Oracle s Unified Communications Infrastructure Solution Delivering Secure, Reliable, and Scalable Unified Communications Services
Oracle s UC infrastructure solution combines tightly coupled session management, border control, and service management functions with comprehensive professional services that enable enterprises to deliver highly secure, reliable, and scalable UC services quickly and cost effectively. Enterprises are turning to unified communications (UC) solutions and all Internet Protocol (IP) networks to improve collaboration, increase worker productivity, and contain telecom costs. Next-generation UC platforms, interactive video solutions, smart mobile devices, and tablets are enabling a new virtual workplace, where one-on-one phone calls give way to rich multiparty collaboration experiences, and mobile information workers efficiently conduct business from any place, at any time. However, implementing an enterprisewide UC solution and extending real-time IP communications sessions including voice, video, presence, and instant messaging across IP networks can introduce a variety of deployment and operational challenges. Connectivity, security, and control issues can lead to project delays, budget overruns, and poor service quality. Oracle s UC infrastructure solution is designed to help enterprises overcome the unique connectivity, security, and control challenges encountered when integrating diverse UC solutions or extending UC services across applications and networks. The solution combines tightly coupled session management, border control, and service management functions with comprehensive professional services that enable enterprises to deliver highly secure, reliable, and scalable UC services quickly and cost effectively. 2
Unified Communications Deployment Challenges Enterprises face the complex connectivity, security, and control challenges deploying or integrating UC systems. Connectivity Information technology teams often run into difficulty when connecting disparate communications systems, business applications, and fixed and mobile endpoints. Protocol interoperability issues can complicate the integration of multivendor IP private branch exchanges (IP PBXs) or UC servers, or the interfacing with SIP trunking services. And third-party endpoint devices may not be able to access the full range of UC services. In addition, IP PBXs, UC servers, and SIP trunking services and endpoints may support different codecs and varying methods for conveying Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) tones, fax tones, and SIP response codes. Network administrators may have difficulties integrating autonomous IP PBX and UC systems because of overlapping addressing schemes or dissimilar dial plans. Security Protecting real-time workforce and customer interactions from attacks and intrusions is important for any business. SIP trunks and internet-facing services open the enterprise to a wide range of threats and service quality concerns, including denial of service (DoS) attacks, viruses, and IP telephony spam. Attackers can leverage public domain scanners and reconnaissance tools to identify and exploit security weaknesses from inside or outside the enterprise. Attackers may try to manipulate signaling or media flows, disrupt network infrastructure, eavesdrop on confidential exchanges, or commit service theft. Conventional IP security devices firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and antimalware solutions are not designed to control real-time IP communications sessions and thus do not address the unique security or service quality concerns associated with real-time communications (RTC). Limited Control Managing distributed heterogeneous UC environments including administering dial plans and routing across diverse IP PBXs and UC servers can be a labor-intensive, error-prone proposition. Identifying, isolating, and resolving signaling and call quality issues can be challenging, especially across vendors and service boundaries. Enterprises need cohesive session management solutions to intelligently route traffic across trunks, interfaces, and resources to optimize cost, availability, and service quality. And enterprises need unified management, monitoring, and analytics solutions to efficiently troubleshoot problems and ensure high service levels in real time. 3
SOLUTION BENEFITS Accelerate UC deployments with a turnkey solution and implementation services Eliminate project risk by leveraging expertise and proven solutions from a market leader Solution Overview Oracle s UC infrastructure solution is designed to address the complex connectivity, security, and control challenges enterprises are likely to encounter when integrating diverse UC solutions or extending UC services across network borders. By tightly integrating Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker, Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller, and Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor, enterprises achieve a complete solution to connect, secure, and control UC. Optimize quality of experience, reliability, and costs by controlling access to applications and services Future-proof the communications network by deploying an architecture designed for multivendor communications Enhance the customer experience by monitoring and troubleshooting the endto-end environment in real time Protect the organization by mitigating the risk associated with fraudulent behavior on the network Future-proof the network with an architecture that enables new communications-rich business applications and workflow automation The solution is based on Oracle s enterprise architecture, a layered communications architecture that connects people, secures interactions, and controls information. Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker comprises the core network layer, connecting disparate UC systems and network applications. It abstracts dial plan management, call control, and session routing services, and it enables easy user access to UC services through mobile devices. In environments with proprietary third-party session managers, the solution alleviates incompatibilities and applies enterprise policies to compliant thirdparty mobile devices. Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller is a real-time communications (RTC) services platform that secures access to wide area network services, including SIP trunks and the public internet. The platform protects against security threats, normalizes protocol differences between network services, adapts to variations in media encoding, and ensures compliance. The Oracle Communications Session Monitor product family provides powerful end-to-end planning and troubleshooting capabilities that simplify multivendor network operations. With Oracle s UC infrastructure solution, businesses can implement a best-of-breed enterprisewide communications system that reduces costs, avoids vendor lock-in, and provides a consistent user experience across locations and devices. 4
Figure 1. Oracle s layered enterprise communications architecture Oracle s comprehensive implementation services helps businesses streamline implementation of the complete solution, providing extensive project management, preinstallation planning, onsite implementation, and postimplementation remote consulting services. Oracle engineers bring broad industry experience and best practices to network design and implementation, helping enterprises reduce deployment complexity and risk so they can achieve desired operational and business objectives effectively and on schedule. The solution provides a high level of deployment flexibility, including support for centralized, distributed, and hybrid network topologies. All critical components are available in carrier-class 1-to-1 high availability (HA) configurations that protect against network and interface failures. Using Oracle s UC solution with Oracle s comprehensive implementation services, enterprises can design and deploy communications architectures that ensure complete continuity. 5
Figure 2. Oracle s UC solution Key Features Oracle s UC solution provides a range of features to address the complex connectivity, security, and control challenges associated with integrating diverse IP telephony and UC systems and extending SIP sessions across IP network borders. Connect The solution abstracts dial plan management, call control, session routing, and endpoint registration services from the underlying proprietary communications systems. It centralizes these services, enabling enterprise IT to extend them to communications platforms, mobile devices, and business applications. The solution also provides extensive protocol normalization functions that mitigate connectivity issues across multivendor UC systems and SIP trunking services. Powerful header manipulation rules (HMRs) help IT teams solve more complex interoperability challenges by adding, modifying, or deleting headers or parameters in SIP messages. Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker also resolves overlapping dial plans and incompatible addressing schemes, enabling enterprises to manage network growth while preserving existing dialing conventions. Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller provides extensive media resource and transcoding functions to enable compatibility between disparate UC systems, SIP trunking services, and remote/mobile SIP endpoints. Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller can convert sessions between a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats. An optional hardware assist enables large-scale media transcoding without impacting service quality or performance. 6
Secure Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller and Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor protect IP telephony and UC infrastructures, services, and applications, ensuring session confidentiality and integrity in addition to service availability. They prevent fraud and service theft and guard against malicious attacks, system overloads, and other service-impacting events. Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller is based on a unique architecture that delivers the quality of service (QoS) required for RTC sessions and maintains strong security. It leverages dedicated network and signal processing resources to detect and block DoS attacks while continuing to forward valid sessions. In real time, Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller fully terminates, inspects, and reoriginates signaling and media associated with each session to protect against protocol fuzzing, eavesdropping, hijacking, and other attacks. Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor provides comprehensive fraud detection and prevention functions. Unlike conventional call detail record (CDR) analysis solutions, which simply examine CDRs after the fact, Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor uses passive network probes to proactively analyze network traffic in real time. Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor provides flexible rules and scoring systems to detect and prevent fraud. It enables administrators to set policies, customize actions, and eliminate false positives. By analyzing calls over time and learning the behavioral patterns of individual users and user groups, Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor is able to detect unusual calling patterns that are symptomatic of telecom fraud. Control Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker creates a core routing and control layer in the network, making the network more scalable and easier to manage. Using this central network element, enterprises can easily resolve overlapping dial plans, normalize addressing, and optimize routing. Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker routes around network failures, reduces toll costs, and orchestrates calls based on business logic. The product includes a SIP registrar that can be used to integrate remote or mobile users, thereby reducing the operating costs of bring your own device (BYOD) and remote worker programs. It also supports a wide range of endpoints. Both Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker and Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller support stateful HA configurations that enable continuous service in the event of a hardware or interface failure. 7
Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor monitors key performance indicators, metrics, and alerts on every session flowing through the network in real time and at great scale. As a result, it is able to identify problems before they become visible to users. The solution provides deep drill-down capabilities to isolate problems across multivendor networks, provide root cause analysis, and resolve problems quickly. Tables 1 through 3 list the key features in the products that make up Oracle s UC solution. Table 4 outlines the benefits of Oracle s implementation services. Table 1. Oracle Enterprise Communications Broker Feature Multivendor protocol normalization Centralized session routing Benefit Resolve interoperability issues; protect and extend previous investments Control and optimize session routing based on identity, costs, or other parameters Centralized dial plan management Reduce operating costs and simplify migration to E.164 addressing SIP registrar and authentication Load balancing and alternative routing Call admission control Optional 1-to-1 HA Streamline BYOD; enjoy greater selection of standards-based endpoints Route around hardware or network failures to ensure continuous service availability Protect against system overloads Provide seamless recovery from equipment or network failures Table 2. Oracle Enterprise Session Border Controller Feature Advanced DoS and overload protection Trunk protocol normalization Least cost and QoS-based routing LDAP/Active Directory interface Embedded Oracle Communications Session Monitors probes Optional 1-to-1 HA Benefit Maintain high levels of service availability Simplify connectivity to multiple SIP trunk providers Minimize costs and optimize service quality Integrate routing decisions with corporate policies Simplify deployment of Oracle Communications Session Monitors service monitoring Provide seamless recovery from equipment or network failure 8
Table 3. Oracle Enterprise Operations Monitor Feature Simple, intuitive GUI Quickly and easily isolates users and network issues In-depth root cause analysis for signaling and media Automatic alias detection Real-time fraud detection Self-learning Benefit Save on customer care costs Improve incident response time Analyze past problems Integrate with existing infrastructure Minimize loss due to fraudulent activity Minimize effort to monitor and detect fraud Table 4. Oracle Professional Services Feature Project management Preinstallation planning Onsite implementation service Benefit Ensure all installation phases are fully managed and all tasks are completed for each installation phase according to the customer s schedule Optimize deployment to meet operational requirements Ensure successful, seamless deployment into production Automatic alias detection Postimplementation remote consulting Integrate with existing infrastructure Ensure ongoing support during services rollout Conclusion Combining tightly coupled session management, border control, and service management functions with comprehensive professional services, Oracle s UC infrastructure solution enables enterprises to deliver highly secure, reliable, and scalable UC services quickly and cost effectively. As a result, enterprises are able to easily overcome the unique connectivity, security, and control challenges posed by integrating diverse UC solutions and extending UC services across applications and networks. 9
Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: +1.650.506.7000 Fax: +1.650.506.7200 oracle.com Copyright 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. 0813