SYSTEM INTEGRATION
Integrating with Middleware
Integrating complex building blocks for reliable, high-availability network services can be a daunting and costly process. The higher up the integration scale you can start with a prevalidated platform, the sooner you can begin adding unique value and get to market.
by J im Lawrence, Enea and Sven Freudenfeld, Kontron
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exploration er your goal eak directly al page, the resource. chnology, and products
Prevalidated Hardware and Middleware Platforms Speed System Integration
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elecommunications applications User Applications have been growing steadily with no sign of decline. Network services, SA Forums AIS such as IP-TV, social networking and 4G presence-enabled services, continue to Standards Based COTS drive growth, setting the foundation for a System Management Building Blocks broad spectrum of content delivery platforms. For instance, as social networking SA Forum HPI begins to converge with communications, it will transition from a fun pastime to a Operating Systems Shelf Mgr valuable business tool providing functionVirtualization panies providing solutions now ality such as advanced customer relationration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest I/O App ship management (CRM) capabilities. lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get ConnectedCMM is to put you Blades Blades Whiletypethese types of services may ice you require for whatever of technology, Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB) luxuries now, they will soon ies and productsseem you arelike searching for. -Chassis FRUsbecome an integral part of our lives both personally and professionally. This means Figure 1 Integrating the complex that the demand to deliver content and building blocks in today’s provide services will grow very rapidly, platforms requires placing heavy demands on the commusophisticated and complex nications infrastructure, while requiring standards to glue them all significant scalability along with unintogether. terrupted service availability. Competition is intensifying as network equipment manufacturers (TEMs) must keep up with providers (NEPs) and telecom equipment time-to-market demands, quality of experience (QoE) expectations and increasing complexity of the network, while focusing Get Connected on differentiating their applications. with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected Building a distributed, highly avail-
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February 2008 Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article. www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
able and reliable system to deliver these services is a complex and often daunting task, particularly since back-end design is increasing in its complexity. Designing the entire system in house is no longer a realistic use of resources nor is it a cost-effective option. Instead, developers are looking to a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) approach that is driven by standards in order to accelerate and take some of the risk out of the development cycle and ultimately meet delivery schedules. By using COTS building blocks from the hardware computing platform up to the operating system (OS), High-Availability (HA) middleware and certain protocol components, NEPs and TEMs are given the fundamental elements to create a carrier-grade platform. The benefits of a carrier-based platform with a true open architecture foundation are realized in the form of highly differentiated products that are scalable. This frees up valuable engineering resources that can then be used to design applications that add value to and reduce the time-to-market of more innovative services. Integrating all of the complex building blocks is essential and can provide a