Telecom Member Section
Adopting SOA for Telecom
Workshop
Sept. 30th, 2008
Useful links
Telecom Member Section
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Steering Committe
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Abbie Barbir, Ph.D., Nortel - Cochair
Michael Brenner, Alcatel-Lucent
Enrico Ronco, Telecom Italia
Takashi Egawa, NEC
Current Members
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http://www.oasis-telecom.org/steering-committee
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Orit Levin, Microsoft
Stephane Maes, Ph.D., Oracle - Co•
chair
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Tony Nadalin, IBM
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http://www.oasis-telecom.org/
IBM, Orcale, Primeton, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, BTplc, CA,
Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, Nortel, Progress
Software, Verisign, Mitre Corporation, OOS Nokalva,
Siemens AG, Telecom Italia S.p.a.
Information including how to become a member
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Dee Schur [email protected]
Workshop Program Committee
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Michael Giordano (Avaya)
Abbie Barbir (Nortel)
Hanane Becha (Nortel)
Tony Nadaline (IBM)
Stephane Maes (Oracle)
Sune Jakobsson (Telenor)
Rakesh Radhakrishnan (Sun Microsystems)
Ian Jones (BT)
And Many Many thanks to all the OASIS Staff
and our host CA
www.oasis-open.org
Closing Remarks
Enrico Ronco – Telecom Italia
[email protected]
Sessions of this Workshop
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Welcome & Opening Keynote (Nortel)
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Panel on Embedding Communications into IT Applications: A Vendor Perspective (Telenor)
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Providers Perspectives on SOA in Telecom (BT)
Accenture, Avaya, Oracle
S1: Challenges of Telecom Services in SOA Environment: Lessions Learned and Case
Studies (Avaya)
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SOA Security: Challenges, Patterns and Solutions (IBM)
Digital Identities for Networks and Convergence (NEC Europe)
Operator Perspective: Dealing with Issues & Relationships in a changing eco-system
(Vodafone)
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S2: SOA Solutions in Telecom Today (Oracle)
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Service Oriented Architecture and Use of SOA at Telenor Nordic (Telenor)
Overcoming the Deployment Blues: Preparing for Comms Enablement (Nortel)
Elements of SOA in TM Forum’s Service Delivery Framework and its Usecases (Oracle)
Service Oriented Authorisation for Managing Services and Devices in Telecommunication
Networks (Axiomatics)
Services Exploiting SOA and Web Service Technology in Modern Telcos (Aepona)
Microsoft Mediaroom as a SOA for IPTV (Microsoft)
S3: Telecom Standards (BT)
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OMG Perspective on Standards
OMA Perspective on Standards
TM Forum Perspective on Standards
Towards a SOA/WS Enabled NGN Open Service Envornment: Ongoing Develop. in ITU-T
SG13
Highlights of the day
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Introduced the OASIS Telecom MS and its
main objectives
Interesting Keynote: operator’s view on SOA
Panel: Heard how Vendors are facing
specific issues on “SOA for Telecom”
S1: Heard of specific Issues currently faced
within the Telecom industry
S2: heard of SOA solutions already in place
S3: Known what other “Telecom” SDOs are
currently doing on SOA and viewed some
possible concrete links
Note: I tried to derive possible implications of exposed presentations
on TMS future activities
The OASIS Telecom Member Section
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Objectives
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Promote the use of SOA in Telecom through the
development of profiles of web services stacks optimized
for the real-time need of telecom industry
Collect and solve telecommunications related issues within
the SOA framework
Bridge between various SDOs applying SOA and WS to the
telecom sector
Next Steps (… first steps)
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Start first TC (January 09) on Gaps – issues – problems on
OASIS SOA standards for Telecoms
… solve such problems
Messages from the Keynote
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Shift from Network Operator to Service Provider
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Need for common capabilities (shift from vertical applications)
Agnostic access to networks, common set of “components for services”:
(profile, messaging, call servers, media servers…)
Convergence between telecom “platforms” and enterprise “applications”:
Network competences now merged with IT competences
Common set of standards now available to enable “web platforms”
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Software Development moving from proprietary monolithic telecom
applications to standards-based layered J2EE applications
Be pragmatic in building the application layer (IMS lesson): understand
what people want to do with services and select standard network
components as mature technology emerges
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Do business within “the long tail”
Communication with communities
Focus effort on building applications customers really want (e.g. sales force
management)
Work to deliver “service building blocks”
No Killer app. / Yes “Killer attribute”: ability to change rapidly
Messages from the Panel: vendors perspective
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Giordano:
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Sabadotto:
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Need for an agile communication creation environment
Deliver different level of granularity for different customers
OASIS can help in filling some gaps (i.e. security, manageability, serviceability of
“communication platforms”)
Occasion for a full automation of business processes (incl. manual processes) – gave examples
(sales force automation, extension of communication services with enterprise folders
How to implement SOA in a holistic view? (need for a proper governance capability)
4 different levels of maturity of SOA adoption in Telcos: (Plan & Organize, Deploy, Architected,
Industrialized). Not necessary to run through them in sequence.
Understand customer need, make a plan, iterate within phases (level 3 is the most difficult)
The whole is difficult: services delivered by consultants, but failure in the achievement of the full
business value. Difficult for a department to pay for others. Short term funding.
Gives us a “recipe” for SOA adoption in Telcos: 1) Define governance framework and decide key
roles (who should sit in this “board”); 2) define quick goals …
Maes:
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Bridge the “Web” world with the “telco” world, and “Traditional Telcos” have goals which are
different from the “Internet SP”
Concept of “Standard-Based Service Delivery Platform”: - look at the OMA OSE
Then a “process” is suggested for successful deployment of the “Standard SDP”
Mention of TM Forum Service Delivery Framework (SDF)
Mention of Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture
No particular challenge in making things happen, but SOA is not yet CARRIER GRADE
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High availability, predictable low latencies, efficient, scalable …
Difficult to guarantee throughput, SLA, QoS, lifecycle management of mash ups
In summary
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(from Sune Jakobsson)
SOA is technically available
…but the Web is not ready
The Web is not regulated, opposed
to the traditional Telco, that is
required to provide carrier-grade
Catch the “long tail”
Messages from S1: lessons and case studies (1)
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Vodafone: real-life experience
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Operators want to use mature technologies o help them solve their problems
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Operators are recognizing user data as a corporate asset (not only for liability); NEW Cash
flow potential with mobile advertisemet
SOA Standards must help Operators to manage such asset
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Operators are invited to provide requirements to the SDOs (e.g. OASIS TMS)
Operators need clear guidance on “minimum interoperable WS-stack” to use
Telenor: real-life experience
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Are WSs easing the integration?
Is REST applicable to telecoms?
Mash-ups; exciting, but realistic?
Presented real-life experience in “ implementing / deploying’ SOA in Telenor
What is the correct granularity of a SOA Service ?
SOA Governance assumes key importance: OASIS standards must address this aspect
(look at RA for SOA): Run-time (and off-line) SOA governance must be enabled
Nortel: lessons learned from 4 key implementations
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Within one case it was required us to go well beyond Parlay X and other telecom standards
Interfaces need to be kept simple so that non-telecom developers could easily make use of
them
Need of mentality change: difficult not to expose “telecom” capabilities (such as session ids)
to the application via APIs
Many internet developers struggle with the WS-* specifications: they expect REST-style
interfaces instead
Necessity to extend standards for location-setting and presence
Need to change some BPEL specs? Customers are just beginning to experiment it – 1 more
year to know
Messages from S1: lessons and case studies (2)
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NEC: identity management
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SWIFT project: solve identity fragmentation of today, develop EU identity architecture
Analyzed today’s identity management within different providers – project will last until 2010
Virtual identities concept: many faces for transactions to separate roles or for privacy roles
Concept of virtual identity applicable down to the network
Defined a set of building blocks of an “Identity Architecture”
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Goals to achieve
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Liberate user from device(s) by enabling use of several interchangeable devices
Network Access automatically made available based on service requested
Identity becomes a convergence technology: forms the bridge between networks, services,
content…
Objective is to bridge existing solutions together
Proposal of the “identiNET” …
Issue: who is accountable on the management of the “federation of identities” ?
IBM: security
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Mobility, Security, AAA, Devices …
Challenge emerges on identity and access management
Need of support of virtual identity and the related trust framework – personalization and virtual
identity
Externalize policies (and security functions) from applications
Open standards based approach is the way to go
Need for real time distributed policy negotiation and enforcement: OASIS TMS must take this
issue and promote its solution within the appropriate SDO
TM Forum
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Work for the enablement of lifecycle management of “services”, not only within one SP’s domain
There may be some modifications to the OASIS SOA RM (SDF Service has > than 1 SI)
Touch points for OASIS TMS and TM Forum SDF
Messages from S2: SOA in telecoms today (1)
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Axiomatics
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How does standardized authorization mnagement support SOA in Telecom Networks (focus on
use of XACML, at service and device configuration level)
Authorization is meant as a service to other applications and services
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As well as location, IPTV … it would be important to provide also Authorization as a “telecom service”
Operators would like to avoid micro-management of services and features of service providers (avoid
micro-management)
SPs need to control their services themselves
Gave examples on access permissions (e.g. end user access to service) and on specific
services for users (e.g. parking service… different policies)
Issues: policy enforcement, policy administration, attribute management
Authorization service shall be provided by Operators to SPs and XACML 3.0 can play an
important role
Aepona:
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Core Telco service enablers: payments, messages, presence, location  they are assets
SOA is about the interface for 3rd parties to access such enablers
3 “killer capabilities”: contextual presence, location – flexible media and conference switching –
Intelligent notification services
WS for telecom exist: Parlay-X: enphasis must be put on refining and making them popular
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Concrete examples of application of WS in Telecom (automated appointment reminder, public sector
property maintenance … enhanced)
Real web services need policy and security control – SDOs must work on this
Messages from S2: SOA in telecoms today (2)
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Microsoft Mediaroom
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Brand name for IPTV solution: platform for delivery of video over (reliable) IP network
Broad view of the End-2-End IPTV solution: content acquisition, content protection, service
management, subscriber management, service delivery, service consumption
Provided high level view o the architecture
SOA enables highly decoupled, modular and interoperable architecture
Understood OSS and BSS functionalities applied to the platform
Use SOAP based web services
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Lessons learned
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Web services ala RPC increased coupling and reduced agility
SOAP limitations (exposing/retrieving large resources and low end hardware)
It is critical adding better control for accessing server resources
Modeling unknown applications is hard
Saying “contract first” is not good enough
Future needs
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Loosely coupled services
Better control of workflow
Simplify access to resources to facilitate application extensibility
Emphasis on modeilng (access profiles, layering of interfaces)
Need standards on SLA management
Messages from S3 - Telecom Standards
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OMG
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Possible new OASIS WIs
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OMA
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There are some concerns in OMA regarding the real-time, carrier-grade performance
of BPEL, when policy processing is transparently applied to all requests in the OSE.
For their Web Services related activities, OMA may benefit from the input and WS
expertise of the OASIS Telecom Member Section… improvements to OWSER, PEEM=
TM Forum
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SDF initiative
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Extend WS protocols to allow the expression of the non-functional properties of
services and support their discovery based on their NFP, enable testing …, address OMG
resulting work to support SOA push model
Develop lightweight Process-oriented runtime languages (e.g. BPEL) for composing
modern time sensitive, context-aware Telecom services
Harmonize complimentary OMG and OASIS standards such as BPEL with OMG BPMN
Bi-lateral collaboration in progress
Specific issues from SDF as “proposals of improvement / gaps” on OASIS standards
NGOSS Contracts: proposed for examination by OASIS
ITU-T SG13
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Capabilities as service enabling toolkit
Work Item on Open Service Environment capabilities for NGN: Working on Functional
requirements for OSE
Need to enhance existing collaboration with other SDOs
General takeaways
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SOA Standards for Security management, policy
management, administration management … “
service management” can help the adoption of
SOA within the Telecom world
Operators have concrete requirements on SOA
 provide them to TMS
Coordination between SDOs is necessary to
avoid overlaps and over-spendings
Next steps (within the TMS)
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Finalize Charter of first TC within the TMS
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Start technical work on gaps / issues
collection – early 2009
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Ready by end-October ‘08
CONTRIBUTE to the first TC
Become members of the TMS
Prepare new edition of SOA Telecom
workshop for 2009 … ?
Future references and questions
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OASIS membership
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[email protected]
TMS Steering Committee
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Abbie Barbir: [email protected]
Stephane Maes: [email protected]
Orit Levin: [email protected]
Michael Brenner: [email protected]
Enrico Ronco: [email protected]
Takashi Egawa: [email protected]
Anthony Nadalin: [email protected]
(Very) final remark
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Thanks to all that worked to make this
event happen
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CA for the premises
Organizing committee
Session chairs and speakers
OASIS Staff
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… Attendees
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