For many years telephony value-added services where part of the network domain.
This network centric approach was excellent for simple mass-market Intelligent Network
value-added services,such as 800 numbers, but is not really suited for the emerging
generation of networks.
What is now needed is a platform that combines the benefits of the network centric
approach of economies of scale and reliability, with the creativity and flexibility of the IT
industry. This means it should be possible for the value-added solution to
be built, tested and operated inside and also outside the network domain and regardless
of the network's underlying technology. This is achieved with a convergent platform meant
to be applied in all different kinds of networks and to provide a wide range of sophisticated
telephony solutions regardless of the underlying media types.
Xphere-3G
is a multi-service convergent platform which provides the frame
to help service providers to deploy traditional and emerging voice,
messaging and Data value-added solutions through multiple network
technologies.
Based
on open industry standards, Xphere-3G offers a distributed environment,
where reliability, performance, cost-effectiveness and time to
market become truly the essentials in the telephony value-added
solutions delivery and ensures that telecommunications providers
are not locked into a proprietary architecture.
Xphere-3G Benefits
 New Revenues
Xphere-3G brings value to telephony service providers by substantially
increasing the spectrum of traditional and emergent value-added
solutions thought to increase the ARPU and the customers' attraction
and retention.
Costs and Time to Market reduction
To overcome costs and time to market limitations, Xphere-3G provides
a complete development environment meant to considerably reduce
the time required to develop and test any new value-added solution.
Its convergent technology provides a stable and standard boundary
that isolates services from the continuous changes and chaos that
occur at the lower layers of the network. This means that no matter
what changes are inflicted to the operators' core network level,
little or no changes will have to be applied at the service level.
Fast Return On Investment
Our off-the-shelf and custom-designed value-added solutions use
our own tested technology and platform, and do not require extensive
development, acceptance or production resources and time. The
end result is a very rapid return on investment of less than five
months for most of these solutions whether they are off-the-shelf
or custom-designed.
New Business Strategies
Using Xphere-3G allows settling new business strategies where
network operators, service providers, and users will profit from
the huge possibility brought by new, convergent technologies.
With Xphere-3G new solutions targeted to specific market segments
can be produced that were either previously not technically feasible
and/or where unprofitable because of their high cost.
Reduced Risk
By using our existing and heavily tested products and technology
the risk involved in the development and deployment of any value-added
solution is considerably reduced.
Xphere-3G
Software Modules
Xphere-3G mainly comprises the following four software modules
organized in a hierarchical way:
- Distributed Kernel Module
- OAM&P Module
- Database Module
- Connectivity Module
The Distributed Kernel, OAM&P, Database and Connectivity modules
can be distributed across several platform hosts in many different
ways and constitute the platform's foundation on top of which
any combination of Value-Added Services or Network Solutions can
be deployed and simultaneously executed provided that there are
enough physical resources.
The Distributed Kernel Module offers a distributed environment
meant to ensure the platform's scalability, robustness and consistency
and to provide a standard communication media used by all the
components to dialogue locally or remotely. The D.K. enables operators
to implement distributed platform's architectures across a wide
diversity of networks to support serviceability considerations
like redundancy and load balancing.
The primary aim of the OAM&P Module is to provide service
providers with the tools and information required for efficient
Business Support and Operations Support. The OAM&P main tools
are a very sophisticated graphical software which can be installed
in any client whether it is a Unix/Linux or a Microsoft® Windows
NT®/98/2000/XP based workstation or PCs, and a set of interfaces
enabling external BSS and OSS to interact with the platform.
The Connectivity Module supplies all the necessary communication
interfaces, devices and protocols required by the platform and
its value-added solutions to interact with most of the PSTN, GSM,
GPRS and UMTS core network elements and Internet elements.
The Database Module provides several kinds of databases servers
and all the required tools to manage them. This module is designed
to support value-added solutions requiring from small to large volumes
of data. The database module also provides an open API, which enables
almost any external source of information to be used as a database,
with no change in the value-added solution. The database module
has the following features:
- Powerful data schema definition language
- Re-use of databases by any value-added solution
- Automatic replication of data
- High throughput and scalability
Xphere-3G Main Features
Xphere-3G offers a carrier grade environment suitable for telecommunication value-added solution
thanks to features such as:
- A single platform for several solutions
- Media and technology Convergence
- Smooth software and hardware scalability
- n+1 hardware redundancy
- Concurrent computing
- Geographical distribution
- Zero-down time software and hardware upgrade
Multi-Solution
Xphere-3G gives a clear advantage to telephony providers by offering them the possibility to provide
several value-added solutions with the same Xphere-3G platform.
Any combination of value-added solutions can simultaneously provide service by sharing the same
proven platform: Xphere-3G.
Multi-Media over a wide spectrum of technologies
As a next-generation platform Xphere-3G is supports emerging more sophisticated value-added
solutions requiring the convergence of different medias (voice, messaging & data) and using
different SS7-MTP2/MTP3/SCCP, INAP, CAMEL, Sigtran, OSA/Parlay, SIP, Wap, J2ME, etc technologies.
Scalability
Engineered to evolve with our clients' needs, Xphere-3G can seamlessly grow and evolve to keep
with an expanding list of value-added solutions. Its scalability allows our clients to start purchasing a
platform really suited to their needs and upgrade it as their customers, traffic, and other requirements
grow. The platform's configuration is decided based on specific economical and technical issues
rather than on any physical or functional limitation.
Availability
To reduce the service's mean unavailability time, Xphere-3G offers redundant configurations where
all the critical hardware and software is replicated. As well as providing a higher level of service
availability, replication can be used to address scalability requirements, through load sharing
(n+1) architectures, and as a basis for on-line upgrade procedures, at both the hardware and software
levels.
High Performance
Xphere-3G high performance is achieved using an elaborated programming methodology, a very fast
and distributed communication-media as well as market-leading middleware and hardware components.
Easy To Manage
Xphere-3G has an extensive management and monitoring graphical tool for administrators to control
and provision the platform in real-time and obtain useful node, traffic, users, etc statistics.
Xphere-3G management tools are thought to detect and respond to problems quickly onsite or remotely
and to operate the whole platform and its solutions very easily from a single point.
Easy to Upgrade
Telephony service providers must continuously deploy new solutions to stay competitive. They typically
install several services on the same platform to reduce the total cost, and require that any newly
deployed solution does not cause existing profitable services to fail.
Xphere-3G is conceived to ensure a continuous evolution of its physical and functional components and
to deploy new value-added solutions without causing already existent services to be stopped or to fail.
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