Understanding the Enterprise Communications Opportunity

Convergence between enterprise computing and communications represents a unique opportunity for service providers to penetrate deeper into the critical business operations of their enterprise customers. Enterprises represent higher-margin business for operators; if operators can better understand their role in enabling enterprises to achieve this transformation, they surely will benefit.

Fortunately, help is at hand. Internet- standard platforms such as Java and Java EE (formerly known as J2EE) have matured sufficiently to allow the implementation of the most demanding telecommunications applications, such as call control, on such a platform. At the same time, the industry is standardizing network interfaces: next- generation networks through the adoption of SIP as a control protocol and today’s networks through the adoption of Parlay/Parlay X application programming interfaces (APIs). Together, these two trends hold the promise of effectively solving the enterprise communications and computing integration challenge, thereby bringing communications to the forefront of enterprise computing.

A simple example of the current challenge is the following.

Every enterprise PBX phone has a variety of sophisticated PBX features such as short-number or speed dialing or instant three-way conferencing. The ability to use these PBX features effectively often results in cost savings for enterprises since it saves them long-distance (or trunk) calling charges for internal enterprise business. However, most employees do not effectively use these features, often because the features are implemented inconsistently on different phone systems — even when all the systems come from a single vendor — or they are very hard to use. For example, many people do not know how to take an incoming phone call and join it to another party to start a conference, a capability that could save the enterprise money and time.

On the other hand, imagine a different world in which users can go to a self-service portal to configure their speed-dial preferences using standard Web tools. Further, imagine they can initiate conference calls from an easy-to-use Web user interface (a service that is the entire basis of startup company JAJAH). Users simply could click on the corporate IM client and initiate a conference call with an available colleague. Making these operations simpler and more accessible only improves enterprise communications, bringing it into real time and, in turn, resulting in improved employee productivity.

Historically, such integration has been difficult or impossible to accomplish because enterprise communications systems typically have been proprietary, closed systems designed to function as autonomously as possible. In most cases, they are optimized for a closed set of specific communications functions. As a result, computing/telephony integration (CTI) is very complex and suffers from custom one-off integrations that are inflexible, costly and seldom used. The adoption of Internet-standard programming in general (and Java in particular) promises to simplify this integration, while simultaneously creating new opportunities for service providers by enabling easier development of communication applications that enterprises value.

The Means and the Opportunity

An obvious question is why Java? The answer is simple. There are more than 3 million Java developers today building Internet applications. The unprecedented speed of innovation on the Internet, including the rapid rise of the Web 2.⁰ phenomenon, has been made possible by increasingly powerful and easy-to-use tools and a talented developer pool familiar with Java/Java EE.

The continuing trends in enterprise application development include automating processes, providing visual development tools, and enabling rapid prototyping, development and deployment. As operators increasingly must contend with a new generation of IP-based providers, MVNOs and myriad other competitors around the world, time-to- market, agility and innovation are critical in helping them capture new business and retain current customers.

Traditionally, Java has had slow penetration into the telecommunications community because of a perception that it is difficult to build applications on the platform with predictable, millisecond response times. Fortunately, the maturity of the Java platform; the availability of high-performance, in- memory databases such as Oracle TimesTen; and clever memory-utilization techniques all have enabled Java to render this perception obsolete. In addition, Java always has been a platform for scale and throughput. Some of the most active Web sites, such as eBay or Amazon, are built on Java or Java EE.

Early attempts to integrate communications protocols, such as SIP, into Java resulted in relatively clumsy attempts where a simple set of APIs (e.g., JAIN SIP – JSR 32) were provided to handle the SIP messages directly. The adoption of such APIs was limited since the use of the API was mostly syntactic sugar and did not free a developer from having to understand the full-state model of the SIP protocol or provide a simple, coherent programming model to build SIP-based applications.

However, Java has evolved rapidly to incorporate the needs of communications-centric applications. Just as the HTTP Servlet programming model was developed to make simple Web application development easier without the need for a detailed knowledge of the HTTP protocol, similarly, the communication industry has come together to propose the SIP Servlet specification to simplify the development of converged communication services. The primary benefit of the SIP Servlet model compared to APIs such as JAIN SIP is that there is now a simple, familiar programming model that a traditional Java/Web developer can use to begin developing communications-centric applications.

As Java already has been well integrated into enterprise computing, the adoption of Java for building next-generation communication systems simplifies the task of integrating the two. Communications system capabilities can be exposed easily through either Java or Web services APIs, which then can be integrated readily into enterprise computing. A simple example is the integration of click-to-dial capability in a help-desk application. If the ability to initiate a phone call to an available help-desk representative can be exposed as a Web service, the integration effort to extend that capability into a Web-based help-desk application is trivial. Such exposure also makes it trivial to bring the SOA notions of reusability, managed exposure, policy enforcement and orchestration to the communications domain.

Horizontal service platforms formalize the ability to expose core network capabilities using either Java or Web services APIs as enablers. Enablers are building blocks that expose a simple northbound API (with a Java or a Web service binding, for example) and isolate the user from the complexities of the underlying network capabilities. They provide the following features and benefits:

● Abstraction of underlying network technology choices and settings. For example, regardless of the vendor or the specific protocol extension used, an enabler can expose the same capability “northbound” to an application developer. This can guarantee the stabilization of application development APIs with respect to underlying network technology choices, making application migration easier.

● API-based support for service integration. By supporting a broad range of APIs, enablers permit in-house development, as well as integration with third parties. In addition, API-based application integration is more attractive to traditional Internet and Java developers when compared to the traditional telecommunications approach of protocol-based component interoperability/integration.

● Simpler OSS/BSS integration. By providing enablers, such as charging, that encapsulate common OSS/BSS integration requirements, operators can consolidate and share OSS/BSS systems across multiple services. Consolidation across multiple networks and network technologies is critical to support convergence between wireless, wired and broadband networks, for example. Having a unified view of charging, identity management, subscriber profile, customer relationship management and partner relationship management systems makes service migration, network technologies and vendors significantly more cost effective when compared to a silo-based approach.

In summary, Java and Java EE are evolving rapidly to address the challenge of communications and enterprise computing convergence. The resulting benefits to enterprises, service providers and the industry at large are numerous: more innovative use of computing capabilities in enterprise applications, faster integration and time-to-market of these new services and managed exposure of communications capabilities through SOA principles. The availability of programming models, such as SIP Servlets, and APIs, such as Parlay and Parlay X, are accelerating the realization of these benefits.

Clouds on the Horizon

While the opportunity is great, there is a downside. The technology presents threats as well as opportunities to traditional service providers. In particular, the same trends that are making enterprise communications and convergence easier also are accelerating the commoditization of voice revenue streams, the traditional mainstay of carrier revenue. New entrants, such as eBay, Skype and many others, are able to deliver not only traditional voice services but next-generation services, such as IM, presence and Web 2.0-like mashup capabilities, faster and much more affordably when compared to traditional service providers. For example, operators spent millions of dollars building Push-to-Talk (multiparty chat) and strong implementations still are lacking. In contrast, Skype has offered this feature for several years and continues to innovate rapidly.

Standards-based SDPs can help traditional service providers improve their agility, allowing them to bring new services to market much more quickly. As a point of illustration, by using the Oracle Communication and Mobility Server (a component of the Oracle SDP), it is possible to support three-quarters of a million VoIP users on a single commodity server that costs a few thousand dollars. At the same time, technologies that enable federation of VoIP networks and new business models, such as “bill-and-keep,” which allow significant reduction in termination fees, put even more pressure on traditional sources of revenue. Enterprises are welcoming new services such as unified communications that integrate core horizontal infrastructure, such as presence and availability, and are looking to service providers as a potential source of such services. If service providers succeed at delivering these next-generation communication services, they will benefit from the high ARPU available in enterprise markets, as well as offsets to their declining voice revenue.

In conclusion, the standardization of networking interfaces, the arrival of SIP as a standard control protocol, and the maturation of the Java EE platform is both food for thought and a tremendous opportunity for operators and service providers. When harnessed properly, these technologies can help operators and service providers generate significant new sources of revenue and achieve a much more strategic presence in the enterprise. How they respond to these challenges and opportunities will be the basis for the next chapter in the global communications story.

Indu Kodukula is vice president of product management for Oracle Service Delivery Platform.