a win win offer and provides the following key benefits : Faster time to deployment due to pre-verified interoperability Reduced costs by sharing systems integration costs across many networks Simplified upgrades with preconfigured policy control rules and simple regular updates to reflect new applications and new Internet sites. Best of breed technology and flexibility This paper explores the Service Provider IT environment, the role of network policy control, and the benefits that Sandvine-System Integrator partnerships provide. Copyright Sandvine

2 Environment and Problem Statement Service Providers, both emerging and traditional, are facing daunting challenges. Their traditional customers including consumers, enterprises, and third parties are more demanding than ever before and have a bewildering array of choices. Rapidly changing usage patterns, and endusers willingness and ability to communicate and network in new ways, are forcing Service Providers to react, or risk being irrelevant. The widespread availability (and affordability) of new technologies, the uptake of mobile devices and services, a much more active regulatory environment, and the introduction of new, competitive service models particularly from the online entertainment community like Apple s App Store or network-centric innovator Google s multi-prong communications and computing strategy have shifted the environment from the traditional walled-garden network to a much more dynamic ecosystem with fast shifting alliances and partnerships. These changes have had tectonic impacts behind the scenes for Service Providers as they determine how all the needed telecom intelligence and capabilities to support these emerging requirements, fits with their future strategies. Service Provider planners and management are facing tough decisions. This transformation process means that Service Providers have had to re-assess their deployment and strategic use of technology to keep up and leapfrog their competition and their subscribers needs. While the physical infrastructure and network and computing capital expenditure (capex) continues to perform a vital role, the role of operational expenditure (opex) is now at least equal compared to its second class treatment in the past. Upwards of 70% of spend in a life cycle to deliver revenues at a typical Service Provider is opex. After staff expenses, the major expenditure costs include ongoing operations and business software, applications creation systems, service delivery capabilities, and supporting IT infrastructure, as well as integrating it all together into a cohesive environment. The interesting acronym of SP IT (or Service Provider IT) renewal is often used in the telecommunications industry to describe this evolution and has reached mainstream at Service Providers. There are four overarching trends changing Service Provider IT environments. These include : 1) Developing and monetizing new services/application at web speed and near realtime cycles Service Providers need to be much more agile, which means being able to create and manage their products (services, applications) centrally and more spontaneously, using software and mostly off-the-shelf hardware and computing resources. The competitive environment also requires them to know a lot more about how their services are working and how their customers are behaving in real-time in order to personalize offers and let increasingly demanding end-users build their own services. All end-user service offerings have to be priced and usage needs to be billed. This is increasingly complicated, especially with the rapid adoption of mobile data services that involve revenue-sharing between end-user the network provider and an array of 3 rd parties leveraging the network. Furthermore, Service Providers are seeking bundle across all their services, and take into account the end-users changing behaviours with targeted offerings Copyright Sandvine Page 2

3 for segmented niches rather than the one-size-fits-all approach of the past. Service provider IT is critical to this evolution. Another example is the emergence of cloud services whereby Service Providers host applications and computing capabilities in data centers and their customers utilize those resources as an alternative to running their own IT and service capabilities. To offer these services, providers need massive IT and much more advanced applications capabilities, for example Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, sophisticated databases, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, as well as a much more in depth understanding of their customers and end-user needs. 2) Cutting costs, especially opex Service providers need to simultaneously reduce costs and increase revenues no small challenge. Most Service Providers have reduced their capex drastically with more stringent and competitive capital purchase decisions; however, such increased rigor hasn t happened to the same degree with opex. Having the most appropriate Service Provider IT capabilities can make operators more efficient by having more flexible, feature-rich and capable Operational and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS), using remote diagnostics and repair systems, as well as implementing customer portals and software support systems to reduce the need for call center resources. All of these require a quantum leap in information about the end-user in near real time. 3) Migrating to next-generation networks and platforms Every network operator is engaged in the migration to new technology platforms, whether it's Long Term Evolution (LTE) in mobile networks, Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS 3.0) in cable networks, all-ip converged networks, or Fibre To The Home (FTTH) for fixed-line telcos, along with a myriad of other technologies including WiFi and These emerging technologies require complex transformation projects including the upgrade to equally transformational SP IT systems. In mobile, for example, the introduction of policy management systems is becoming critical to operators' ability to deal with the exponentially increasing demand for data services by introducing tiered data plans in lieu of unlimited plans. 4) Moving the customer relationship to the forefront Improving the relationship with end-users is critical to the success of Service Providers. Marketing new, targeted, relevant services and applications, and also dealing with demanding end-users inquiries and issues cost-effectively, to the users satisfaction, are cornerstones of customer loyalty. Service Providers, both traditional legacy providers and emerging new providers, need to augment capabilities in these areas. Attracting, and then holding on to new customers, and retaining the existing ones, is a huge challenge in an environment where the customer attachments are ever more tenuous and there exist many non-traditional alternatives. The best way to address this challenge is to know who the customers are, what services and applications they want to use, how they use them, for how long, how they pay for the services, which customers are profitable (and the corollary, which ones are the least profitable), and increasingly where the customers are located. All this means a quantum leap in the Service Provider IT s intelligence and capabilities. Evolution of Service Provider IT systems used to happen in-house but the timelines, costs, and necessary skill sets don t allow this to take place internally to the same degree today. Most Service Providers have to rely on Systems Integrators to take on much of this work now. Copyright Sandvine Page 3

4 A Model For Service Providers and System Integrators Systems Integrators address a wide scope of Service Provider IT requirements. Light /Heavy Reading has broken down the software portion of the Service Provider IT market into 14 major building blocks and platforms. One of the most important new technologies that Systems Integrators need to leverage for their offerings in Service Provider IT is the emerging area of policy control. Network policy control is a network and service management technique that supports all access technologies, all users and all applications in order to: Identify convergent network conditions including subscriber, application and location; Evaluate in real-time business logic rules to make policy decisions locally and; Enforce policy actions locally and remotely that affect network conditions and subscriber experiences. Network policy control can enhance virtually all aspects of Service Providers IT systems evolution and impact the building blocks as follows: Building Blocks of Service Provider IT Networks Role for Network Policy Control 1 Service Activation Service Creation 2 Service Management Service Creation & Operations Mgmt 3 Billing systems Operations Mgmt 4 Customer Relationship Management Service Creation 5 Data integrity Operations Mgmt 6 Security and Fraud Management Operations Management 7 Performance Monitoring Traffic Optimization 8 Mediation Systems, Virtualization, Middleware Operations Mgmt and Service Delivery Platforms (incl IMS) 9 Planning Tools Business Intelligence 10 Provisioning 11 Network and Element Management Systems 12 Fault Management Systems 13 Inventory Management 14 Test and Measurement Sandvine has created a model for the evolution of network policy control in Service Provider IT systems and found that four key areas are impacted in improving the end-user quality of experience and Service Provider IT environment. These include: Service Creation Operations Management Traffic Optimization Business Intelligence Copyright Sandvine Page 4

5 Service Provider IT, and the custom systems integration that every operator needs to adapt to its unique requirements, are the intermediaries between the operator s business processes and its network infrastructure assets. While business processes provide the lifeblood and revenue stream of the operator, its SP IT is its biggest differentiator, especially versus all the emerging over-the-top Service Providers. This software intelligence and integration has to evolve to meet the changing needs, and leveraging policy control to gain efficiencies in costs or offer new enhanced services is captured in our view of the Service Provider reference architecture. Copyright Sandvine Page 5

6 Service Provider and System Integrator Sample Use Cases Sandvine has worked closely with most of the world s top Service Providers since 2001 to deploy policy control in their networks. There are a multitude of real life use cases and deployment examples of Service Providers using policy to more efficiently utilize their network resources or enhance the end-user experience. These use cases could be greatly improved, and others developed, through the collaboration between Systems Integrators and Sandvine. Some example use cases are as follows: 1) Network visibility and analytics The combination of network policy control and business intelligence capabilities allows Service Providers to identify the level of end-user usage by type of applications, device types and even destination sites, and additional variables. Regular reports can be generated to monitor activity on the network. This allows engineers to design the network based on key metrics and trends and also allows business/marketing planning to take place. For example, if a network is experiencing high Netflix or Youtube traffic, network planners can optimize facilities to the appropriate content provider. System Integrators can leverage all the other data points in the IT domain to consolidate this information in a aggregated or dashboard view. 2) Fair usage policies Implementation of network policy control and advanced traffic management techniques allows capex deferral and improves the subscriber quality of experience during peak times of congestion. This can include applying policies during peak hours to restrain heavy users (e.g. shape their traffic to a predefined bandwidth) so that other subscribers get a fair share and are not impacted by excessive congestion. Fair usage policy and usage caps are part of a comprehensive traffic management strategy. Neither a single service plan nor an unlimited usage plan satisfies the usage needs of the entire subscriber base. Moreover, the different usage behaviors of the subscriber base do not justify the cost of a single rate or an unlimited rate plan. Although flat-rate unlimited usage plans look attractive to subscribers, the rule indicates only 20% of subscribers consume 80% of the network bandwidth. These 20% subscribers are paying the same flat rate as the other 80% of users, yet they account for a disproportionate 80% share of the resources. In addition, Service Providers need to switch their focus from adding new subscribers to retaining existing subscribers and increasing ARPU. To achieve this, usage based billing services or fair usage policies are helpful. It is a fair assumption that a subscriber that consumes 100Gb a month is less profitable than a subscriber in the same tier that consumes 10Mb a month, especially if that consumption occurs during peak hours when network capacity is stretched to its limit. The Sandvine usage management solution suite enables real-time enforcement of policy actions, support for multiple thresholds, support for multiple quotas/caps per subscriber, multiple rating group or zero-rating, subscriber notification, and standards-based interfaces with third-party platforms. Copyright Sandvine Page 6

7 3) Bill shock prevention Sandvine has the industry-leading bill shock prevention solution that encompasses both roaming detection and notification (e.g. for compliance with European Union roaming regulations), as well as sophisticated usage management subscriber notification mechanisms that enables subscribers to be notified on multiple quota thresholds. Moreover, the system also includes sophisticated tethering detection capabilities to extend the concept and application of bill shock prevention into all facets of subscriber behavior and Advice of Charge use cases. System Integrators experience with charging systems could enhance this even further with charging systems to proactively bill end-users for these value-add services. 4) Activation of services based on subscriber profiles Advanced network policy control has capabilities to proactively apply policies based on tiered service plans (by quota not just bandwidth) in real time for a variety of potential thresholds. This might include differentiation on a per-profile, per application or zero-rating of some content (such as the Service Provider portal). For example, a subscriber may have a Subscriber_Tier=Gold attribute (which in turn, drives the application of other policies). Attributes are like variables in a programming language but they are attached to an individual subscriber. They can be defined as a boolean, string, integer, or enumerated type. So in this example, a subscriber attribute called Subscriber_Tier is an enumerated type that accepts the strings Gold, Silver, or Bronze. The Sandvine solution uses subscriber attributes, along with other conditions, to define the actions taken for a flow. This policy can be a subscriber- and content type-aware solution, including redirection to a service provider portal, once a tier quota threshold is exceeded, to prompt the subscriber to top-up the quota or subscribe to a higher tier. System Integrators can enhance this capability by integrating specific offers (such as Facebook Unlimited) into cohesive service bundles. 5) Parental control with network-based content filtering Content filtering introduces parental controls that protect end-users from unsuitable content online. All web browsing sessions are filtered, regardless of the initiating device and irrespective of the operating system or browser. Because it is network-based, content filtering delivers advantages over localized software installations by ensuring that the solution is device- and software-agnostic. This use case complements government and legislative requirements to restrict access to Internet sources of objectionable or illegal content. 6) Optimized VAS enablement Sandvine has a patent application (US 2004/ A1) for the industry-leading Divert capability that enables intelligent arbitration and management of multiple service gateways. The Divert feature enables the network policy control platform to act as the unified point of service intelligence and to redirect traffic flows, on an application-aware and subscriber-aware basis, to third-party systems for further processing. The third-party systems then return the processed traffic back to the PTS for reinsertion onto the traffic path. Copyright Sandvine Page 7

8 This feature is significantly different than, and markedly superior to, port-based alternatives. Sandvine owns the intellectual property rights to the only viable means of logically inlining thirdparty devices on a per-flow basis, after a connection is established and the application and/or content type is known. Consider a very simple example in which a SP wishes to implement video optimization. Sandvine s Divert capability leverages the PTS s best-of-breed traffic identification capability to identify protocols of interest and redirect optimizable traffic to the video optimization platform. Moreover, the Divert mechanism has the ability to redirect based on Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type, so that Flash video assets (.flv) can be differentiated from the rest of an HTTP flow. System Integrator s can leverage this capability to integrate other media sources and improve the end-user quality of experience. The Benefits for Systems Integrators to Partner with Sandvine Sandvine is completely focused on network policy control. It is not distracted by other lines of business and is guided by the BARS principle: Breadth - solutions for multiple business needs and integration with a partner ecosystem to enable new value-added services. Access - provides consistent access-independent and vendor-agnostic network policy control (e.g. our system works with various GGSN vendors) Reporting - unsurpassed visibility into network usage, including per-subscriber, application, location, and device awareness Scale - scalability up to 480 Gbps throughput and 5 million subscribers. Since the Sandvine solution is a distributed model, with integrated policy decision and policy enforcement functionality distributed close to the edge of the network, it is able to scale as the network grows. It is superior to a centralized PCRF-based model where centralized policy control cannot meet the real-time latency requirements of broadband IP networks. There are a number of other benefits for partnering with Sandvine. These include: 1) The Sandvine Ecosystem Sandvine s Partner Ecosystem is a collaboration of best-of-breed technology partners and integrated joint solutions designed to rapidly deploy new services, improve subscriber retention, and enhance subscriber experience. The program ensures a broadened scope of solutions by joining with renowned technology vendors who share Sandvine s vision. These include content control, content caching, media optimization, parental control, lawful interception, advertising optimization and content delivery network vendors. This ecosystem can be brought to bear by Systems Integrators as they build their overall solutions and position their offers to Service Providers. Copyright Sandvine Page 8

9 2) Sandvine Professional Services and Training - Sandvine has a team of professional service experts that can supplement the Systems Integrators in customizing policy and other solutions to Service Providers. 3) Preferred Partners and Joint Marketing - Sandvine has developed a preferred partner program specifically for Systems Integrators which streamlines the marketing process and includes joint market collateral and other initiatives. 4) A Platform and Toolkit for Custom Applications - The flexible Sandvine platforms allow for custom applications leveraging policy control to be developed by systems integrators. 5) Leadership in Policy Control - Sandvine is the recognized leader in policy control with the largest footprint as confirmed by industry analysts. Sandvine is a stable and profitable company with well defined process and escalation procedures and significant experience working with partners. The Benefits for Service Providers to Partner with the Combination of Systems Integrators and Sandvine Network policy control is at the core of Sandvine s portfolio of products and solutions. System Integrators have strong skill sets in all of above mentioned Service Provider IT software building blocks and platforms. By working together to increase network and applications policy control intelligence and visibility in Service Provider IT, System Integrators and Sandvine can enhance the end-user s quality of experience and bring value to customers. There are four key benefits for Service Providers, in working together with System Integrators partnered with Sandvine: 1) Faster time to deployment Interoperability testing between even standards-based SP IT systems and network policy control systems takes a minimum of 4-6 weeks for each release when you factor in the actual testing, knowledge sharing, and associated tools development. Working together reduces this time drastically. 2) Reduced costs Systems integration costs money. A set of modules developed once and shared across many networks reduces costs significantly to Service Providers. In a simple policy use case, the systems integration and a couple of simple policy rules can cost in the hundreds of thousands. Amortizing this over several deployments has an immediate payback to all and simplifies integration greatly. Copyright Sandvine Page 9

10 3) Simplified upgrades Simplified upgrades with preconfigured policy control rules and regular updates to reflect new applications and new Internet sites. Pretested, preconfigured policy control requires less training of staff, simpler deployments and upgrades, and less of the most valuable staff time diverted to working in this area and more spent on applications and end-users. 4) Best of Breed Technology and Flexibility The offer includes patented technology such as late divert, standards based interfaces, a web API for customized solutions and a programmable policy language for faster time-to-market for news services and applications. In conclusion, in addition to addressing the Service Provider use cases across the spectrum of IT network building blocks, an SI and Sandvine partnership solution results in faster and more costeffective deployment, and ongoing ease of operations. Copyright Sandvine Page 10