Platform Outsourcing: Faster Time to Market, Higher Availability

In the telecom industry, time to market is critical. Today, new and emerging applications are driving a fast-paced build-out of converged and wireless networks, end-user demands are growing and diversifying quickly, and Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) of all sizes are being challenged to provide new, increasingly complex applications. Given limited resources, tight budgets, and short delivery timeframes, TEMs must find ways to balance the level of their R&D effort with stringent time-to-market and end-user cost requirements in order to satisfy customer expectations. In particular, today's Voice-over-IP and 3G Wireless markets are experiencing intense competitive pressures dictating that strategies be found to enable quick and cost-effective application development and deployment solutions.

In the final analysis, telecom customers pay for services — software-based applications running on hardware platforms. The software providing the service (the application) and the hardware, software, and middleware that enables the service (the platform), are the two key elements of a telecom solution, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1 - Software application running on an integrated platform

Clearly, dependencies exist between these two elements. For example, software application development, debugging, and deployment require a platform. As a result, the choice for TEMs — who specialize in application-level development — is whether to allocate time and resources to develop and integrate platform in-house, or whether to jump-start the application development process by leveraging an externally-sourced standardized platform. The latter approach allows TEMs to focus exclusively on application development.

The Case for Platform Outsourcing

Outsourcing the platform clearly offers the advantage of reducing an application's time to market. However, less obvious is the often-overlooked complexity of developing the platform itself and maintaining it throughout product lifecycle. Ironically, it is this complexity that has traditionally been the catalyst for proprietary platform development by TEMs, as previous generations of off-the-shelf hardware often lacked the sophistication, level of control, and manageability needed to create a robust telecom solution. As a result, TEMs were essentially forced to create proprietary hardware platforms to meet their requirements.

However, in the last few years tremendous advances have been made in the area of standards-based platforms through the efforts of industry organizations such as the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), which work in conjunction with TEMs to define robust, carrier-grade standards. For example, the PICMG standard for a Packet-Switched Backplane (PSB) specifies significant reliability and performance requirements, while the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) specification supports robust platform management and control.

While in theory the platform is simply a collection of modules that are integrated within a chassis enclosure, the reality of creating an integrated, scalable, and manageable platform is a very extensive undertaking. When designed correctly, a platform combines reliable architecture, system management, cooling, performance, flexibility, and high availability features in an elegantly simple offering. The end goal of the platform design process must be to produce a solution that delivers performance and simplicity to TEMs while supporting the revenue-generating application. To accomplish this, a platform provider must simultaneously fill the roles of designer, supplier, and integrator for a wide range of building block solutions that include chassis, blades, management software, high availability middleware, and protocol solutions.

About Continuous Computing

Continuous Computing provides integrated systems and services that enable telecom equipment manufacturers to rapidly deploy Next Generation Networks (NGN). Over 150 customers worldwide benefit from the company's unique blend of customized professional services, Trillium protocol software, AdvancedTCA and CompactPCI systems, and BladeCenter hardware. Continuous Computing helps customers reduce platform lifecycle costs, optimize data delivery, and accelerate deployments of NGN, 3G/4G Wireless, and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) infrastructure. The company is ISO-9001 and CMMI certified and based in San Diego with development centers in China and India. For more information, visit www.ccpu.com.

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