Recent industry events around the world have touched on the issue that there’s currently a lack of an integrated approach to virtualization service delivery, and that’s a hurdle blocking some potential massive new markets. According to the Broadband Forum, this is because of the spread of bottom-up network infrastructures and delivery platforms, as well as the absence of a clear migration and coexistence strategy with legacy networks. It also says a lack of interoperability is a fundamental barrier, except in the case of a handful of bilateral agreements.
So how about a worldwide group of service providers working together to help resolve how connectivity and virtualization are bought and sold around the globe? It sounds like a big undertaking, but the Broadband Forum announced initial steps this week to form a new industry connectivity and virtualization committee to help do just that.
In a statement, the group points to the way that airlines work as a model that allows interworking and service differentiation. “In the airline industry, organizations such as Sabre Airline Solutions and SITA allow travel classes to be automatically configured and purchased across airlines worldwide,” Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh explains. “If a new airline launches, it simply plugs into the system. Now imagine if every airline had to have a separate agreement with every other airline and there was no common agreement on service classes. Today, connecting flights and cooperative agreements are taken for granted, allowing customers choice and reliability, and that is where we need to get to in the telecoms industry.”
Target deliverables for the effort reportedly will include “a common buying and selling framework for providers and a common language between proprietary systems, standards developing organizations (SDOs) and open source groups, and vertical market providers, bridging siloed implementations.” Founded by the Forum’s Service Provider Action Council (SPAC), which is an international autonomous committee of service providers, the new steering group reportedly has been created with the initial purpose of creating the committee rules and developing an international open trading business framework to seamlessly deliver virtualized servers across the globe.
“This will accelerate the deployment of interoperating connectivity and cloud services, as well as reconcile the vertical market and system integrator interests to avoid the endless inefficiency of n-by-n integrations,” the Broadband Forum’s statement says.
“Equipment manufacturers, system integrators, and software companies will all benefit from the realization of this vision, as it will simplify and reduce the cost of providing products and services to their customers,” Mersh says. “A common approach to service enablement and delivery will create a much larger addressable market to these market players.”
To help gain a global and industrywide approach, the Broadband Forum reports it is inviting non-Broadband Forum member service providers to join to investigate the basis for trading connectivity and virtualized services.
