cloud media processing -...

CONTENTS

Basics of Cloud Computing pg. 2

Transition to the Cloud— What Does It Mean? pg. 4

Overcoming Challenges Around MPaaS pg. 5

Requirements for Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) pg. 9

MPaaS Deployment Categories and Examples pg. 10

Radisys Products for Cloud Communications pg. 13

References pg. 14

OverviewCloud computing is gaining momentum as a substitute for traditional IT infrastructure, due in large part to its on-demand model for providing computing resources. In “Have it your way” fashion, companies and institutions can choose from different categories of service, ranging from basic server instances to complete application delivery platforms, as offered by Salesforce.com. Leveraging capacity already in place, businesses can quickly deploy new applications with less development effort, capital investment and ongoing support.

Telecom service providers, looking to derive the same benefits, are now investigating cloud computing for delivering IP media services across public and private networks. A significant hurdle is that public Internet networks were not designed to satisfy the telecom industry’s more stringent requirements around real-time performance and reliability. In fact, the Internet operates on a best-effort delivery model, which poses issues for time-constrained multimedia data, such as video and audio. Still, cloud computing for IP media services using Intel® multi-core server platforms is a viable option for telecom service providers who are aware of the technical challenges and take proactive steps to address them.

For those developing cloud-based telecom solutions, this paper examines some of the major considerations associated with deploying IP media services, such as VoIP, video, fax and conference mixing.

Cloud Media ProcessingEmbracing Cloud Computing for MRF Media Processing and IMS Applications

By: Adnan Saleem, Chief Architect, Radisys Ray Adensamer, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Radisys

White Paper | May 2012

2Cloud Media Processing | Radisys White Paper

Basics of Cloud ComputingAccording to a US National Institute of Standards and Technology definition, “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”1

The value propositions created by readily-available computing capacity and “pay-as-you-go” are the underpinnings of an economic model made possible by service-oriented software, virtualization and grid computing technologies, among others. Strong cloud computing momentum is reflected by IDC’s 2012 forecast—80 percent of new commercial enterprise applications will be deployed on cloud platforms.2

Benefits of Cloud ComputingCloud computing leverages Internet networking technology and standard servers to create financial and infrastructure benefits for service providers and their customers. Financially, service providers can achieve significant cost savings by deploying low-cost, commoditized general-purpose servers and through high equipment utilization enabled by software consolidation. The value to cloud service customers is paying only for what they use and accessing additional resources (i.e., overflow capacity) when needed without making an upfront investment. In fact, the model dramatically lowers customers’ capital expenditures, minimizes depreciation expenses and improves cash flow. Since the computing platforms are already in place, customers can deploy services more quickly than if everything had to be done from the ground up.

With respect to infrastructure, cloud computing is built with fungible computing resources that can be easily re-purposed, thus extending the useful lifetime of hardware and software investments. Capacity scales easily through the addition of new Intel®-based servers, and the homogeneity of the equipment simplifies the management of datacenters and central office systems. Furthermore, compliance strategy is easier to develop and execute because of the consistency of the infrastructure.

Service ModelsThe cloud is capable of providing services on many levels, three categories of which are represented by the acronyms IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. These service categories are defined by TechTarget3 as:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) involves outsourcing the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a paradigm for delivering operating systems and associated services over the Internet without downloads or installation.

• Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.

In acknowledgment of media processing functions (see sidebar: What is a Real-time Service?), this paper introduces another type of service, referred to as “Media Processing as a Service” or MPaaS. This service model has hardware, an application programming interface (API) and application elements, so there are delivery mechanisms consistent with IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, as shown in Figure 1.

Fully Integrated Application

Eg: Conferencing in Private Cloud

Eg: Media Applications on Base Hardware Infrastructure

Eg: Multimedia Ringback Tones, or Conferencing in Public Cloud

Eg: Network APIs for Application

Developers

Infrastructure as a Service

(IaaS)

Platform as a Service

(PaaS)

Media Processing as a Service

(MPaaS)

Sostware as a Service

(SaaS)

PackagedSostware

Figure 1. Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS)


What is a Real-time Service? Real-time telecom services are differentiated by the need to meet time-critical parameters, including minimal end-to-end delay and jitter, to produce an acceptable quality of experience (QoE). For audio calls, the rule-of-thumb is the round trip delay cannot exceed 150 millisecond (ms), otherwise users will hear echos and get irritated. For this reason, VoIP is a classic real-time service.

Video calling and conferencing are similar to VoIP, where delay must be minimized. Video conferencing also has “lip sync” issues caused by audio and video content being transmitted from source to destination on often separate RTP media streams; consequently, their paths and delay through an IP network will differ. To remedy this situation, the streams must be buffered and put back “in sync” at the receiving end by an IP media server, thus overcoming jitter and sync problems.

In contrast, receiving an email and refreshing a browser screen are examples of a near-real-time service since users can’t detect or won’t care if it takes 150 ms or longer. Although users might get frustrated with slow Internet response, in most cases they will still use the service. Similarly, a 1-way video streaming service is considered near-real-time because the end user doesn’t know when the transmission was actually sent. Even with a bogged-down public Internet, YouTube or NetFlix streams are usually good enough for users to consume and enjoy the service.

A real-time service is typically a true 2-way communication experience. In a real-time service, the users can immediately tell if the service is slow or not working properly. Today, this is evident with video calling and conferencing, where it is often “hit and miss” in terms of quality when streaming across broadband and 3G networks.

The following lists examples of real-time telecommunication services:

• VoIP calls

• Video over IP calls

• Multi-media conferencing

• Video content streaming

• Multimedia ringback tones

• Interactive voice and video response (IVVR)


• Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) provides access to specialized platforms, APIs or fully-integrated applications that analyze and modify media data streams. These applications leverage functions such as audio and video mixing, multimedia transcoding, recording and playing a media stream, detecting the “loudest talker” or noisy connections, and applying voice or video quality enhancements.

Types of Cloud ComputingClouds are classified as public, private, hybrid or community, based on the entities providing computing resources and networks. A public cloud uses the mainstream public Internet, which is operated by and shared across many external organizations. This model is typical for hosted conferencing service providers. A private cloud is operated for a single organization and is common among enterprises for data security, corporate governance and reliability reasons. A hybrid cloud combines both public and private clouds. A community cloud is setup for a common interest group, and the infrastructure is maintained by its members.

Transition to the Cloud—What Does It Mean? Cloud computing is creating a paradigm shift that is closely aligned to guiding tenets around how computing resources are accessed and consumed, some of which are listed in Table 1. As a result, customers of cloud services can take advantage of new features, like dynamic resource allocation and consumption-based pricing models, that increase their agility and flexibility.

From the perspective of telecom service providers, an industry migrating to cloud-based services is likely to experience fundamental shifts related to infrastructure, business models and competition. Drawing on insights from Morgan Keegan5 at Equity Research, some of these changes include:

Infrastructure:• New on-premises infrastructure deployments

give way to cloud-based systems located offsite.

• Transcoding-intensive digital signal processors are substituted with virtualized COTS infrastructure based on Intel® multi-core processor technology.

• Large, upfront equipment expenditures are replaced by recurring fee (rent) payment models.

Business Model:• ‘Conferencing as a business’ transitions to

‘conferencing as a service.’

• Interoperability requirements expand from dedicated equipment to all computing devices.

Competition:• New entrants take advantage of lower barriers

to entry provided by cloud computing.

• Greater reliance on public networks levels the playing field.

• Improved interoperability enables new partnership opportunities.

Tenets Implications

Abstract Resources Substitute references to physical servers and hard drives with instances and volumes. Cloud resources are fungible.4

On-Demand Provisioning Get more resources right when they’re needed. Give back unnecessary resources.

Scalability in Minutes Scale out or in depending on usage needs.

Pay per consumption Don’t pay for resources after they’ve been turned off.

Automation Increase automation using APIs. The cloud provides access to scriptable infrastructure.

Table 1. Tenants of Cloud Computing


Overcoming Challenges Around MPaaSThe motivations for the industry to consider cloud computing, and more specifically media processing as a service, are usually grounded on the financial benefits. That is why cloud computing is also characterized as a financial model first, but then also needs to be balanced with technical realities in delivering a real-time telecommunications service.

Leveraging cloud computing for IP media services requires changes to the underlying network architecture in order to adapt the new ways data and applications will move between customer machines and central offices/data centers. For example, public access networks need to be upgraded to deliver greater bandwidth, higher quality of service (QoS) and improved reliability, among other things. Moreover, MPaaS must run on shared computing platforms and meet stringent QoS requirements despite the reliance on public networks, which are far less predictable than private networks. The following sections describe many of the challenges facing networking and telecom solution providers in the delivery of MPaaS, and how Radisys solutions are helping to address them.

Real-time Network PerformanceTraditional Internet applications do not have strict real-time performance constraints. Most users wouldn’t complain if a web page download took a half second or longer, whereas such a delay is unacceptable for audio and video communications. Based on user perception studies, most people consider the benchmark of 150 milliseconds (ms) as the maximum tolerable delay for a satisfactory voice call. If the delay is greater, users will notice the delay, which will negatively impact the communications experience.

Today, many telecom service providers choose to purchase their own IP media processing equipment and QoS-enabled IP network infrastructure in order to deliver the real-time network performance needed to ensure an acceptable quality of experience (QoE) for subscribers. Likewise, control over equipment is especially critical for service providers who implement

virtual private networks (VPNs) designed to improve IP communications quality through better performance, lower delay and less jitter than the Internet. When quality of experience is a top priority, it’s imperative that service providers test the end-to-end network performance of IP media services at maximum load. The same is true for those deploying IP media services on cloud infrastructure; it is important to closely look at the network performance, along with the costs for delivering that performance, with your service provider.

Radisys Solution: Real-time performance is designed into Radisys media servers, enabling both DSP hardware-based and software-based versions in virtualized environments running on Intel® multi-core processors to satisfy comparable latency specifications. Employing patented technology, all Radisys media servers (see sidebar: Media Servers in the Cloud) implement a real-time control layer that sits on top of the operating system. This layer enhances DSP, multi-core and multi-processor architectures by providing real-time optimizations specifically tuned for the deterministic response times needed for IP media processing.

The Radisys Software Media Server also utilizes Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP)—an extensive library of multi-core-ready, highly optimized software functions for multimedia and communications applications. Intel® IPP functions deliver parallel performance beyond what optimized compilers alone can deliver, enabling Radisys to execute packet and jitter buffer processing within the strict 5-millisecond packet processing increments required by in high-performance telecommunication applications using Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) media streams.

In addition, the resource manager differentiates processing tasks (‘hard-real-time’ versus ‘near-real-time’) and distributes them independently. Ensuring the hard-real-time processes have sufficient computing power, the resource manager reallocates CPU, DSP, memory and I/O resources as needed. This optimizes application performance based on the available computing resources, thus reducing cost for a given performance level.


Availability and ReliabilityRepresenting the gold standard for reliability, carrier-grade equipment is known for “five-nines” availability, which is often bolstered by robust failover. Cloud-based infrastructure supporting telecom services should integrate the hardware and software components capable of maintaining equivalent availability.

Radisys Solution: Radisys Software Media Server, running on the carrier-grade Red Hat Linux operating system, can be deployed on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Linux appliance or blade servers, as well as AdvancedTCA-based computers delivering five-nines availability such as Radisys ATCA Compute Processing Modules based on Intel® multi-core architecture.

Resource AllocationAs mentioned earlier, on-demand provisioning is a key tenet of cloud computing, which requires an infrastructure resource manager capable of adding burst capacity, when needed. Resource managers may also be called upon to route workloads to certain nodes, perform load balancing and manage a cluster of resources. These tasks must be carried out with the understanding that some computing resources may perform specific media services, like text to speech, pure transcoding or multi-media processing. Some scenarios that resource allocation should comprehend include:

• Resource Management—Customers pay for what they need per service level agreement; and accordingly, the resource manager assigns servers and balances the load among all the resources. For example, a customer requests six servers total, where five are dedicated to media services and one to transcoding.

• Burst Capacity—As an example, audio conferencing has a peak time, typically during work hours. After that time, a customer chooses to release the cloud resources to lower cost or to enable other services to reuse the same cloud infrastructure.

• Geographic Resource Management—Services and features are tailored to individual geographies, making it necessary to manage dissimilar installations.

• Server Redundancy—In the event of server failure, the cloud maintains a redundant server for failover to minimize disruption.

Media Servers in the Cloud: Hardware-based and Software-based Cloud service providers offering media processing services have the option of deploying hardware- or software-based media servers, or a combination. For example, Radisys offers both types of media servers designed for real-time media processing performance.

• MPX-12000

˸ Broadband Media Resource Function (MRF)

˸ Voice and video over LTE (VoLTE)

˸ ATCA-based system can integrate load balancing blades

• CMS-9000

˸ High density, fault-tolerant and NEBS compliant

˸ Scalable up to 22,800 ports

• Radisys Software Media Servers

˸ Runs on COTS Linux servers based on Intel® multi-core processors, including the Intel® Xeon® processor E5 family

˸ Patented design to maximize real-time performance under high system load

˸ Utilizes Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel® IPP)—an extensive library of multi-core-ready, highly optimized software functions for multimedia and communications applications

˸ Ongoing optimization for virtualized environments


Radisys Solution: Radisys continues to improve our unique application programming interface (API) that allows cloud providers to monitor media server resource utilization (e.g., how many resources are still available) in real-time, thus greatly facilitating load balancing. Radisys also exposes measurements and statistics for any running instance. As a result, Radisys media servers are easy to manage on a per instance basis or cluster basis in the cloud.

Media Processing in Virtual MachinesWhen implementing software-based media servers, virtualization (see sidebar: Virtualization Technology) gives service providers far more flexibility to add/remove services and features on the fly. This is because the software providing services/features run in virtual machines that can be deployed/undeployed while the server is running. This capability can be used to satisfy the abstraction and scaling tenets of cloud computing described earlier. However, caution is needed when using virtualization since it can slow down systems, as well as introduce unpredictable behavior that negatively impacts real-time performance, especially under high load.

Radisys Solution: Radisys Software Media Server has been successfully tuned and tested on VMware, running on an Intel® multi-core server. Radisys customers have also reported virtualized operation on Linux KVM. Radisys Software Media server will soon be properly productized and supported on these and other virtualization products in the future. Using virtualization, service providers can easily deploy multiple instances of the Radisys Software Media Server to increase media processing capacity. Another usage is to enhance reliability by creating a backup copy that is a hot standby media server in a virtual machine.

Media, Control and Access SecurityStoring company information in the cloud can be risky, therefore incorporating encryption and authentication technology is critical, particularly for public clouds.

Radisys Solution: Radisys implements standard security protocols to protect IP flows.

• Media Plane—The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) supports encryption and message authentication. Note: SRTP is an adaptation of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP).

• Control Plane—Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) secure IP communications by authenticating and encrypting packets.

• Operations and Management—Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems.6 Radisys is implementing the HTTP combined with TLS, called HTTPS, in the future.

Virtualization TechnologyVirtualization is commonly discussed in the context of cloud computing. The technology has been around for many years, most notably used in data centers where various applications are consolidated onto a single server. Virtualization software, called a hypervisor, abstracts a computer’s resources (CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) and creates virtual machines that act like independent computers with an operating system, memory, disk and an application. VMware and Linux KVM are examples of hypervisors, also called virtual machine monitors.

Of concern to telecom application developers is the overhead introduced by hypervisors, particularly when the computer switches between virtual machines. This delay can diminish deterministic, real-time performance and lead to unexpected behavior. As a result, developers should take steps to ensure their software can run in a virtualized environment without perceptible performance degradation. This includes thorough end-to-end service testing—especially when the cloud media processing and associated cloud network infrastructure is under high system load.

Therefore, telecom service providers should weigh the potential impact, both cost and performance, of a virtualized cloud infrastructure. There may be one option where a server instance runs un-virtualized on its own dedicated Intel® computing platform, and another, where many virtual server instances run on the same physical machine.


Service-Aware Load Balancing and Traffic RedirectionLoad balancing is an essential aspect of managing the workload sent to media servers because it optimizes resource utilization and minimizes bottlenecks that impact performance. Another important workload

management task is traffic redirection, which is prevalent in teleconferencing. For example, a conference call may have three participants calling into the cloud, and all of the messaging and signalling needs to be routed to the single node supporting the call. Multi-party services and collaboration can make traffic redirection more complicated.

Load BalancingWithin the cloud, many identical servers may be required to provide services for many thousands (if not millions) of individual clients. Therefore, a vital component of a cloud service platform is the module that distributes traffic evenly across a dedicated bank of servers.

Radisys offers two types of solutions for providing the load balancing function in an ATCA chassis. The first, ‘wirespeed’ load balancing, resides on the ATCA chassis’ internal switch/hub. The second, which provides an intelligent adaptable load balancing solution, is a software technology called ‘FlowEngine,’ designed to run on the Radisys family packet processing blades based on NetLogic and Cavium processors.

Wirespeed load balancing leverages functions inherent within the switching silicon itself to parse packet headers for the fields that contain the identity of the particular user (client) or flow and to use the values found to select a service blade or thread to process the packet. Since the switch is able to perform this function on packets as they are received directly off the ingress port, there is very little additional latency. The switch can load balance all external facing ports at the full line data rate.

A potential limitation of switch based load balancing is that the forwarding decision has to be made on a completely stateless basis. This means the identification of the target for the packet is derived solely as a mapping (or hash) of the bits in the relevant header fields. The target cannot be specifically assigned when any one connection is first made. In the context of a media server platform, where conferencing is a common requirement, it is important that packets belonging to a particular call can be sent to a specific blade. To address the requirement, FlowEngine-based intelligent load balancing is often a more appropriate solution.

FlowEngine is a software technology that allows Radisys to create application-specific load balancing appliances on top of an ATCA packet blade. Such intelligent load balancers are able to look-up key packet header fields or hashes in a table to see if the packet belongs to a known connection or if it belongs to a new one (a previously unseen user/session), in which case a new forwarding rule has to be created. The new forwarding connection can be based upon a weighted round robin snapshot of recent server loadings or can be specifically created as part of the process of setting up the session/call by the control plane part of the media server platform.

Both switch and FlowEngine-based load balancing provide high availability features to respond to the failure of a load-balanced service blade. Packets destined for the failed blade can either be redirected to a standby blade, or if a standby is not available, they can be distributed among the server blades which remain in service. Once the failed blade is restored, the load balancer can either return packets back to the original target, or in the case of FlowEngine, minimize further session disruption by using the restored blade only for new users/sessions as they appear.


Radisys Solution: Radisys media processing solutions can be delivered with other Radisys products, including ‘wirespeed’ load balancing on ATCA chassis internal switch/hub. Alternatively, a Radisys software technology called ‘FlowEngine’ can deliver load balancing on the Radisys family of NetLogic and Cavium-based packet processing blades (see sidebar: Load Balancing)

Developer API’s and InterfacesDevelopers of telecom applications need straightforward mechanisms to invoke media services that are compatible with a diverse set of application development and run-time environments. This typically entails an API that makes it easier to support multiple client platforms, such as Internet browsers, smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.

Radisys Solution: Radisys media servers support standard-based APIs, including:

• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an IETF-defined application-layer control (i.e., signaling) protocol for creating, modifying and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution and multimedia conferences.7

• VoiceXML (VXML) is the W3C’s standard XML format designed for creating audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony and mixed initiative conversations.8

• Media Server Markup Language (MSML), described in RFC 5707,9 is designed to provide feature–rich media processing control in an IP–based communications network. MSML has been adopted by dozens of vendors and is used to control many millions of IP media server ports in numerous service provider networks around the globe.

• HTTP RESTful Interfaces, soon to be supported by Radisys, are growing in popularity because they are a good fit for cloud and other Web-based services due to their HTTP synergies and client-side scripting capabilities (e.g., web browsing). For example, JSON (Javascript Object Notation) or XML-encoded media control functions are well-suited for mobile web

applications employing media services hosted in the cloud. In comparison, the protocols previously discussed are better suited for non-IP-based telephony.

Requirements for Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS)Cloud computing is capable of supporting media processing services, due in large part to significant advances in computing and IP networking technology that are enabling a new class of real-time telecom services. The stringent performance requirements of MPaaS can be met, in many cases, by existing cloud network elements. Special considerations, in order of importance, are outlined in the following, where MPaaS is compared to other applications moving to the cloud.

• Network I/O and Associated Load/Traffic Management—High Importance

˸ Media processing controls and manipulates IP media streams, and like other applications involving multiple video sources, it can consume a large amount of network bandwidth.

˸ High-quality network connections are critical to avoid network jitter, which can significantly impair the quality of experience (QoE).

• Compute Resources—Medium Importance

˸ Media processing is computing intensive, as are many other applications.

• Element Management—Medium Importance

˸ Perhaps more distributed than most applications, media processing can be complex to manage, especially when a service provider’s solution spans in-house service infrastructure and outsourced cloud computing infrastructure.

• Billing—Low Importance

˸ Billing is obviously an important aspect of a cloud media processing service. While normally not a function or top concern for the media processing layer, billing grows in importance when the service offering involves customer-facing application layer elements.


• Storage—Low Importance

˸ Comparatively, media processing typically requires minimal storage, unless the application uses a media library, like a multimedia ringback tone database.

The cloud service providers best positioned to provide MPaaS have high-quality network connections and supporting QoS mechanisms. However, the costs to deploy high-performance network I/O can be considerable—often much higher than the compute resources themselves.

For this reason the CFO, who likes the financial benefits of cloud media processing, should work together with the telecom engineers and service planners to achieve a balance between economic and quality aspects. They must identify when it makes sense to migrate media processing from a controlled, properly engineered, private telecom IP network, to a cloud environment that often has many variables and unknowns. For example, one strategy might involve a tiered approach such as:

• Economical Telecom Services, which leverage cloud media processing and the associated cost benefits, are suitable for lower-end, price-sensitive service offerings.

• Premium Telecom Offerings, which use existing, dedicated data center and IP VPN infrastructure, continue to deliver the highest quality of experience.

MPaaS Deployment Categories and ExamplesWhen MPaaS (Media Processing as a Service) was first mentioned in this paper, it was suggested this service type fits into the most common cloud computing service models. This point is illustrated in Figure 2 and described in more detail in the following:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

˸ Media processing services running on virtualized and media-optimized compute resources, network I/O and storage.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)

˸ Application developers accessing media processing services using API’s and standard interfaces to enable mobile and wireline communications applications that leverage the cloud media platform and associated resources.

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

˸ Cloud hosted, fully-integrated communications services and applications, such as multimedia conferencing or communications portals, with all the necessary management and billing services included as part of the service.

Media-Optimized Elements in the Cloud—IaaS ModelToday, most telecommunication service providers have their own infrastructure, purchasing IP media server equipment and deploying it in their central offices or datacenters. With cloud computing, it’s no longer necessary to make this large investment; instead, service providers can get media processing capacity from cloud service providers on a pay-as-you-go basis. This kind of arrangement is likely to employ a private cloud, and a single cloud service provider would host some or all of the service provider’s media processing requirements and capacity.

MediaIntegrated

Apps

MediaAPIs &

Interfaces

MediaOptimizedElements

SaaS

Application

Platform

Infrastructure

PaaS

IaaS

Monitoring

Object Storage

Compute NetworkBlock Storage

Runtime Database

Content

Identity Queue

CommunicationCollaboration Finance

Servers

DesktopsLaptops

Phones Tablets

Figure 2. Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) Aligning with Common Cloud Computing Service Models


To better serve cloud computing customers, media server vendors (i.e., equipment manufacturers) are optimizing media processing elements to enhance performance in these environments. Moreover, media-optimized elements will ease the deployment and provisioning of media processing capacity, and leverage virtualization technology to increase the flexibility and cost efficiencies availed by cloud computing infrastructure. For instance, web service provider Amazon offers their Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC210), where media processing elements could be optimized for rapid deployment to support on-demand resizable media processing capacity in the cloud.

Example: Cloud Media Processing for Peak Capacity A successful service provider offering hosted telecom services has a growing business and needs to increase its capacity. Rather than increase capital expenditures (CapEx) to fund more infrastructure, the service provider obtains additional capacity from a cloud service provider during peak demand, just a few hours a day (Figure 3). When evaluating cloud service vendors, the telecom service provider considered network I/O costs, connectivity quality and overall network performance with respect to jitter, delay and QoS. Another key aspect was ensuring the management features could seamlessly integrate and hand-off calls from the existing infrastructure to the cloud provider.

The cloud service provider offering included hosted media servers whose resources were partitioned as virtualized instances, allowing them to be provisioned and used, as required, during peak periods. In other words, the virtualized instances could be activated and brought online during peak periods, and later released when demand decreased.

Benefits of outsourcing for service providers:

• Saves capital and operating expenditures (CapEx/OpEx) to enable future growth.

• Allows media processing resources to be gradually migrated to the cloud.

• Enables tiered-service offerings.

˸ Premium (highest QoS): uses the service provider’s internal network and infrastructure.

˸ Economy (satisfactory QoS): uses the cloud.

APIs and Interfaces for Media Services—PaaS ModelService providers are looking for new ways to offer real-time media processing services, in addition to hosting their own services. One promising avenue is to open up their platforms to third party developers, whose applications would interface with and utilize their real-time media processing as a service (MPaaS). This business model could be supported by the public cloud, which could also handle the billing for third parties.

To pursue this opportunity, service providers must expose their media service APIs and interfaces in languages and formats that can be utilized by the broadest cross-section of the software engineering industry. The pool of software engineers that develop applications using SIP or other telecom-specific APIs make up only a small percentage of the software

ServiceProvider

Cloud Media Services

Provider (IaaS)

Application Server (AS)

PSTNPhone

2GCellular

Laptop with VoIP

Client

LTE Smartphone

with App

IP Media Server (MRF)

Virtualized Media Resources

Configure Network for Normal Traffic• Service Provider provisions infrastructure for normal traffic volumes

Use IaaS Media Processing During Peak Traffic• Provision and utilize media processing instances during peaks• Service Provider AS routes overflow calls to cloud media processing• Turn off when daily peaks completed

Consistent End User Experience• Same service quality, features and performance 24/7

Figure 3. Outsourcing Media Processing to Add Capacity During Peak Demand


engineering industry. Instead, service providers should embrace more commonly-used Java or HTTP-based protocols. Moving forward, there are new standards under development to better support these business models, including JSR-309 for Java-based media control development and RESTful HTTP interfaces for control.11

Example: Cloud Media Processing for 3rd Party DevelopersA web-based contact center determines it could dramatically increase the efficiency of its support team using real-time audio/video communication features. For instance, customer contact begins with an over-the-web chat session, but then, using a “hotkey,” the customer can quickly start a 1-on-1 real-time conversation with a customer service representative or product specialist. Tasked with creating this feature, an application developer reprograms the contact center’s call flow to incorporate the new real-time audio/video communication features, which the contact center accesses in the cloud, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Example: RCS Video Services (Rich Communications Suite-enhanced)The GSMA driven RCS-e industry initiative is gaining widespread momentum within operators, device manufacturers, and application service providers. An important component of RCS-e is multimedia/video share and video calling services operated and provided through carrier networks. Interoperability across a diverse set of handhelds, media codecs/formats, bandwidth optimization, and inter-carrier media connects and interworking are well identified challenges. Hosting RCS-e video as part of a Cloud Service adds significant value to overcome the interoperability issues where the Cloud Services can be shared and the required Media Processing within the Cloud would provide seamless interoperability across RCS and non-RCS handhelds as well as inter-carrier networks, in real-time.12

Benefit of open platforms for MPaaS providers:

• Generates new services and associated revenues driven by the imagination of application developers around the globe.

Telecommunication Applications as Cloud Service Offerings—SaaS ModelAfter making significant investments in unified communications (UC) infrastructure, some enterprises would like to transfer some of the support responsibilities to a third party. This presents opportunities for cloud service providers with offerings similar to hosted unified communication service offered by a telecom service provider using a subscription or pay-as-you-use billing model. One example is a hybrid, enterprise-class deployment model consisting of enterprise-owned equipment for headquarters or large branch locations, and cloud-based telecommunication services for smaller locations or remote workers.

The key is for service providers to recognize and adapt their offerings for hybrid deployment environments. There may also be mid-sized enterprises that decide to outsource their entire communication services to a cloud service provider instead of buying and operating their own UC infrastructure. A hosted conferencing provider could also manage the application and media resources at the customer premises.

Customer Care Interactive Web Session

“Click to Conference” Request

Real-time N-wayConferencing Session

Customer Care SaaS Application

Cloud CustomerCare Service

IP AccessInternet, IP VPN

Conferencing Application

MPaaS

Cloud Communications

Service

LTE Mobile Web-based APIs

Figure 4. Cloud Media Processing for 3rd Party Developers in LTE Mobile Network


Example: Enterprise UC Integrated with Cloud-based Communications ServiceAn enterprise maintains a large multi-site UC infrastructure with on-premise PBXs deployed in large locations. It has become expensive to backhaul branch locations and remote workers, and a cost-effective option is to use conferencing services in the cloud. Therefore, cloud-based telecommunication services may be required to:

• Provide WAN interconnection of remote workers and branch locations.

• Provide backhauls and interconnects to workers in larger enterprise locations.

Service providers who want to offer cloud-based host audio and video conferencing can easily build a solution by running the Radisys SIPware Reservationless Conferencing solution on Radisys media servers.

Benefit of supporting unified communications for cloud service providers:

• Creates more demand for media servers already deployed in the cloud.

Radisys Products for Cloud CommunicationsRadisys is the leading supplier of media processing technologies and solutions for the telecommunications industry. Radisys media servers have a proven track record in supporting IP-based media processing in 3G networks and are already working in 4G/LTE deployments. A natural progression is the cloud, where Radisys has expanded its product offerings to include optimized cloud-based media processing.

The Radisys Software Media Server (SWMS) is a Linux-based SIP media server developed for enterprise and IMS audio/video media processing applications. The software is designed to install and operate on Intel® multi-core COTS hardware servers, such as blades in a shelf, and also run in virtualized machines. The product will evolve to support RESTful HTTP/JSON and Java interfaces for 3rd party developers.

Alternatively, Radisys hardware-based media servers, the MPX-12000 and CMS–9000, have a very large capacity, providing the scalability, performance, and reliability for large-scale hosted deployments. Their exceptional processing power and I/O throughput deliver very high performance for XML–based IVR and messaging applications, while expanding multi–service versatility for multimedia conferencing, IP Centrex, ringback tones, IP contact centers, video communications and complex audio/video transcoding and transrating.

PSTNPhone

UC Desktop Tools

Desktop IP Phone

EnterpriseUC Platform

Gateway

2GCellular

Laptop with VoIP

Client

LTE Smartphone

with App

IP AccessInternet, IP VPN

Enterprise HQ Location

LTE Mobile

Circuit AccessPSTN, 2G Mobile

Telecom Application Servers

MPaaS

Cloud Communications

Service

TDM

IP

Figure 5. Enterprise UC Integrated with Cloud-based Communications Service


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©2012 Radisys Corporation. Radisys and Trillium are registered trademarks of Radisys Corporation.

*All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. May 2012

About the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance: From modular components to market-ready systems, Intel and the 200+ global member companies of the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance provide the performance, connectivity, manageability, and security developers need to create smart, connected systems. Learn more at: intel.com/go/intelligentsystems-alliance.

When these media services are combined with the Radisys SIPware Reservationless Conferencing solution, service providers have a complete hosted audio and video conferencing solution built on cloud-computing architectures and technologies. This portfolio enables hosted providers to increase their service revenues, and service providers to reduce infrastructure costs when outsourcing their telecom applications or media processing infrastructure.

References1 Source: “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing,”

by Peter Mell and Tim Grance, October 7, 2009, www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/upload/cloud-def-v15.pdf.

2 http://gigaom.com/cloud/its-cloud-prediction- time-idc-gartner-and-i-weigh-in/.

3 Source: TechTarget website, http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/SPI-model.

4 Fungible implies computing resources can be repurposed or re-targeted, as needed, to support other applications and services.

5 Source: Report titled “The Video Cloud,” by Morgan Keegan of Equity Research, November 28, 2011, pg 1.

6 Source: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt.

7 Source: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt.

8 Source: W3G, http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20/.

9 Source: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5707/.

10 For more information, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

11 For more information about GSMA OneAPI and HTTP/REST interfaces, visit https://gsma.securespsite.com/access/Access%20API%20Wiki/Home.aspx.

12 Further information on RCS-e and interoperability specifications are available from GSMA/RCS: (http://www.gsma.com/rcs/).

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