Daitan White Paper IMS, NFV and Cloud-based Services BUILDING INTEGRATED CLOUD COMMUNICATION SERVICES Highly Reliable Software Development Services http://www.daitangroup.com Daitan Group 2014
IMS, NFV and Cloud-based Services 1 ABSTRACT: IMS AN OLD FRIEND WITH NEW OPPORTUNITIES Is IMS an idea whose time has come? Will the emergence of VoLTE and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) provide the catalyst for mobile and telecom operators to cross over into the space where IP-based communications providers have dominated? Or will these Over-the-Top (OTT) communications providers use the power of IMS to hold onto their innovation advantage? IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) is not exactly an emerging technology and many have the perception that the benefits of most deployments to date have not offset the complexity and cost. But we now see a convergence of factors that creates critical mass for established technologies, like IMS, combined with emerging technologies to deliver innovation such as integrated communication services. The rollout of Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) by mobile operators will use IMS on a very large scale, which is exactly where it can deliver on its promises. In addition, these solutions can benefit from approaches already adopted in the Internet world such as software-centric deployments using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) on high-volume, standard hardware platforms. The implications are significant not only for the Mobile and Telecom Operators, but also for Over-the- Top (OTT) Communication Providers, who will feel the competitive pressure to offer integrated services and can benefit from the unbundling of integrated systems previously accessible only to large operators. That is why we see IMS, VoLTE, WebRTC and NFV as key technologies for anyone in the telecom or IPcommunications spaces. This paper includes our view on how they play together to change the communications market in the next few years and a brief primer on IMS and NFV. 2 WHAT IS THE OPPORTUNITY? Telecom service operators have been losing market space to IP-based communication providers for several years. OTT operators leverage the benefits of Internet methodologies (virtual infrastructure, N+1 redundancy, software-centric approaches) and can deliver services that are more compelling and costeffective to end users. Telecom vendors have been stuck in the proprietary box world (physical infrastructure, N+N redundancy, dependency on proprietary hardware). Because deploying new services is expensive and time consuming, there has been no offer of converged services on a large scale. OTT operators don t own their network infrastructure and typically offer a small set of stand-alone services. Telecom operators have been unable to provide competitive converged services. The result is a market with fragmented services that can look like this: Daitan Group 2014 1
Is the person available on the phone? Make a phone call No Is the person available on Skype? Establish a VoIP connection No Is the person available on WhatsApp? Establish a webchat connection No... Diagram 1- Call flow with fragmented services Today s communication starts with picking a channel or service such as using a landline phone. If the person does not respond, the caller can try to check their online status such as through Skype or texting the person to see if they are available. Once connected, if the caller wants to switch channels, he/she has to disconnect and reconnect with a different service or application. This is a familiar scenario where users have embraced several of the latest communication methods, including phone, SMS, VoIP, web chat, social network, etc. However, the technology has not provided the means to manage these options seamlessly during a live call. It s not hard to see how the integration of these services would be the next step, but big changes in the market can only happen when there is a combination of technology availability, market dynamics and evolving user demand. Is this convergence happening now? Daitan Group 2014 2
See who is available before making a call (presence) Establish Connection with another person Select and change connection type in realtime as needed Diagram 2- Call Flow with integrated services 3 OLD MEETS NEW IMS is a standardized architecture (defined by 3GPP) adopted by telecommunication operators to provide IP-based telecom services natively in an IP network environment (versus the circuit-switched network). Its main promise is to enable converged service offerings that are flexible and quick to deploy. IMS is not intended to standardize applications, but to let old and new applications access wireless and wireline terminals and the underlying telecom infrastructure in a standardized way, ensuring interoperability, access awareness, quality, security required to meet consumer demand. Most previous deployments of IMS frameworks used proprietary hardware-based systems in a dedicated network infrastructure, which made them expensive and complex. The notion that to provide the quality of service we need by using a dedicated infrastructure we can control is probably not viable in the long term. The recent emergence of NFV drastically reduces infrastructure costs and enables the fast deployment of IMS in a scalable manner. So, telecom operators will be able to take advantage of Internet approaches, including software-based deployments in a cloud infrastructure. And also there is VoLTE. VoLTE is the next frontier in telecom infrastructure evolution. Mobile operators have for years been preparing for this transition and its rollout is starting to happen. We see this shift as the main catalyst for the large scale deployment of IMS systems that will have a deep impact in the communications technology market. VoLTE is a mobility-enhanced version of VoIP in the IMS network. It is the final transition to a world where voice service (control and media) is transported as data all the way to the handset. It can enhance the quality of voice calls on mobile phones, improve the use of wireless frequency spectrum, and reduce power consumption. But the major impact of VoLTE is the fact that it finally Daitan Group 2014 3
incorporates voice services into the IMS framework and enables seamless integration of voice with other types of interaction. The transition from traditional voice to VoLTE service is the market catalyst to demand and justify the deployment of IMS. The availability of NFV is the technology enabler for that to happen fast and costeffectively. As this materializes and the market appreciates the availability of integrated communications services, OTT vendors will be under increased competitive pressure to offer more integrated services as well, which means they will also need to take a serious look at adopting IMS as the core system for service delivery. 4 BRINGING IT TO THE CLOUD WITH CLEARWATER In new IMS deployments, operators are embracing the cloud the same way Internet companies do. So, it becomes a requirement that new IMS systems are software based, hardware-agnostic and optimized to run in a virtualized cloud infrastructure. As an example of an IMS system that is optimized for the cloud, we examine the architectural diagram below of Clearwater Core by Metaswitch Networks, an implementation of IMS built using Web development methods that follows IMS architectural principles and supports all of the key standardized interfaces expected of an IMS core network. \ Daitan Group 2014 4 Source: ProjectClearWater.org
Clearwater provides SIP-based call control for real-time communications in an IP network. It can support VoIP services relying on its built-in set of basic calling features and subscriber database, or work as an IMS core in conjunction with other existing elements such as Telephony Application Servers (TAS) and a Home Subscriber Server (HSS). As an IMS core, Clearwater incorporates a Proxy CSCF (Call Session Control Function), Interrogating CSCF and Serving CSCF, together with Breakout Gateway Control Function (BGCF). Interestingly, Clearwater includes a WebRTC gateway, and natively supports interworking between WebRTC clients and standard SIP-based clients, using SIP signaling over Web-Sockets. The integration of WebRTC within an IMS framework makes it possible to integrate browser-based communication with traditional telephony; and opening the doors to a large scale, seamless solution. 5 WHAT IS NFV AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? NFV brings the concepts of infrastructure abstraction and virtualization to the communications world. We see NFV as the approach that enables the deployment of IMS in a flexible, scalable and costeffective way. NFV is an architecture that breaks the various network functions into modules that can be virtualized. Those network functions run as independent software modules without requiring awareness of the underlying physical infrastructure and without proprietary dependencies on the other network functions. In the past, most communications network functions (e.g., VoIP switches, Session Border Controllers, firewalls, media servers, deep packet inspection) were implemented as appliances, with tight integration between proprietary hardware and software from a single vendor. Scaling services involved deploying new hardware. Implementing redundancy required duplicating infrastructures. Recent advances in IT technology, including faster general-purpose processors capable of processing demanding real-time tasks (such as media transcoding, for example), and advances in software (e.g. virtualization technology) makes it possible to implement network functions as software modules that can be quickly deployed (minutes, not months) and scaled over a virtualized cloud infrastructure. This Network Functions Virtualization is changing business models in the telecom industry. The revenue streams of leading network equipment vendors are being disrupted. The shift from integrated systems with applications running on proprietary high-availability middleware and optimized hardware platforms to an applications software model will decouple the components of the network and create opportunity for smaller OTT service providers to adopt platforms and technologies that before were only available to large operators. 6 INTEGRATION IN ACTION: IMS/WEBRTC IN THE CLOUD DEMO If IP-based communications is unavoidable, most telecom operators would like it to be independent of mobile and social platforms (Skype, Google, ios, etc.). WebRTC offers an alternative that has potential for universal access integrated with traditional telephony in an IMS system. Daitan Group 2014 5
Daitan leveraged its expertise in communications systems to integrate WebRTC applications to the Clearwater Core and created a deployment in the cloud that can demonstrate end-to-end connections between any combination of WebRTC and traditional telephony end-points using a SIP-based signaling plane in an IMS architecture. This demo shows the seamless integration of WebRTC to the existing telephony infrastructure and supports the transition from a world using a mix of PSTN and cell phones to communicate worldwide in real time to a world that embraces Internet technologies. To access the demonstration and make real calls from WebRTC, please visit http://daitangroup.com/webrtc ABOUT DAITAN GROUP Daitan provides highly reliable software development services. We partner with technology vendors to help them develop their next software solution in Telecom, Unified Communications and Cloud/Web Solutions. We have worked with the leaders in Telecom technology to help them develop WebRTC, IMS and NFV solutions. To learn more about Daitan, please visit us at http://daitangroup.com Daitan Group 2014. All rights reserved. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.