From Pipes to Clouds
Operators are seizing upon the emergence of cloud computing to change the direction of their broadband businesses. Operators who have built and successfully marketed their broadband businesses as high speed internet access pipes, are seeking to transform them into platforms for delivering and monetizing applications - in short, operators are seeking to change their networks from Pipes to Clouds.
ConteXtream's focus is on helping network operators transform their broadband networks from into agile and dynamic "smart clouds." Making this transformation gives operators multiple paths to monetize their broadband networks:
- "Cloud-enabling" operators own media and data applications. This drives increased productivity from servers and software, thereby delivering significant CAPEX savings in application resources and networking costs
- Enriching subscribers' connections to Internet sites and applications, enabling operators, for the first time, to have a comprehensive approach to adding value to and partnering with Internet Application Service Providers (ASPs)
- Orchestrating operators delivery of personalized bundles of services to every subscriber, affording increased ARPU, improved subscriber loyalty, cutting CAPEX and improving service velocity
- Optimizing delivery of media and applications, reducing the load on operator networks and improving quality of experience for subscribers
The technique ConteXtream has pioneered to achieve these goals is "network virtualization". Data center virtualization has helped operators and enterprises deliver more productivity from the servers installed in a data center. Network virtualization extends this across the network, enabling operator's networks to operate as a single unified pool of resource, allocating each subscriber's request for service to the particular application servers best placed to handle that particular request.
Virtualizing a whole network is a "big, hairy" problem. To solve this problem, ConteXtream reached out to the computing world for a technology developed to tackle extremely large problems by using computers distributed across a network and loosely coupled. This technology is Grid Computing.
ConteXtream's Service Delivery Grid applies grid computing techniques to optimize application delivery. The Service Delivery Grid breaks down the overall problem of cloud based application & service delivery into millions of individual problems – how to connect a particular subscriber to the particular application servers best placed to handle that subscriber's application needs. Each of these problems is manageable in itself, and ConteXtream's software enables a single standard server to handle a half million or more individual sessions.
Grid computing techniques allow a network of standard servers to solve problems which previously required the world's most expensive super-computers. Similarly ConteXtream's Service Delivery Grid employs standard servers instead of ASIC based proprietary networking "mainframes". Powered by smart software, the Service Delivery Grid can virtualize the largest network, increasing agility and driving improved price/performance and economics.