We live in a world where communication solutions can be hardware-based, run in a virtual machine on a local server or be situated in the Cloud. The paradigm for communications solutions has been shifting from hardware to software to virtualization as I’ve discussed in my recent posts. Once a solution is virtual, in principle, customers have the flexibility to control their own destiny. They can run solutions on their own premises, in the Cloud, or with a hybrid model that uses both approaches.
Let’s consider an example. Dialogic has traced this type of evolution in its SBC products. In 2013, the company positioned two products as SBCs. The BorderNet™ 2020 IMG provided both SBC and media gateway capabilities and found an audience that wanted an IP gateway between different networks or an enterprise edge device. The BorderNet™ 4000 was a new product which focused on SBC interconnect functions and ran on an internally-managed COTS platform. Five years later, both products have changed significantly. The IMG 2020 continues to run its core functions on a purpose-built platform, but its management can be either virtual or web-based. The BorderNet™ 4000 has morphed into a re-branded BorderNet™ SBC product offering. The product has evolved from its initial hardware focus to being a more portable software offering. Customers can now run the software on a hardware server, in a choice of virtual machines or by deploying on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Whereas the original BorderNet 4000 only supported signaling, the BorderNet SBC can optionally also support transcoding of media, either in hardware (using a COTS platform) or in software. The journey of these products has offered customers more choices. The original concepts of both products are still supported, but the products now have elements of virtualization which have enhanced their portability. So as a result, the full functionality of the BorderNet SBC can run in the Amazon cloud and in the other business models.
Once a product has been virtualized, it can be deployed numerous ways and can be deployed using a variety of business models. As customers want to move solutions to the Cloud, being able to run one or more instances of software in virtual machines is essential. The term Cloud tends to be used generically, but in telecom, there are multiple ways the evolution to the cloud is playing out. One example is the OpenStack movement, where open source has helped drive what is sometimes called the Public Cloud. The various forms of private clouds have also been popular, with variations being offered by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM and others.
In my next post, we’ll consider how the technical changes we’ve been describing here have also been coupled with changes to business models.
If you participated in the evolution described here, please feel free to weigh in with your comments. If you’d like to explore strategies on how to evolve your application solutions or other communications products / services in this rapidly changing technical and business environment, you can reach me on LinkedIn.