Introduction
A proliferation of new data, voice, and video applications are reaching a broad user base with increasingly sophisticated needs and heightened expectations. However, most of these applications are still delivered over a heterogeneous infrastructure that lacks the extensibility required for future applications and is optimized for single-service, point-to-point delivery.
Multiple-play (triple and quadruple) architectures have been designed to offer a different approach but continue to lack the flexibility to fully support the breadth of applications likely to traverse IP networks. What is needed is an extensible, scalable, and programmable network infrastructure that meets today's needs and is flexible enough to evolve in the future - a network that supports Any Play services.
To deliver a rich variety of services to a broad range of devices over multiple access points means that the network must have the ability to access and process granular customer information. It needs to understand the identity of the user in a variety of dimensions, as well as manage the policies of the service, and meet ever-changing session and mobility characteristics. A network built for Any Play service provides a suite of service-enabling and control technologies that empower service providers with the following essential subscriber and service information:
• Who? Who are the users - what device and services are they trying to access? More subscriber detail may be provided depending on the service provider's specific application needs.
• What? What policies need to be applied to provide the service? What are subscribers allowed to do? What timeframe can they do it in? For example, if a customer accesses a service during peak times, should the customer be charged more?
• How? How can the network resources be dynamically controlled? How can service providers monitor and charge for a service on a per-user and per-usage basis? How can the network be made self-aware of the demands on itself? How can the network interoperate with other carrier networks to provide rich-media control?
• Where? Where can the users roam? How will location and presence impact the overall service delivery?
Requirements for Any Play Service
Building a network for Any Play service presents huge opportunities for today's service providers, accompanied by significant challenges. To capitalize on these opportunities, service providers must quickly provision and scale multiple, secure offerings for immediate consumption. At the same time, they need to customize these offerings for users to access from virtually any end-user device.
A single-service or dedicated network cannot meet these diverse and growing consumer demands for "many services to many screens" (Figure 1). With empowered users not wanting limitations on how they access and use their applications, providers need to address a multitude of service demands or at least provide as many options as possible to capture the greatest market share. This is becoming possible, in part, because of the blurring of functions and devices. With computers being used as phones, and phones being used for Web browsing, the expanding multipurpose capabilities of end-user devices are quite apparent. In fact, a great many devices can be used to provide a range of data, voice, and video services and offer mobile access at the same time.
Figure 1. Today's Consumer Demands
The services are expanding too. Today's mobile phones, for example, can display downloaded video clips, take and share photos, play music files, and manage e-mail, while offering the voice-related services for which they were originally intended. Such integrated services and the ever-increasing functionality of end-user devices provide exciting new opportunities to offer innovative or niche services that can help consumers fully customize their experience. Service providers that capitalize on these opportunities can dramatically increase their average revenue per user (ARPU).
Web 2.0 and Video 2.0 applications are growing exponentially. Many of these, having been developed independently, may be optimized around single device or single service delivery. Service providers must ensure that a bandwidth-intensive application such as video does not compromise other services or security or an application's performance on the respective device. In a world of Any Play services, the network must be flexible and intelligent enough to accommodate any combination of converged service delivery.
However, in many cases, networks are already being stretched in their ability to meet customer demands. Dedicated networks cannot maximize service efficiency and profitability. Services must be delivered over a common, flexible, intelligent IP network with superior scalability and availability. It must be fully integrated to deliver current and future services efficiently, and adaptable enough to meet changing application demands.
Beyond this, in order for service providers to be successful, the network must achieve advanced levels of service awareness: recognizing the type, priority, and needs of each service and subscriber and, therefore, accommodating many different and distinct services. The network must also be flexible enough to allow service providers to offer and deploy their services in different ways to match the needs of individual customers. This is not currently possible with most service provider networks. A network built for Any Play service enables providers to deliver a wider range of service options, achieve greater network efficiencies, and improve network, service, and business control.
The Impact of Web 2.0, Video 2.0, and Beyond
Web 2.0 and Video 2.0 represent a new era of interactive, personalized media, and new complexities to managing converged data, voice, and video applications.
Web 2.0 continues the migration from static, published content to interactive or two-way communication. With new innovations and capabilities to draw from, service providers are expanding their relationship with subscribers by "interacting" with them. In addition to offering a much richer set of content, providers can allow customers to personalize the services they receive through Web portals and tailored display formats.
Video 2.0 builds on the same concept of interaction. Unlike broadcasts and downloads that operate on a one-way, universal model, today's video content is personalized. Subscribers can pick, choose, download, upload, critique, and eliminate content choices at will. Video 2.0 content can be created, indexed, and reviewed by subscribers, and some of the content has become more compelling than Hollywood productions.
Equally as important as the concept of personalization is that of community. When ordering a movie with a DVD rental service such as Netflix, customers can see the movie titles that their "friends" rated highly - and consider friends' recommendations in making a decision. Communities can also be used as a means of sharing content with family, friends, or like-minded users. The massive popularity of YouTube demonstrates the pent-up demand for a service that enables the easy sharing of home movies and other amateur videos. But why be restricted to watching user-generated content on a PC? Consumers do not want to be limited to just one device; they need new, user-friendly ways of sharing all their content and gaining access to the content of others (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Impact of Video 2.0
The impact on businesses is also significant. Video 2.0 offers business subscribers ways to connect, communicate, and collaborate through telepresence, video-enabled chat, video conferencing, unified communications, and industry applications such as distance learning and remote medical diagnosis.
Realizing the full potential of this Any Play universe cannot be achieved through traditional dedicated networks. An intelligent IP network optimizes the user experience and allows service providers to reduce costs by converging Any Play services for both business and residential customers. Beyond just offering these services with mobility, today's service providers must deliver integrated, branded "experiences" in order to move up the value chain of the customer.
The Transition to "Experience Provider"
The rise of the "empowered consumer and employee" has expanded the notion of the customer experience in large part because of the requirements, technology, and pace of today's digital culture or "Connected Life". Figure 3 represents the gradual transition of the relationship between users and service providers, with the user role evolving from a passive recipient of media content to an active participant in its creation.
Figure 3. The Evolution of the Customer Experience
At first, and for a long time, the experience users had with their provider was a "passive" one. Broadcast television, for example, was delivered with the content and timing defined by others. If users were interested in a particular show, they had to organize their lifestyle to accommodate the broadcaster's schedule. With technology advancements, consumers were able to move to more of a "pick" relationship with their providers, where they were able to view the movie they wanted to watch using video-on-demand, or pick the type of content they wanted to surf with the introduction of the Internet. Soon thereafter, the relationship became one of "participation" - where they could share their interests and interact with others through virtual communities. Even more quickly, this desire for expression evolved content "production" - where the users themselves are no longer dependent on content created by others, but are able to create, remix, or develop content themselves and then share it with a global audience.
Service provider networks have become more advanced and new services must be more responsive to customer preferences. This ability to "transact" with the customers, albeit limited, was achieved through such network capabilities as video on demand, and also generated additional revenue for the provider. With continued innovations and capabilities, providers were able to extend the relationship with their customers by "interacting" with them. In addition to providing a much richer set of content to the user, the providers were able to personalize the services they delivered through Web portals and tailored display formats, and advance the socialization process by hosting online forums for discussion. Providers are looking at ways to fully "empower" the customer - so that, through their network, users can completely customize their experience. Just as the expectations of the experience are changing, so too must the provider's ability to deliver on them.
The evolution that the providers are undergoing to offer this experience is enabling them to stretch beyond the bounds of their traditional market and extending them into other industries as well. As part of this evolution, service providers are extending beyond their traditional market into new industries. No longer are they limited to communications, Internet, and entertainment, but are expanding into advertising, retail markets, and even finance through such services as the "phone as a wallet" service. Such an approach greatly enlarges the addressable market for providers and affects many other industries as well - either providing opportunities for partnering or another front on which to compete.
To offer a truly integrated experience to empowered customers, service providers must redefine themselves as "experience providers." And their networks are the fundamental enablers of this transformation.
The Cisco IP NGN - Intelligent Foundation for Personalized Any Play Services
The benefits of an Any Play network require an IP NGN with service intelligence and key linkages across network layers that allow for close coupling of baseline requirements such as quality of service (QoS), security, and multicast. It must be scalable and reliable with the intelligence to address application bandwidth contention or manage aspect ratios on any variety of devices to accommodate screen formats for video while integrating voice, mobility, and other data applications.
Cisco® enables a connected-life experience over its end-to-end IP NGN solution that leads the industry in Any Play delivery. While other industry solutions are addressing triple and quadruple play by attempting to integrate disparate network elements that offer partial solutions, or by using limited IPTV approaches that cannot be easily extended, only Cisco has the IP NGN infrastructure and service intelligence to do it all - both now and in the future. The Cisco IP NGN is extensible, programmable, flexible, and specifically designed to accommodate emerging and future technologies with maximum performance.
The Cisco IP NGN architecture utilizes three tightly coupled layers for convergence: application, service, and network. Working together these provide rich, personalized, value-add multimedia services enablement for operators. Service providers need an application layer that interfaces with the customer, a secure, reliable network layer that scales to deliver numerous services, and a programmable service layer that orchestrates the delivery using service intelligence. The Cisco IP NGN simplifies the complexity of operating such a network by making it more resilient, integrated, and adaptive, allowing providers to profitably deliver a suite of integrated "any-play" services that meet the needs of their customers well into the future.
For More Information
• For more information about the Cisco strategy for service providers, visit:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns525/networking_solutions_market_segment_solution.html
• For more information about the Cisco IP NGN vision and architecture, visit:
• For more information about the Connected Life, visit:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns705/networking_solutions_solution.html