Solace s Solutions for Communications Services Providers

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1 Solace s Solutions for Communications Services Providers Providers of communications services are facing new competitive pressures to increase the rate of innovation around both enterprise and consumer services within global IP networks. Many providers have invested in migration towards a lower cost IP/MPLS core, leaving them well positioned to rapidly define and deploy new application-level services to improve customer loyalty, strengthen customer relationships and generate new revenue. Solace makes hardware content routers that perform message delivery, routing and transformation directly in hardware for unprecedented performance and predictability. These content routers accommodate modular blades giving service providers the power to customize and scale the content routers to meet their unique requirements over time. Solace s solution addresses several key opportunities for service providers: o Software as a Service (SaaS) Infrastructure Solace s solution enables networks to inherently understand and act on the content within the network in near real time so providers can roll out services that add more value to the corporate applications and processes it supports. o OSS/BSS event processing Solace can help providers evaluate high-volume traffic such as call detail records and traffic load statistics in real time so they can identify threats and opportunities and proactively manage call or data flow to best match conditions and policies. o Mobile content networks Solace s platform enables mobile operators to more quickly develop and deploy new wireless services by embedding the ability to route, filter, transform and personalize content for wireless devices directly into their network. o IPTV infrastructure Solace s solution can embed content intelligence within the IPTV provider s network to bring a unique, personalized experience to consumers. Thanks to the networked nature of Solace s content routers, along with their modular blade architecture, a single infrastructure based on Solace content routers can meet the content requirements of a wide range of applications, and can be scaled over time to support new requirements or additional volume. Establishing a shareable hardware-based information infrastructure helps service providers deploy and upgrade applications with many different messaging requirements without the considerable cost and complexity of introducing new messaging software and requisite servers. Copyright 2008 Solace Systems, Inc.

2 Software-as-a-Service Infrastructure Service providers must continually deliver differentiating new services to engender customer loyalty and generate new revenue streams. Many relate this to hot trends and consumer services, but the opportunity exists in the world of enterprise IT as the lucrative and growing market for SaaS as well. Increasingly, enterprise IT looks like a virtual network of internal and outsourced applications, value-added services and partner networks performing functions in areas such as sales contact management, human resources, payroll, expenses and corporate travel. This presents opportunities for service providers to supply content-layer services to enterprises, along with the risk of losing them to providers that do a better job. Solace s content networking platform allows the service provider s network to understand and act on the content flowing through it, enabling a range of new services that position the service provider as a trusted business partner, actively participating in the customer s business above the connectivity layer. inefficiency and waste in global supply networks. Coordinating the dissemination of such information is a key area of opportunity for managed services. o Transportation/logistics Substantial revenues are lost due to poor communications between transportation and logistics partners. Managed services can efficiently propagate real-time status changes that help prevent costly errors, save time and simplify IT efforts. o Horizontal IT needs Coordinating information between locations or to outsourced service and trading partners will be a massive IT expenditure over the next five years. Offering services that aid in the deployment of reliable, secure distributed application infrastructure is a huge opportunity. Solace s content networking solutions offer service providers many advantages: o Revenue opportunities SaaS can be the basis for new, high-margin services that contribute to profitable revenue growth. o Strategic positioning with customers Providing unique content and applications as services allows service providers to become embedded in their enterprise customers processes in a way that lower layer network services can t, making the relationship stickier. o Carrier-grade performance and scale Solace s solution moves the path of data for analysis and manipulation into hardware, allowing thousands of enterprise customers to securely share a common infrastructure. Typical Architecture for SaaS Infrastructure Managed service opportunities exist across a wide range of industries and enterprise needs: o Familiar administration and operation Many service providers have tried to move toward data-layer services using commercial software and general purpose servers that their staff is not familiar with. Solace s content networking equipment is a robust, turnkey hardware platform that is managed much like the networking equipment they re used to. o Manufacturing and distribution Sharing information across companies through integrated supply chain processes and RFID information tracking can dramatically reduce 2

3 OSS/BSS Event Processing Large service providers generate billions of events every day, such as call detail records (CDRs), billing charges, fraud detection profiles, tariff rules and carrier interconnect records. Recognizing situations and trends that help them make smarter decisions about things like pre-paid balances and best resource call routing can help service providers reduce costs, provide superior service and improve service performance guarantees. These events arrive in such sheer volume, however, that they need to be aggregated and organized before they can be analyzed. Solace s Solution Solace s event processing platform can help service providers evaluate all of these events in real time by moving this organization of data into dedicated hardware that increases performance by a factor of 10 or more. By doing so, Solace s solution helps carriers make realtime decisions relating to billing, fraud detection and the other essential factors that can make the difference between profits and losses in retail, business and wholesale networks. Solace s solution enables the creation and application of millions of rules that dictate information flow as network and business conditions change so each call or data service request can be handled as efficiently as possible. Unlike software solutions, Solace embeds intelligence about these events directly into the network, eliminating the need for racks of servers and allowing the real-time processing of what is today done after the fact in data warehouses. Knowing where inefficiencies lie and where fraudulent activity is occurring now is key to limiting losses and optimizing profit margins. Solace content networking solutions deliver many benefits to OSS/BSS event monitoring projects: o Simplified event monitoring operations Solace s content networking layer removes the need for large numbers of application servers in favor of content routers that operate with the simplicity of IP routers. This reduces requirements for datacenter resources like hardware, software, power and cooling, and saves IT expense by simplifying administration and change management. o Increased operational agility Solace s event processing solution allows programmatic control of content inspection and routing rules, resulting in a dynamic environment that can adjust as new business relationships are formed, network loads change or fraudulent activity is identified. o More profitable business operations Realtime monitoring of billions of events per day provides visibility and control not possible through conventional after-the-fact data warehouse-based solutions. Timely identification of conditions like stateful on-line purchasing transactions, instant targeted contextual ads, or the unauthorized or fraudulent use of resources helps improve profitability. o Improved SLA management Solace content networking solutions provide tighter controls and earlier warnings when SLA terms are at risk of violation, allowing faster response and reduced penalties. This is another source of positive contribution to improved customer satisfaction and the service provider s bottom line. 3

4 Mobile Content Networks With mobile markets edging towards saturation for voice services, and IP-based networks deployed in all major markets, mobile operators are shifting from a focus on subscriber growth to increasing average revenue per user (ARPU) by developing, launching and promoting mobile content services to the consumer and business user markets. The challenge these mobile operators face is giving consumers a seamless experience from device acquisition to service discovery and subscription. An easy, compelling user experience is essential to keeping the competitive hounds at bay as companies like Yahoo!, AOL and Google offer low cost or free (advertising supported) direct-to-consumer services. As such, mobile operators must offer a personalized experience without incurring the cost of tailoring feeds to each user. Solace Systems provides a content networking platform that mobile operators can use to develop and deploy new services that deliver information or interactivity to customers over their wireless network. Solace s solution embeds the ability to route, filter, transform and personalize content directly into the operator s network. Decoupling content publishers and subscribers makes it possible to automatically configure and maintain these connections without the overhead of understanding or storing countless locations and relationships. This also simplifies content distribution by matching users with content and applications as an integral part of the process of sending queries and responses, instead of looking up information in a central database. Typical Architecture for Mobile Content Networking Solace s solution allows mobile operators to roll out applications more quickly with less risk and lower maintenance costs. With the Solace platform, mobile operators can deliver a single platform that can be rapidly configured to support highly specialized services for market segments such as investors, sports enthusiasts, business travellers, gamers, news junkies and more. Each segment can be further subdivided, and users can decide which applications and information they have access to, with every interaction automatically tracked and maintained by the network to support customer satisfaction and help identify potential complementary new services. Solace s solution offers the following benefits: o New service and user revenue Solace s solution helps mobile operators deliver a compelling and integrated user experience for greater retention and higher ARPU. o Improved go to market agility Many new services will fail for every one that succeeds, so mobile operators need to be able to test new services quickly and easily. Solace s solution simplifies new service definitions, which decreases the risk of testing new applications thus increasing the operator s ability to identify and deploy the next killer app. o Reduced churn By adding more value to the equation and becoming the owner of the customer relationship, and allowing coownership along with the subscriber, mobile operators can engender customer appreciation of their brand and gain leverage for negotiating agreements with content partners to provide compelling information and entertainment services. o Lower cost of service delivery The flexibility and scalability of Solace s content routers makes it possible for providers to quickly deploy applications and services with very different requirements on a common platform. This keeps operational maintenance costs low, and scales easily as volumes increase. And one Solace-based content network can be shared by many services, further reducing costs. 4

5 IPTV Infrastructure IPTV is in the early stages of fundamentally changing the way programming and advertising is delivered. While much of the initial focus is aimed at the delivery of streaming video, consumers will be won or lost based on the degree to which IPTV can meet their expectations in terms of personalizing their content and overall experience. IPTV service requires that each viewer is fed not only quality video but event-based, personalized data. For IPTV to meet its full potential, deployments need a data management and middleware layer that can scale to support millions of consumers concurrently interacting with thousands of information sources in real time. Solace s content networking platform embeds content intelligence within the IPTV provider s network to bring a unique, personalized experience to consumers. Solace event-based middleware efficiently delivers personalized consumer data events and administrative data from the provider, content sources and advertisers directly to each consumer s set-top box, computer or mobile device. Solace s IPTV middleware solution decouples producers and consumers of content and coordinates the flow of information between them with carrier-grade availability and scale. Solace s hardware-based content networking solution gives service providers the scale, low latency and turnkey manageability required to match millions of consumers with events and data supporting hundreds of channels and advertising in real time. Solace s content networking solutions provide many unique benefits for IPTV providers: o Simplified administration Solace embeds user personalization directly within the network, eliminating the need to centralize profiles or user caches at various points around the networks. This accelerates the ability to deliver information in real-time as message routing is done via FPGAs in hardware, eliminating latency typical with writing data to disk. Tasks such as digital rights management updates, personalized on-screen alerts, interactive audience polling and user camera angle control selections can all be directly handled by the network as users make the requests. Solace equipment is operationally similar to traditional routers, making it easy for existing network administrators to operate. o New revenue opportunities Improving IPTV personalization represents an opportunity for many incremental charges based on user choices. Solace s platform has fully integrated capabilities to capture billing events to monetize micro-services within the larger IPTV service. o Improved competitiveness Integrating Solace content capabilities within the IPTV offering helps service providers embrace what is unique about IPTV rather than delivering a comparable product to today s cable offerings. Such advanced personalization features are a requirement to clearly differentiate and motivate consumers to switch from their incumbent provider. Typical Architecture for Personalized IPTV Delivery 5