Service Control Layer (SCL): Enabling rule - Based control and enrichment in next - Generation telecom service delivery

Abstract

Telecom operators have started to make significant investments towards evolving their Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) to a next-generation architecture based on IP technologies and standards such as SIP, SOA and increasingly, Web 2.0. With consumers and businesses increasingly relying on Web 2.0 - oriented services for information, communications, collaboration and entertainment - the key to this evolution would be the integration of Web/SOA middleware and Telecom middleware infrastructure, thereby creating a converged Web-Telecom services layer. To this end, operators are gradually embracing the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and looking at developing an ecosystem of IMS/SIP - based services that can be mashed up with Web - based applications, in innovative ways. Service delivery is vital for the success of the IMS - based approach. To this end, operators will require greater flexibility around real - time management, control and enhancement of user services at runtime - in a manner that is decoupled from the application logic itself. We observe this need and present the Service Control Layer (SCL), a middleware technology that sits between the IMS service and network plane, and provides operators with the requisite fine-grained control and enrichment over the delivery of next-generation converged services.