As many of Australia’s major telcos embark on IT transformations, what can we learn from overseas

Today, Sun Microsystems is working with more than 20 major communications companies worldwide. Converged digital media and next generation service delivery are all the rage. What are the next big things in communications sector IT transformations?

Technology innovations combined with regulatory change have sparked an overhaul of communications companies’ IT infrastructure.

For telecommunications and media communications companies alike, the drive to deliver complex new content, applications and services has never been higher.

At the same time, the consumer wants simplified experiences – whether they are accessing content or querying their bill – they want one click/one call convenience.

Delivering new services such as IPTV, poses a huge systems consolidation and integration challenge for most communications companies.

Gone are the days when the marketing department would wait months for engineering to provision a new service and be able to bill for it.

To compete, modern communications companies need flexible Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), so they can launch new services targeted at multiple customer demographics, fast.

To integrate OSS and BSS, most communications companies today need to find new ways to increase processing power and energy efficiency, while reducing space in the data centre.

They also need to be able to store petabytes of data in the form of e-mail, streaming media, blogging, text messaging, package tracking and more, as new services emerge on a weekly basis.

And then there are the issues that come with rolling out services on multiple devices, while still protecting the data stored in core applications.

So what are some of the new ways to tackle these challenges?

Modular Datacentre – a Fast Way to Increase Capacity Anywhere it is Needed

“We’re talking to lots of communications companies about the Modular Datacentre for everything from disaster recovery to moving things out to the edge of the network,” said Sun Microsystems Modular Datacentre S20 director, Cheryl Martin.

Sun’s Modular Datacentre S20 is a virtualised datacentre housed within a shipping container.

“One company in Europe is looking at adding temporary GSM capabilities for sporting events,” she said.

For communications companies, the Modular Datacentre S20’s benefits include:

• 10X faster to deploy vs. traditional datacenter (deployed in days)
• Reduced capital expenses with incremental expansion
• Global deployment capability & flexibility to redeploy as needed
• 4X higher density per rack vs. typical datacenter
• 40 per cent lower cooling costs in 1/8th the space

“Everybody’s looking at how they can participate from an eco standpoint,” said Cheryl Martin.

“The Modular Datacentre is 40 per cent more efficient than traditional data centres. In some parts of the world, where there’s a big variance in the cost of power, you can locate it near cheaper sources of power,” she said.

Russian telecommunications company, Mobile TeleSystems has deployed Sun’s S20 Modular Datacentre at multiple sites for distributed billing.

“Mobile TeleSystems wanted to distribute their billing applications rather than centralise. They were in a hurry - the new datacentre had to be up and running within days,” said Cheryl Martin.

Whether you need to get content closer to the customer or access processing power that can be turned on and off according to demand, the Modular Datacentre can help.

Server Consolidation – How to Boost Processing and Cut Power Consumption

Many communications companies around the globe are touring Sun Microsystems Santa Clara data centre which has become a blueprint for balancing economics and ecological demands. Upcoming Let's Talk Briefing in Australia and New Zealand will feature a case study on Sun's Data Centre as well as addressing how to prepare for the demands of the next generation systems.

Like many communications companies, Sun was faced with the need to consolidate and compress its data centres.

Sun replaced old servers and storage systems in multiple data centres with its latest equipment (including Sun Fire servers and StorageTek storage arrays) to one new data centre campus. The results were:

• More than $US9 million cost avoidance in new data centre investment
• 88 per cent reduction in server and storage space footprint
• More than 75 per cent reduction in power demand saving $US1.1 million in energy costs
• More than 450 per cent improvement in server compute performance
• 244 per cent increase in storage capacity

Similarly, phone company Vonage uses Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers to power its ticketing system for managing customer support.

With the Sun systems, Vonage saw dramatic reductions in power and cooling costs (SunFire Systems consume around a third less power and generate less heat than comparable systems) and used 50 per cent less space than before.

Live Web content provider, The Real Time Matrix Corporation, was able to expand its system capacity using Sun Fire servers while achieving an 80 per cent reduction in rack space and power consumption. Cost savings were 50 cents in the dollar as system capacity expanded.

For the Sun Microsystems Santa Clara data centre, the key to energy efficiency lay not just in the technologies within the servers. Rather than air conditioning the data centre rooms, the Santa Clara centre uses cool water circulating around individual boxes to keep temperatures at an optimal level.

Content & Services on Multiple Devices Without the Integration Challenge

The demand for rich interactive content, applications, and services that run on a variety of devices continues to grow.

“Communications companies want to be able to deliver iPhone-type capabilities without being locked into one operating system or content delivery platform,” said Bill Cowper, Executive Director, Sun Microsystems Australia.

“Using JavaFX, a company can turn any device, be it a white label handset or a desktop PC, into an iPhone-style device, and take advantage of their own content platforms,” he said.

To simplify and speed the creation and deployment of high-impact content for a wide range of devices, Sun has introduced JavaFX, a new technology based on the Java platform, designed to enable consistent user experiences on desktop, mobile, TV, and other consumer platforms.

The technology is attractive as a way to help communications companies push new services to multiple devices without costly integration costs.

View the video with Flickr and Twitter feeds running in Facebook within the browser, dragged to the desktop, and then put on a mobile phone.

SOA and Open Standards for More Efficient New Services Roll Out

To help solve the OSS/BSS integration challenge, an increasing number of communications companies are moving to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

With SOA, it is possible to re-use elements of existing OSS/BSS systems.

For example, the Java Composite Applications Platform Suite (Java CAPS) contains everything a communications company needs to develop and deploy SOA.

Java CAPS is a collection of middleware software suites using service-oriented architecture for business integration.

With multiple new services and more people accessing data from integrated OSS/BSS systems, the challenge then becomes identity management.

With open-standards based technologies, organisations can securely manage, protect, store, verify, and share identity data throughout the enterprise and across extranets. While management burdens are eased using self-service password management.

The result is improved customer service, speed of deployment and facilitates that deliver new, improved services.

Sun's Identity Management solutions deliver the only complete, user provisioning and meta-directory solution to enhance enterprise security, affordably.

Read the White Paper on Changing Trends in Operation and Business Support Systems

Learn more about Sun’s communications solutions