NEC Carrier Cloud
- 1. White Paper Carrier Cloud Carrier-centric, Carrier-grade and Founded on IT and Network Innovation NEC Corporation http://www.nec.com/
- 2. Carrier Cloud Table of Contents 1. Acquiring New Value Chains with Cloud 2. Carrier Cloud 2.1 Cloud Services by Carrier 2.2 Carriers’ Advantage 3. Building Clouds 3.1 Core Platforms 3.2 Cloud Service Platform 3.3 SaaS Applications 3.4 NGN Transport and Access 3.5 Cloud Connected Devices, Gateways and Terminals 4. Supporting Cloud Services 5. Winning in Cloud 5.1 Carrier-grade Cloud 5.2 Inherent Cloud Risks 5.3 IT + Network Innovation and Integration 6. Nearer to You Appendix - Acronyms 2
- 3. White Paper 1. Acquiring New Value Chains with Cloud There comes a time in every successful business when it becomes The previous Internet age saw users and content providers breaking hard to grow. In developed and developing countries alike, market away to form a direct relationship beyond the reach of the carrier’ s saturation in telecoms is limiting customer acquisitions and value billing system. The cloud era, underpinned by the concept of “if we added services have not been able to generate the same revenue as share, we can save money and gain best practice”, is ironically voice services. To continue to grow, it is time to look for other marked by consolidation and a return to centralization, featuring the revenue sources. carriers’ preferred, core oriented business model. This time, the datacenter is the new core. NEC believes that for sustainable and substantial growth, “Business IT from the cloud” should be one of the first places to look. Figure 1 Cloud is not new and we can already see well known Web 2.0 cloud shows four examples of value chains that are important and mature players controlling payment, identity and access within the cloud, sources of revenue. Which value chains are most accessible will justified through a much enhanced end-customer experience. depend on your local situation. Carriers already dominate the c o m m u n i c a t i o n s (a n d to s o m e ex te n t t h e p e r s o n a l m e d i a NEC is committed to helping its carrier customers expand their distribution) value chains. Energy and government service provision business horizons to include new value chains such as Business IT. are certainly important areas to study, but in most cases Business This new revenue will come from a new, more intimate relationship IT seems a good place to start due to the general trend of SMEs with business or enterprise customers, penetrating further into the moving to opex oriented models for software, systems and services. technology, service and management aspects of their business As the diagram shows, the carrier can position itself to capture operations. value from many value chains by providing an IT + communications capability to enable these business models or help deliver public services at lower cost. Through connecting customers or delivering content, this hub and spoke (core oriented model) has placed you at the center of many business models, maximizing your potential for revenue. The Carrier’s Cloud Figure 1. Carrier-Centric Cloud: Capture multiple value chains Copyright © 2010 by NEC Corporation 3
- 4. Carrier Cloud 2. Carrier Cloud This paper describes something we at NEC call Carrier Cloud. The concept has three pillars: 2.2 Carriers’ Advantage - Carrier-centric cloud, which is the use of cloud computing services, We have already talked about the need for new revenue sources and technologies and business models to acquire new value chains; how the cloud owner can control the cloud business model. This is - Carrier-grade cloud – being able to deliver cloud services that strong motivation for carriers to move into this space – but what millions can rely on; competitive advantages do they have? - Differentiation through IT and network innovation and integration. Later we will discuss what makes Carrier Cloud special, but first Our studies have shown that carriers have several advantages over let’s take a look at the service landscape. Web 2.0 cloud service providers. These advantages includes their networks, which provide appropriate bandwidth, quality of service and end-to-end security; and commercial maturity which provides 2.1 Cloud Services by Carrier more commercial stability, customer support, customer trust and Cloud services are the fundamental purpose of cloud: “The ability to better operational processes. Better service availability can be provide services on demand, on a per-use basis, which scale derived from both. Carriers already have human resources and dynamically, with the illusion of unlimited resources and without know-how to build/ operate datacenters and backup centers. exposing the actual assets providing the service.” Carriers also have many telephony switching central offices that have earth-quake resistant, high-power air conditioning, power What is important to the business customer, whose core purpose is supply and security facilities. Carrier can use these offices as rarely IT, is that they can convert much of their IT capex to IT opex datacenters. Based on their human and material resources, carriers while cutting inhouse IT support opex. For consumers, it is the same a re c o n side re d to have g re at adva nt ag e s ove r othe r clou d model except that they are expected to generate advertising or providers. market intelligence income for the provider. The uptake of cloud services among the small to medium size enterprise community is complicated. We need to look at network bandwidth and stability, the prevalence of software piracy, regional trust levels and the attractiveness of the accumulated business applications (SaaS) portfolio. NEC can see at least two phases of cloud service provision for carriers. The phases are differentiated by ecosystem complexity. In Figure 2, Stage 2 demands more cloud user devices, embedded devices, new business models and processes interacting within a more complex ecosystem. Figure 3. The Carrier Advantage Relative Introduction Effort (Client Side) Business Process M2M Remote Stage2 Outsourcing These advantages give the carrier a secret weapon, an end-to-end Systems & High Network SLA that can only come from a carrier with service availability at Management Connected carrier levels. Home DaaS Virtual Private Cloud SaaS Carriers have other strong points, too: they have preferential access (Replacement Digital service) Signage to user's location information such as GPS or femtocell information Stage1 SaaS for example. Carriers can even handle settlement and authentication Low (New service) PaaS functions, and use information about their customers and sales Light Consumer laaS Services channels. All of which add value to cloud services. As carriers can bundle network access with cloud services, they can also offer a Low High more competitive price. Relative Introduction Effort (Carrier Side) Figure 2. Cloud Service Phases 4
- 5. White Paper 3. Building Clouds Cloud is not about platforms, it’s about people, ser vices and 3.1 Core Platforms solutions. While SaaS services will run on a "Platform as a Service" (PaaS), digital signage, Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Connected Below we can see the logical structure of the Carrier Cloud – the Home need much more than PaaS; they need servers, devices and heart of several value chains beyond pure telecoms. In the center a business model. On the telecoms infrastructure side, we have we have the core IT platform (servers, storage and IT networking) many industr y standards and blueprints on which to build a and the network core with its policy control, IMS and ser vice network, but IT oriented services are driven more by the carrier and switching functions. Thirdly we have our cloud + network OSS their customers. So when NEC works with customers on Carrier allowing the integration and fulfillment of carrier borne cloud Cloud, we design the service together; including the business services. model, service roadmap, platform, support and operations. To achieve Carrier Cloud, you need to visualize and automate cloud 3.2 Cloud Service Platform services operations. It is also important to virtualize the network and to control the network’s paths and flows dynamically. A Carrier Utilizing this core is the Cloud Service Platform. Its role is to provide Cloud solution has at least the following key elements: the facilities required by SaaS applications so they can operate and thrive within the cloud. T he most impor tant func tion is the Inside the datacenter marketplace. It allows customers to buy service licenses, give IT Platform (IaaS) feedback on services, get expert help from the community and NGN core infrastructure move data bet ween applications. This is a dif ferent level of OSS for cloud + network functionality than earlier ASP models which ran hosted software Cloud Service Platform (PaaS) licenses in separate silos. SaaS applications Call center & helpdesk Other more basic functions of the Cloud Service Platform include Datacenter operations single sign-on for all services, and a charging gateway that accepts charging events from SaaS applications. The PaaS hosts APIs Outside the datacenter which allow the SaaS service to access the secure database, NGN access and transport message passing and multi-tenant IaaS capabilities of the core IT Gateway equipment Platform. End-user terminals & devices IT consulting Third party management Inside the Carrier’s Datacenter Internet Scalability Enterprise Flexibility Secure, Fast & Guaranteed Figure 4. Carrier Datacenter Centric Cloud ● The datacenter is at the heart of the Carrier Cloud ● The Network is both in the datacenter and beyond Copyright © 2010 by NEC Corporation 5
- 6. Carrier Cloud 3. Building Clouds As we move from an era of “best effort” to “as promised”, more 3.3 SaaS Applications bandwidth will either have to be managed on a per flow basis or Revenue generating applications are hosted on the Cloud Service within fatter virtual pipes, dedicated to commercial cloud traffic. Platform. These are typically provided by third party ISVs wishing to Transport networks that are service and user aware will have an provide services to the carrier’s SME subscribers. They could be advantage in delivering cloud. This awareness has to permeate hosted on another cloud but a carrier’s attractive traffic and hosting every layer of the transport since higher level policy control systems prices, an SLA and the carrier’s brand should win them over. can only really work when they receive the bandwidth they expect. In the future, NEC believes that OpenFlow™ technologies will unify 3.4 NGN Transport and Access the telecoms transport and datacenter’s IT network. OpenFlow brings an unrivalled awareness and communication between the The quality of cloud ser vices is only as good as the network network and the application management layer. delivering the service. QoS, stability and security are the carrier’s primary weapons when competing with Web 2.0 clouds. 3.5 Cloud Connected Devices, Gateways and Terminals In some countries, carriers are looking at LTE hot zones as the key to providing cloud in central business districts, where customers are Home Gateways and femtocells are the critical link between the highly mobile. In some developing countries, this will be the primary cloud, home and SME domains. Now users can stream media in broadband access service. their house from anywhere. They can access media libraries in the cloud or remotely control home electronics and appliances such as Lighter cloud based ser vices such as SaaS can be used personal video recorders and digital picture frames. successfully over lower broadband speeds provided by DSL and HSDPA. Heavier services such as DaaS require more bandwidth. A Machine to Machine (M2M) can be commercial or consumer in single user can normally use DSL or HSDPA to support a DaaS nature but millions of cloud devices will need to be connected and session when out of the office, but it may not be feasible to have controlled, each within their own unique cloud business process. many users sharing the same connection. From smart cars to e-book readers, set-top boxes to electricity meters, each one will have their own business model, charging model with embedded traffic charges and roaming policies. This list continues to grow. Cloud Platform Suite Programmable Servers and Storage Flow PASOLINKTM SaaS LTE/SAE Solution WiMAX Solution FTTx Solution Digital HGW 3G/LTE Femtocell Digital Signage Virtual PC Center Solution Figure 5. NEC’s Solutions for Carrier Cloud Services 6
- 7. White Paper T he consolidation and ce ntraliz ation of re source s brings a 4. Supporting Cloud Services concentration of risk – that of all the eggs being in the same datacenter. Secondly, to continually offer more value, cloud services For most SMEs, IT is not their core purpose and cloud unchains them are “encouraged” to interact for the common good, exchanging from IT, allowing them to focus on customers. In the Carrier Cloud data and sharing functionality. model, the carrier takes the responsibility for their IT support needs. This closer cohesion links services such that they become highly Ideally each user within a customer should be able to call one dependent upon each other. This is another substantial inherent risk. number and receive help on any of their SaaS subscriptions. Limiting calls to nominated representatives may have individuals Many cloud risks can typically be resolved through various forms of questioning if economies made on in-house support are valid. redundancy and service mobility. - Redundancy ensures that there are always more IT resources (and Remember that in cloud, applications will increasingly share data copies of data) available to continue processing during any failure; and interact, so most applications cannot take a silo approach to - Service mobility ensures that the live service can be moved at the right support. Problems will often happen at the border between services time to alternate resources, while providing fast access to storage. as data is shared between applications. Over time, a scalable way to manage cloud application support will need to be implemented To implement these strategies we use many tools and processes as the cloud portfolio expands. including Invariant Analysis (which can detect silent errors), Virtual Machine mobility (which moves the service before failure) and Network Virtualization (which moves the service between datacenters) to name 5. Winning in Cloud but a few. Happily, NEC uses these same management techniques to make clouds more environmentally friendly too. NEC believes that there are two critical elements to the winning formula for Carrier Cloud: 5.3 IT + Network Innovation and Integration 1. Carrier-grade cloud, the ability to deliver cloud services that millions can rely on; Carrier Cloud is a fusion of IT and telecoms business models, 2. IT + network innovation and integration. technology and infrastructure – plus some people to help. For NEC and our customers, now is the time of IT and network integration: O p e nflow te c h n o lo g y le ts th e a p p li c atio n laye r t a lk to a n d 5.1 Carrier-grade Cloud dynamically control the network. Thin clients are tuned for DSL and As a carrier you know how to keep millions of customers happy at wireless networks. Home Gateways link home IT to the WAN. once. You know the cost of managing and compensating for an outage V ir tualize d se r ve r s smooth vide o stre a ming pe aks on VOD and you can imagine that while telecoms provided critical infrastructure management systems, while application statistics between network to the nation, cloud IT infrastructure is critical to the businesses that and application look for silent problems. We have released our would be paralyzed without access to their systems. Cloud Platform Suite: a Cloud IT virtual processing and storage platform with power, weight and cooling optimized for telecoms These are just some of the issues that underline the difference switching rooms. between mass cloud IT and today’s enterprise IT. For this reason, NEC has developed carrier service platforms that are 99.9999% available at the service platform level. We are not suggesting that 6. Nearer to You every customer wants to invest in that level of availability, but it is an option. In fact, many of the same mission critical middleware and We wa n t to h e l p c a r r i e r s b u i l d t h e i r ow n C a r r i e r C l o u d , a operational management systems are available to all as part of our carrier-centric platform featuring services, solutions and people standard cloud proposition. who allow you to acquire new value chains and revenue. Each cloud is different, so we are expanding our ability to work with you locally to help design the right business case, ser vice por tfolio and 5.2 Inherent Cloud Risks operational capability. This will enable you to operate an innovative, Cloud computing was designed as a business model that allowed SLA-driven, carrier-centric, carrier-grade cloud. extreme dynamic scaling at a cost closely matching actual usage. To achieve this dream, multi-tenant scale and resource sharing are For more information on NEC and NEC’s Carrier Cloud solution, essential. please visit us at: http://www.nec.com/cloud Copyright © 2010 by NEC Corporation 7
- 8. Carrier Cloud Appendix Acronyms API Application Program Interface ASP Application Service Provider CAPEX Capital Expenditures DaaS Desktop as a Service DSL Digital Subscriber Line GPS Global Positioning System HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet Access IaaS IT Platform IMS Information Management System ISV Independent Software Vendor IT Internet Technology LTE Long Term Evolution M2M Machine to Machine NGN Next Generation Network OPEX Operating Expenditures OSS Operations Support Systems PaaS Platform as a Service QoS Quality of Service SaaS Software as a Service SLA Service Level Agreement SME Small to Medium size Enterprise VOD Video on Demand Corporate Headquarters (Japan) NEC Corporation www.nec.com © 2010 NEC Corporation. NEC and the NEC logo are registered trademarks of NEC Corporation. Cat.No.C01-10090001E