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Tony Gale is vice president of IP portfolio management, responsible for planning Lucent Technologies' IP products and services including IP service switching, MPLS, and core routing. Gale previously was director of product management for MPLS, frame relay and ATM products with Lucent's Core Switching Division after holding other Lucent management positions in systems engineering and network consulting.
In the same way the real money in telephone service today is earned through class services such as caller ID and call waiting, cable modems and DSL connections create income via huge bandwidth at a flat rate. Service providers are now adding service intelligence to networks using IP service switches to extract greater value from their network investments, carving up the additional bandwidth into compelling services that generate incremental revenue. The past demands in voice networks are becoming present-day demands in data networks.
There clearly is a compelling need for network service providers to offer services that allow enterprises to outsource network integration for intranets, remote access, virtual private networks (VPNs), extranets, Web hosting, e-commerce, and the like. Customers are demanding better than "best effort" IP services, such as network-based VPNs, network-based firewalls, broadband access wholesaling, B2B communications, content delivery and converged services combining voice, video and data in a seamless network transparent to users. The real power of the new public network is its ability to quickly deliver new services with minimal investment in equipment or installation. Furthermore, consumer and business users agree on a fundamental concept: they both want the end-to-end services arrangement to be "dumb" on the premises (home or office) and intelligence in the network. They want to try new services without buying new equipment.
With developments in IP service switch technology, providers can deploy these services using equipment they install and maintain in their own data centers, freeing end-user organizations from cost and administrative burdens. Service providers also can save on previous investments by offering these services via intelligent edge devices working in tandem with previously deployed core and access devices. And the ability to increase revenue with new services allows service providers to "up sell" existing customers, as well as entice new ones, with premium services. Value-added IP services are a win-win scenario for both service providers and customers.
By supporting high performance delivery of highly secure value-added IP services via an IP service switch at the edge of the network, there are numerous advantages from an architectural perspective. The ease of maintenance and improved upgradability of locating the service layer functions in dedicated hardware allows the service provider to maintain and upgrade the access and backbone devices without disrupting the services delivered on the network. IP service layer devices also can be deployed flexibly in either router or switch centric networks. This is one of a number of investment protection benefits, allowing incremental introduction of value-added IP service with existing access aggregation and core switching equipment. The independent service layer also serves the goals of reducing operations costs and speeding deployment by enabling a move to policy-based provisioning.
The ability to install IP service equipment seamlessly and ramp up services creates a perfect scenario for service providers to increase revenue and for their customers to take advantage of added services without major overhauls to networks, service disruptions, and additional customer premise equipment. The independent services layer achieves access technology independence by delivering a consistent service across all technologies, including dial access, leased line, frame relay, ATM, cable modem, xDSL and even wireless. IP services may be furnished flexibly without regard to how the user accesses the network. It avoids the need to install, maintain, and administer these functions in large numbers of aggregation devices.
By deploying IP services at the edge of the network with IP service switches, everybody wins.
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