Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Release -1 Abstract

This document refers to Service Delivery Platform (SDP) which enables Service Providers to develop and deliver services more rapidly. It describes the overview, logical architecture and some typical SDP applications.

1. Introduction
SDP is an Open, Horizontal, Standards-based platform that enables Service Providers to create and deliver new innovative services for existing end users as well as next generation services for SIP phones. New services for NGN are too complex and rigid to allow for the rapid creation and deployment in the network and are to be developed by third party. SDP provides these services by insulating the service developers from the underlying complexities of the network, streamlining the deployment of new services and enabling providers to respond to market needs in less time and at lower cost. The objectives of SDP are: Rapid service deployment for fastest time-to-revenue. Service differentiation for better customer acquisition and retention. Lower cost of service deployment. Telco grade proven, high reliability and adaptability

To meet the above objects, SDP provides: A service creation environment A service orchestration and execution environment Abstractions for media control, presence/location, integration and other lowlevel communication capabilities service control environment

2. Overview
SDP at its simplest is a standards-based environment for design, deployment and management of IT and network converged services. SDP opens up the network to a vast community of services and developers without sacrificing the management, security and control necessary to deliver the quality of service, the telecom industry demands. SDP has the following features: A Carrier grade execution environment for services that access next-generation as well as traditional networks. The explicit design of the SDP enables services to work on present as well as future networks, ensuring future proofing. Enablers and Enabler Framework that provide development time and run-time encapsulation of key components and building blocks that are critical to service development.
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Components that bring SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) principles to a service delivery context by enabling orchestration, policy enforcement and composition. A service gateway that allows partners controlled access to critical network resources. A unified user profile that provides a unified view of user information to the service layer and execution environment. Out of the box services built on the standards based platform.

3. Logical Architecture
Application Server Applications

OSA/Parlay Interface

SDP
SCF

Interface Class Frame work Presence Call control Service Capability Servers (SCSs) (logical Implementation of Enablers)

HLR

MSC

SSP

Servers e.g. Billing Servers

SCS: Service Capability Server SCF: Service Capability Feature HLR: Home Location Register MSC: Mobile Switching Centre SSP: Service Switching Point OSA: Open Services Architecture Figure1: Logical Architecture of Service Delivery Platform (SDP)

Figure-1 above shows the logical architecture of SDP. Logical entities are Applications, Application Servers, Service Capability Servers (SCSs), the OSA/Parlay framework and Core Network Elements. SCSs are logical implementation of Enablers. Applications are deployed on Application Servers and use the capabilities defined in OSA/Parlay and offered to the applications through the APIs. SCS implements the Server side and application the client side of API. Communication between the application and SCS is done using standard IT middleware infrastructure. Service Capability Servers (SCSs) implement the API (that is interface classes of the Service Capability Features) and potentially interact with core network elements. Network elements may include Home Location Register (HLR), Mobile Switching Centre (MSC), Service Switching Point (SSP) etc. Application Servers could be either in the same business domain as the SCSs or in the different domain.
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A service Capability Server may implement multiple SCFs. As an SCS is a logical entity, it need not be implemented as a separate box. For example, Content based Charging SCF might very well be directly offered by the Charging and Billing Server itself.

4. Enablers and Enabler Framework

Enablers and Enabler Framework in SDP provide abstraction of complexity of underlying system to an application developer making possible application portability across various systems that expose similar functionality, future-proofing and easing service migration. SDP includes a common Enabler Framework as well as several out of box Enablers built upon the enabler framework.

4.1 Enablers
Enablers are building blocks that expose a simple north bound API (e.g. with a Java or a web service binding) and isolate the user from the complexities of the underlying network capabilities. This enables developers to develop network-centric applications and future-proofing service development. In SDP, enablers provide following typical features and benefits: (i) Abstraction of underlying network technology choices and settings: An enabler can expose the same capability northbound to an application developer thus stabilizing the application development API with respect to underlying network technology choices. As a result, migration at the network level and integration with the existing and future network elements can be carried out incrementally without wholesale replacement. API based support for service integration: By supporting a broad range of APIs, enablers can permit a number of integration scenarios including in-house development as well as integration with 3rd party applications.

(ii)

(iii) Simpler OSS/BSS (Operations Support Systems/Business Support Systems) integration: By providing enablers (such as charging) that encapsulate common OSS/BSS integration requirements, operators can consolidate and share OSS/BSS systems across multiple services. SDP includes several out of box enablers which expose common reusable functionality. Some out of box enablers such as SIP Servlet container, Call Control, Presence, Media Server Control and Messaging are described below briefly. 4.1.1 SIP Servlet Container SIP Servlet Container is used to build SIP- specific services, whereby the application developer need not to understand the complete signaling details of the SIP protocol and can instead program at a higher level of abstraction. SIP servlet container integrates with a variety of J2EE application servers. 4.1.2 Call Control Enabler The Call Control Enabler provides north-bound Java and web services APIs for a number of different call control scenarios across multiple networks. Simple example is click-to-dial scenario.

4.1.3 Presence Enabler Presence information is central to a whole generation of next generation applications. The presence enabler in SDP performs two major functions. First of all it aggregates presence information from a number of different sources in a persistent scalable manner. Secondly presence enabler provides ability to publish the presence information to a number of different sources. Application developer can make an application immediately more responsive to presence information. 4.1.4 Media Server Control Enabler The Media Server Control Enabler provides a set of standard north-bound APIs for controlling media server functionality across different control technologies hiding the differences in semantics between these control languages from the application developers. 4.1.5 Messaging Enabler The Messaging Enabler provides a set of north-bound Java and web service APIs that an application can use to send and receive messages. Application developer can view messaging as an abstract service that can be implemented to connect to an arbitrary provider without having to understand or depend on what specific protocol is used by that providers messaging gateway. As a result, the developer is able to integrate messaging into their applications in a more portable manner.

4.2 Enabler Framework

Enabler Framework is a general purpose enabler framework providing out of the box enablers as well as enabling system integrators to develop additional enablers of their own to solve specific challenges. Enabler Framework expose north-bound APIs through Java or web service bindings and integrate south-bound to network elements or west-bound to OSS/BSS systems through Java Connector Architecture. In addition, an enabler framework provides full life cycle support for enablers, including deployment, activation, upgrade, management, deactivation and undeployment. As a result 3rd party developers can build their own enablers on this Enabler Framework.

5. Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Applications

Service delivery applications can be classified based on network, technology or solutions. Some example applications are shown below in Table-1. Table: 1 SDP Applications S No. 1. Classification Based on Network Example Applications i) NGN or IMS based applications: These applications are IP based and supported over NGN or IMS Networks. ii) Legacy applications : These are circuit switched applications which are supported on the legacy IN network in GSM, CDMA or PSTN.
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2.

Technology

i) Multi User Applications : They create a session with multiple users e.g. Audio Conferencing, Video Conferencing. ii) User to User Applications : These applications are between two users originated and destination, e.g. Voice over IP, Push to talk. iii) User to Server Applications : In these applications, originator is user and the destination is a server in the network, e.g. SMS, MMS. iv) Server to User Applications : Here originator is server in the network and the destination is user, e.g. Push Services, Click to Dial. i) Entertainment & Content Delivery Solutions : e.g. Multi-location Presence Enabled Gaming. ii) Messaging Solutions: e.g. Short Message Service, Video Mail Solution, Video Mailbox. iii) Personal Convenience Solutions: e.g. Active Phone Book. iv) Personal Call Management Solutions : e.g. Communications Manager, Personal Call Manager. v) Conferencing & Collaboration : e.g. Video Conferencing, Voice Conferencing.

3.

Solution Type

5. Conclusion
SDP provides the platform for applications to meet customer demands for new telecommunication services. The solution provides service creation and execution environment for composing enhanced services and delivering service bundles. Enablers are core components in the implementation of SDP. They are key building blocks of reusable functionality that provide standard interfaces. They bring many features of IT domain such as encapsulation, abstraction, standard APIs and reuse to the telecom Service providers domain. SDP provides both enablers as well as enabler framework that allow 3rd parties to build their own enablers.

Abbreviations
API BSS CDMA GSM HLR IMS J2EE MMS MSC NGN OSS PSTN SOA SCF SCS SDP SMS SSP SIP Application Programming Interface Business Support Systems Code Division Multiple Access Global System for Mobile Communications Home Location Register IP Multimedia Subsystem Java to Enterprise Edition Multi Media Messaging Service Mobile Switching Centre Next Generation Network Operational Support Systems Public Switched Telephone Network Service Oriented Architecture Service Capability Feature Service Capability Server Service Delivery Platform Short Message Service Service Switching Point Session Initiation Protocol