Paolo Dettori

Extending the Service Bus for Successful and Sustainable IPTV Services

Telecom carriers have positioned IPTV as one of the key components of triple-play (broadband, television, and voice) or quad-play (with the addition of mobility). Adoption of Web services within a SOA framework as building blocks for developing complex media workflows is an important step toward reuse of media processing tools in an IPTV environment. A Web services approach also provides the capability to abstract network-based services for creation of composite services that can be executed in an IPTV environment. At the same time, adoption of a service bus provides a single point of integration for multiple services, and common features such as service registry and discovery, reliable message delivery, and transformation in a heterogeneous production environment. In this article we present an approach of media enabling the service bus to support offline digital media processes and composite service execution in an IPTV production environment.

Issues in data embedding and synchronization for digital television

As digital television matures, applications which utilize data embedded in the broadcast television signal are likely to be an important feature of the new medium. The paper explores some of the issues involved in the implementation of systems for the utilization of data which accompanies digital televisions video and audio content. Chief among these issues are those which pertain to: (i) how data can be embedded into the television signal in ways which utilize bandwidth and buffer space efficiently; (ii) how the embedded data can be synchronized with its associated video and audio content.

Transmission of hypertextual information using MPEG-2 private data

In this paper, we design a new system for the transmission of multimedia information within the digital TV channel in a broadcast fashion. The scheme proposed is based on some DSM- CC functions, studying an additional syntax that allows us to convey all the data required to manage with the multimedia information at the reception side. The transport structure used is the well-known MPEG-2 Transport Stream, that is the most widespread platform for new digital television systems. The multimedia information conveyed in such a model is similar to that of the WWW system, that is an hypertextual file system where the text is integrated with images, sounds and animation. A proper encoding software has been realized, that codes the file system by means of the DSM-CC operations and brings out a transport stream.

Polyglot Application Auto Scaling Service for Platform as a Service Cloud

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud delivery model that provides software services and solution stacks to enable rapid development, deployment, and operations in many languages and run-times (polyglot). These applications require capabilities to rapidly grow and shrink the underlying resources to satisfy their workload needs. Auto scaling is a service that enables dynamic resource allocation and deal location to match application performance needs and service level agreements. In this paper we present the architecture and implementation of a polyglot auto scaling solution for IBM Blue mix PaaS. Our auto scaling service enables users to describe policies and set thresholds for scaling the applications based on CPU, memory and heap usage for applications developed in different languages (Java, Java Script, Ruby, etc). The auto scaling service consists of a set of monitoring agents, monitoring service, scaling service, and a persistence service. The service is developed with sharedmulti-tenancy model and offered as a managed cloud service. An application attached to the auto scaling service is monitored and its resources will be adjusted based on the auto scaling policies of the user and on the system conditions.

Blueprint for Business Middleware as a Managed Cloud Service

Cloud offers numerous technical middleware services such as databases, caches, messaging systems, and storage but very few business middleware services as first tier managed services. Business middleware such as business process management, business rules, operational decision management, content management and business analytics, if deployed in a cloud environment, is typically only available in a hosted (black-box) model. This is partly due to where cloud is in its evolution, and mostly due to the relatively higher complexity of business middleware vs. technical middleware in the deployment, provisioning, usage, etc. Business middleware consists of multiple functions for business processes design and modeling, execution, optimization, monitoring, and analysis. These functions and their associated complexity have inhibited the wholesale migration of existing business middleware to the cloud. To better understand the complexity in bringing business middleware to the cloud and to develop a systematic cloud enablement approach, we studied the deployment of IBMs Operational Decision Manager (ODM) business middleware product as a managed service (Cloud Decision Service) in IBMs BlueMix cloud platform. Our study indicates that complex middleware must be componentized along functional boundaries, and provide these functions for different business users and developers with cloud experience. In addition, middleware services must leverage other cloud services and they should provide interfaces so that they can be consumed by Java applications as well as by polyglot applications (JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc). Applications can bind to and use our Cloud Decision Service in a matter of seconds. In contrast, it takes hours to days to setup such a service in the traditional packaged software model. Based on the lessons learned from this experiment we develop a blueprint for enabling high value business middleware as managed cloud services.

Non-intrusive Adaptive Multi-media Routing in Peer-to-Peer Multi-party Video Conferencing

Motivated by the problem of limited bandwidth in peer-to-peer (P2P) multi-party video conferencing systems, in this paper we propose a non-intrusive adaptive multi-media routing algorithm that effectively calculates stream routing to achieve a maximum number of receiving streams. The technique is non-intrusive in that it makes use of current streaming status to infer link bottlenecks rather than sending active probing packets, which would seriously interfere with the latency-sensitive video conferencing application and waste bandwidth. When link bottlenecks are detected, the method will adaptively calculate streaming routes, allowing bandwidth abundant peers to act as relays. To test the performance, we use real data from a world wide bandwidth distribution archive and investigate the algorithm convergence rate and distribution fairness through simulation. Results show that the technique works well to achieve effective multi-media routing for latency-sensitive video conferencing applications.

Synchronized data services over MPEG—2 digital television broadcast systems

Until the present, the digital television (DTV) industry has focused providing high—quality basic video and audio services. With advancements in the underlying technologies, digital television is likely to evolve into a much more interactive medium, involving advanced data services and applications which are both integrated with and synchronized to the video/audio content of the broadcast. We present our approach for the implementation of these synchronized data services, with emphasis on the issues of content synchronization and the optimization of data placement in the broadcast stream.

A Feasibility Study of Collaborative Stream Routing in Peer-to-Peer Multiparty Video Conferencing

Video transmission in multiparty video conferencing is challenging due to the demanding bandwidth usage and stringent latency requirement. In this paper, we systematically analyze the problem of collaborative stream routing using one-hop forwarding assistance in a bandwidth constraint environment. We model the problem as a multi-source degree-constrained multicast tree construction problem, and investigate heuristic algorithms to construct bandwidth-feasible shared multicast trees. The contribution of this work is primarily two-fold: (1) we study the solution space of finding a feasible bandwidth configuration for stream routing in a peer-to-peer (P2P) setting, and propose two heuristic algorithms that can quickly produce a bandwidth-feasible solution, making them suitable for large-scale conference sessions, (2) we conduct an empirical study using a realistic dataset and show the effectiveness of our heuristic algorithms. Various QoS metrics are taken into account to evaluate the performance of our algorithms. Finally, we discuss open issues for further exploration. The feasibility study presented in this paper will shed light on the design and implementation of practical P2P multiparty video conferencing applications.

Media-Aware Workflows

In this work, we present Media-Aware Workflows, an extension to Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) middleware for automating media workflows. The combination of SOA and BPMS technologies provides a robust architectural approach for integrating and orchestrating the multiple heterogeneous systems involved in enterprise-level workflows. However, media-intensive workflows pose a set of unique requirements. For example, typical media processes require utility media services such as transcoding, data movement, content storage, asset and metadata management. Media-specific considerations regarding formats, profiles, large file sizes and content security must be taken into account for every step of the media workflow. Difference in culture between the IT and the operational/media engineering departments must also be addressed for a successful SOA adoption. Media-Aware Workflows provides a robust layered system controlled by domain-specific business rules to address media specific requirements. The novelty of our approach is based on the combination of static and dynamic workflow composition and the ability to automate control of the media specific aspects of the workflow with business rules, providing clear separation of roles for business experts, IT personnel and media engineers.