November 22, 2007; 06:15 AM
ARMONK, NY
-
20 Nov 2007:
IBM (NYSE: IBM)
today announced new and enhanced products to help telecommunications
carriers, equipment providers and application developers take advantage
of service oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 technologies to help
them more rapidly and affordably create, deploy and manage voice, video
and data services.
Building on its SOA leadership and
telecommunications industry expertise, IBM is enhancing its existing
software portfolio to help service providers enable flexible,
standards-compliant service platforms that support the delivery of
IP-based services. Service providers are also taking advantage of IBM's
SOA approach to transform previously siloed network infrastructure
investments into reusable services that can easily interoperate using
industry standards. This helps provide the business and IT leaders
within an organization with the ability to quickly adapt to changing
market demands and customer needs.
IBM is helping telecommunications companies like AT&T explore
innovative and highly personalized services through a wide range of
telecommunications industry-specific products based on SOA and Web 2.0
technologies. AT&T is using IBM WebSphere Application Server and
BladeCenter systems as a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) service
logic execution environment platform to develop mission-critical
services for deployment on AT&T's IP-based network.
"IBM is enabling service providers to create, combine and deploy
new telecommunications services based on emerging technologies," said
Tim Greisinger, vice president, communications sector solutions, IBM
Software Group. "With IBM's Web 2.0, SOA and IP technology leadership
service providers may also have the capability to deliver innovative
services with greater speed and quality in a much more open and
flexible environment."
This is also reflected in IBM's continued partnership with the TM
Forum, an open standards industry consortium with more than 600 members
around the globe. The TM Forum recently selected IBM Rational
RequisitePro to manage requirements across its Service Delivery
Framework group. The Service Delivery Framework team is expanding
industry best practices guidance and standards to next generation
service delivery. This complements the existing publication of the
Shared Information/Data (SID) and multi-Technology OSS Program (mTOP)
telecommunications models by the TM Forum in IBM Rational Software
Architect and support for TM Forum's process models, contracted service
definitions and SID data models in the Telecom Operational Content Pack
for the IBM WebSphere Business Services Fabric, helping
telecommunications service providers use industry best practices to
transform their businesses.
New software for telecommunications industry
Available today, the following new and enhanced Rational, WebSphere and
Tivoli products are designed to enable service providers to efficiently
create, deploy and manage rich new converged services independent of
the underlying network infrastructure. The WebSphere offerings build
upon the latest release of IBM WebSphere Application Server and
leverage reusable IP-based services building blocks based on open
standards. The WebSphere offerings' modular approach provides customers
and partners with a flexible, high-performance service execution
environment for next generation converged services. The new IBM
Rational software includes extensions to standards-based modeling and
testing tools, which are key components of an open, comprehensive
service creation environment that supports the design, development,
testing and deployment of SIP-based applications in a converged
environment.
- IBM Rational Performance Tester Extension for SIP --
designed to enable the testing of SIP-based applications. For example,
service providers can use an integrated test management environment to
test the reliability and scalability of not only SIP applications, but
also applications dependent on other standards and protocols such as
HTTP, Web Services, and Java™ Server Pages, across a variety of IBM and
non-IBM service execution environments.
- IBM SIP
Modeling Toolkit for Rational Software Architect -- designed to enable
the modeling of SIP-based applications. For example, service providers
can start with simple call flow models using the graphical Unified
Modeling Language (UML) standard and automatically generate the code to
power new SIP servlets such as a call blocking application.
- IBM
WebSphere XML Document Management Server (XDMS) -- offers a way to help
customers manage XML documents of various types, including group lists,
user profiles, contact information, authorization rules, and policy
data, which is independent of both services and applications. Using
XDMS, customers may now incorporate network-stored documents across
multiple applications. For example, a user may create a group list
through an address book application or device client and then access
that same group to set up a conference call or instant messaging chat
session.
- IBM WebSphere Telecom Web Services Server
(TWSS) -- designed to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies to help
deliver a secure, standards-based gateway for third-parties to access
personalized capabilities like location- based services, presence, call
control and messaging. In the latest version of TWSS, IBM expands its
existing portfolio with new Parlay X 2.1- based Web services for MMS
messaging and address list management, a new WAP Push Web Service, and
new implementation options for terminal location services. Using the
new functionality, a social networking site might offer a mash-up of
the presence and location of nearby friends and enable a subscriber to
easily send an SMS message to invite the group to meet at a nearby
restaurant. Likewise, a workforce management application might be
enhanced with a worker's location and availability to determine whether
to forward an incoming customer call to them.
- IBM
WebSphere Presence Server -- designed to deliver the ability to
collect, manage and distribute real-time information about subscriber
access, availability and willingness to communicate across applications
and environments. The new version adds performance and functional
enhancements, including standards-based authorization rules for privacy
and features to help minimize network traffic.
- IBM
WebSphere IMS Connector -- designed to enable applications running on
WebSphere Application Server to communicate with IP Multimedia
Subsystems (IMS) core elements like the call/session control function,
home subscriber servers and charging systems. The new release includes
support for pre-paid or credit-based charging, designed to allow
service providers to deploy new services with more flexible billing
options.
- IBM Tivoli Netcool -- IBM plans to release new
Tivoli Netcool software that will provide monitoring of the WebSphere
IMS platform, enabling service providers to monitor the availability
and performance of their next generation IMS WebSphere infrastructures.
The new software will add to Tivoli's extensive portfolio covering
wireless, wireline, and server and application expertise, helping
businesses to deliver end-to-end management of next generation services
utilizing SOA and SDP technologies.
These new and enhanced products are available today. These products
build upon IBM's extensive telecom industry experience -- boasting more
than 90 percent of service providers worldwide as customers -- and
complement IBM's hardware and services offerings as part of IBM's
broader IMS services plan solutions.
IBM WebSphere Application Server
IBM's WebSphere Application Server delivers telecom class
infrastructures with a focus on SIP features. It is a carrier-grade
application server that utilizes a converged HyperText Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) and SIP container. It allows service providers to
quickly offer new personalized and productivity enhancing services that
subscribers demand. WebSphere Application Server 6.1.0.11 using Red Hat
Linux and integrated in the IBM BladeCenter HT chassis, which is
network equipment building systems (NEBS) compliant, has achieved an
industry leading SIP performance measurement of 1296 calls per second,
using a 13 message SIP call model (with 80 second hold time) which
translates to over 4.6 million busy hour call attempts per blade. Using
this call model, in a high availability, carrier-grade configuration,
WebSphere Application Server achieved 660 calls per second per blade
with session replication. These results were achieved while retaining
extremely low end-to-end SIP message processing latency of under 50
milliseconds ninety five percent of the time. This exhibits the ability
of WebSphere Application Server to handle the call volumes businesses
demands while ensuring service quality.
For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/soa