The value of SDN/NFV lies in standardising and making network infrastructure programmable, while enabling value-added services to be introduced quickly and efficiently, writes Ari Banerjee, principal analyst for service provider IT at Heavy Reading.
Virtualising complex, proprietary network equipment and providing an easy, programmable way to control the network is critical for enabling new revenue streams. Decoupling the service layer from the control layer will help in building and assembling new services faster and will not depend on the underlying network layer. Hence services can be brought to market faster, without upgrading the network or investing in new proprietary hardware, thereby reducing the cost/time barrier for service introduction.
CSPs’ ecosystem will change even more rapidly with the dawn of SDN/NFV. CSPs will be able to create new service models in partnership with any number of third-party vendors. Services will also be exchanged across various channels. With these new service mashups, as it were, CSPs will need a billing system that is able to accommodate multi-party compensation and settlement.
For CSPs to maximise their revenue potential from NFV initiatives, they need to have their IT systems in order. A lot of the discussion and focus today is about service fulfillment and how it needs to evolve to support the virtualised environment. Not enough importance is currently given to the BSS side of things, which is unfortunate because operators cannot make any money without a robust BSS infrastructure.
Virtualisation of OCS (Online Charging System) function is a good starting point for CSPs that want to gain experience with virtualisation before tackling larger, more complex NFV projects. The OCS is a key component within a full IMS implementation. Mobile operators are taking advantage of the transition to LTE to converge their online and offline charging capabilities into a single, Diameter-speaking, real-time charging function able to charge any type of subscriber and service.
Thus, OCS virtualsation is a critical step on the broader path to full IMS virtualsation, as part of an overall LTE migration strategy. Virtualising OCS with adequate performance and scalability metrics will bring major benefits to CSPs. Virtualised OCS is independent from underlying hardware, it is free to run on any COTS server, anywhere within the operator’s organisation.
In the future, we believe that the policy and DPI components of the BSS ecosystem will work in close alignment with the SDN controller. Policy rules, subscriber context, user transactions and behaviour, application user trends, congestion events, device trends, etc. will be fed into the SDN controller in real time. This will help in creating self-managed network scenarios that will continuously adjust resources based on policies, QoE, efficiency and other parameters.
Billing and charging also need to interface with the self-service engine to provide the necessary usage/chargeback information to users, and must capture information regarding the provider of the service or event so that settlement can be accurately calculated and partners compensated for their contribution. Flexibility of pricing, complex bundling capability, embedded business intelligence to provide customised offers, for example, are critical features of a revenue-management solution set in a virtualised world.
The main understanding with SDN and virtualisation is that the intelligence of the network will now exist in a consolidated management layer (the SDN control plane). From the control plane level, the packet-carrying network below looks like a single, giant switch responding to programming and instructions from above and sending back usage records and performance parameters to the management systems. Above the control plane sits the application layer, which is where the BSS/OSS applications sit, including billing and settlement. A continual surge of information will pass between the network and billing applications via the control plane allowing product managers to define triggers based on network events, chargeable events or billing status that can be combined in ways to provide customers with automated discounts and offers based on their use of the service.
In order to enable these types of services in an SDN environment, a modern day billing and settlement platform must be deployed with the following traits:
Programmable and able to capture and bill for any event
An SDN/NFV environment will require a billing system that is also programmable and able to capture any type of chargeable event or trigger as soon as it is plugged into the control plane. Billing platforms also must support an unlimited array of charging/rating scenarios, including:
- Usage-based consumption of any metric
- Chargeback
- SLA violation calculations that span all participants in a mashup
- Bandwidth (public Internet in/outbound, same cloud, regional cloud)
- Configurable server instance types
- Partner and reseller management, contract management to determine individual terms with each partner on a per-service basis
- Model contractual clauses in all aspects of the financial relationship, including payment terms, disputes, taxation and currency requirements
- Commission calculations for value-added resellers and agents, as well as referral fees for referring partners
- End-to-end subscriber management, which includes account relationship, terms, real-time balance management of monetary and bundled units, customer hierarchies, subscription type, etc., should also be part of the revenue-management solution set
o Real-time visibility and notifications into departmental, regional usage across enterprise for zero-cost IT
Respond in real time
When implemented, NFV and SDN will demand billing systems to respond in near real time to accommodate new types of billing events and to take policy-driven actions in response to the continual triggers from the control plane. Notifications will be critical for B2B contracts to eliminate bill shock, for example for a cloud service negotiated with a multi-national.
Be service-aware
CSPs who look to SDN/NFV will need a billing and compensation platform that is just as flexible, versatile, and capable as the SDN architecture itself. CSPs will need a billing system that can change as rapidly as new software-defined service templates can be applied in the network and to flexibly bill for any event that can be captured.
