Oracle's SDP For Telecom Industry

Oracle has outlined its roadmap for a comprehensive, standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) to enable communication service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Oracle SDP plans to embrace the convergence of IT and network technologies to deliver a scalable platform with carrier-grade reliability, real-time performance, connectivity to traditional and next-generation IP-based networks, and interfaces to operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS).

It plans to extend Oracle Fusion Middleware for network-centric applications by enabling users to access next generation mobile/ voice services; networks based on IMS and VoIP infrastructure, and Enterprise Applications through traditional communication networks; thereby extending communication infrastructures.

The new Oracle SDP plans to incorporate a broad suite of middleware functionality specific to the communication needs of carriers and enterprises including the industry’s leading SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) Application Server, Presence Server, Proxy Registrar and Location for a complete IMS-ready Infrastructure.

Oracle SDP provides:

* A programming environment that extends J2EE for asynchronous, event-based programming that is crucial to support and leverage existing legacy telecommunication networks. It supports the industry standard Java API Parlay X Web Services standards.

* A rich set of adapters to connect the SDP to existing network elements and telecommunications equipment enabling service providers to rapidly roll out new services while protecting their existing investments.

* Facilities to access content from mobile devices across a variety of standard protocols including SMS and MMS.

* Carrier-grade communication infrastructure including Oracle Database 10g, real application clusters and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for supporting scalable, always-on, real-time services.

Future functionality plans include:

* Call control capabilities that are intended to work across IMS and Legacy networks as well as a charging enabler to quickly integrate SDP with billing systems.

* Support for standards-based device management, and a comprehensive device repository.

* A suite of services such as mobile content delivery, VoIP and virtual PBX that can be immediately deployed for faster Return on Investment.

Oracle SDP plans to include a suite of services that can be immediately deployed or used as templates for additional service development. It’s key elements are already available and in use by several service providers around the world. A broader suite of functionality will be made available this calendar year.