Sriram Ramanathan

The IBM telecommunications service delivery platform

Telecommunications service providers (TSPs) are currently faced with a significant number of threats to their core business models. In addition to competition from traditional TSPs, they must also face increasing competition from Internet service providers such as Google, Yahoo!, and eBay, which have succeeded in implementing a variety of very useful communications services, including voice services, for a fraction of the traditional cost. This new set of threats is causing TSPs to reexamine their business models, explore ways of reducing their operational expenses, and devise a means of reducing the typical service life cycle (from concept to delivery, typically more than a year) to a few weeks. To help address these issues, IBM has created an SOA-centric (service-oriented-architecture-centric) reference architecture called the telecommunications service delivery platform (SDP). In this paper, we present three case studies involving field deployments to the networks of three major wireless TSPs and describe the role of the IBM SDP and its key benefits. We highlight the architecture and key use cases involved in these carrier-grade deployments, and articulate the best practices and valuable lessons gleaned from them.