Building on Oracle's leadership in middleware and information management and the company's experience in carrier-grade communications infrastructure, Oracle today outlined its roadmap for a comprehensive, standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry. The new Oracle® SDP is being designed to enable communication service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and shrink the time and cost to deploy new voice data and integrated multimedia services on existing and next-generation communication Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Enterprises are expected to be able to extend their communication infrastructures with the Oracle SDP, providing a strong foundation for new Voice-over-IP (VoIP), mobile, and real-time applications.

The 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-standards-based service delivery platforms offer compelling value to operators as the basis for developing interactive, media-rich, next generation data services," said Philip Marshall, director of Wireless/Mobile Technologies, Yankee Group. "Service delivery platforms that enable immediate ROI through out-of-the-box services and integration with OSS/BSS systems through standard interfaces are likely to be particularly compelling. Vendors who are able to provide a broad portfolio of products that are stable, mature and carrier-grade will have a definite edge over the competition."

Oracle SDP -- A Roadmap to Meet Industry Needs

Oracle SDP plans to extend Oracle Fusion Middleware for network-centric applications by enabling users to access next generation mobile; voice services; and Enterprise Applications through traditional communication networks; and next generation networks based on IMS and VoIP infrastructure. The new Oracle SDP roadmap incorporates a broad suite of Middleware functionality specific to the communication needs of carriers and enterprises including:

Oracle SDP -- Available Today

• IMS Support: Oracle SPD includes the industry's leading SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) Application Server, Presence Server, Proxy Registrar and Location for a complete IMS-ready Infrastructure. Oracle acquired the SIP Infrastructure as part of its Hotsip acquisition.
• Support for Legacy Networks: 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. Oracle has acquired Parlay and SLEE technology as part of its acquisition of Net4Call, a Norway-based provider of carrier- grade Parlay infrastructure software.
• Network Adaptation Layer: Oracle SDP provides 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.
• Messaging: Oracle SDP provides 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. This is particularly relevant in a telecom environment where end-to-end service availability across middleware and database tiers is critical.

Oracle SDP -- Future Functionality Plans

• Call Control, and Charging Facilities: To provide 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.
• Device Management and Device repository: To provide support for standards-based device management, and a comprehensive device repository.
• Out of the Box Services: To include 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 Advantages

Oracle SDP plans to provide a more complete, standards-based solution that will have the following advantages over existing market offerings:

• Comprehensive: Oracle plans to deliver an integrated suite of best-in-class products in its service delivery platform. The integrated suite plans to offer unparalleled functionality when compared to any other industry player and offers customers the flexibility to adopt either an evolutionary or revolutionary approach to new service deployment.
• Integrated user profile: Oracle is uniquely positioned to combine its leadership positions in identity management and middleware to bring to market an SDP that would allow operators to provide highly personalized services to their customers based on customer profiles and preferences.
• Converged programming model: Oracle plans to enable a single J2EE-based programming environment to provide support across next generation and current generation networks and OSS/BSS integration, thereby simplifying service development, integration and management for developers.
• Hot Pluggable architecture: Oracle SDP plans to support multiple application servers, including Oracle Application Server, OC4J, JBoss and WebLogic.
• Oracle Ecosystem: Oracle offers a large ecosystem of network equipment manufacturers, system integrators and ISVs with industry expertise and solution offerings that are built on Oracle Fusion Middleware and the Oracle Database.
• Out-of-the-box services: Unlike pure platforms that could take months of development in order to realize revenue, Oracle SDP plans to include a suite of services that can be immediately deployed or used as templates for additional service development.

"Our vision is to address market needs and provide customers with a comprehensive, scalable, IP- based services platform," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies. "We are building the ideal platform for developing and deploying new telephony services that deliver value over today's networks, both wireline and wireless, and as well as for the converged networks of the future."