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SPECIALHIGH-END EMBEDDED COMPUTINGCarrier Grade Linux: The cornerstone oftelecoms’ COTS strategyBy Glenn SeilerThe telecommunications industryis in a state of profoundchange and is now beginningits long rebound from the burst of 2001.The industry is finally starting to seesignificant consumer demand for 24x7accessibility to multimedia-based highbandwidth services. Of course consumerswant these new services for lessthan they used to pay for standard voiceservice. This demand is driving the rapidgrowth of Next Generation Networks(NGNs) and thus provides opportunityfor increased revenues and market share,if the service providers can react to themarket. But this increased opportunityis also causing the emergence of newcompetitors to service these markets.These new competitors do not have thelarge inventories and cost structures thatwere created prior to the burst. Serviceproviders are faced with the challengeof providing new services while continuingto reduce capital and operationexpenses. These service providers mustfind cost-effective methods to drive downcosts and get higher margins in returnfor their services.Convergence and transformationThis change is having a far-reaching impacton the entire supply chain of ISVs andoperating system suppliers, semiconductorand hardware component vendors, andmost importantly the Network EquipmentProviders (NEPs). NEPs can no longerafford to develop entire solutions in-houseand must focus their resources on thedevelopment of new value-added services.A key strategy to drive down and managecosts is to develop systems for new marketsusing common Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components for softwareand hardware. These COTS componentsare transforming the telecommunicationsindustry just as they did for the enterpriseand IT industries in the 1990s when volume-basedx86 servers running UNIX andlater Linux began replacing single-vendorproprietary hardware and OS solutions.In fact, the convergence of applicationservices and network infrastructure applicationsis one of the key forces drivingtelecom COTS ecosystem growth. For along time the telecom industry has beenusing proprietary hardware solutions withproprietary real-time carrier grade operatingsystems, often built in house, and inhousehigh availability and managementsolutions for their network infrastructures.At the same time they often use commerciallyavailable IT or enterprise-based solutionsfor application services such as BSSand OSS. But now commercially availableCarrier Grade Linux-based systems offerthe real-time support and high reliabilitythe network infrastructure requires. TheseCarrier Grade Linux systems combinedwith advances in commodity processorand hardware technology are drivingCOTS into the previous proprietary networkinfrastructure. By leveraging thebenefits of these COTS components manyNEPs are now developing a universalplatform comprised of COTS componentsthat support both application services andtraditional network infrastructure servicesin a single cost-effective platform. NEPscan now use commercially available commoncomponents to replace much of thein-house R&D development for bothhardware and software, creating significantsavings. This drives the creation ofstandardized hardware solutions such asFigure 1AdvancedTCA packaged with carriergrade operating systems and third partyhigh availability solutions. This trend isshown in Figure 1.In particular, it is the NEPs and their customers,the service providers, who aredriving this trend. They have the mostto gain from a healthy ecosystem ofboth open source and proprietary COTSbuilding block components. The benefitsof using open source platforms such asLinux can help companies build securityrich,flexible, and scalable infrastructures,achieving levels of cost and time efficienciescrucial to accelerating developmentprocesses and speeding time to market.And the reuse of high-volume COTScomponents, which has long been a trendin enterprise, is now something the NEPsand service providers can leverage as morestandardized COTS components designedfor telecom are becoming available.Key driversLet’s look more closely at some of thekey drivers for NEPs who are consideringdeveloping NGN solutions using COTSbuilding blocks. What needs do thesecompanies face that make them look forsolutions that use building blocks fromone or more vendors rather than buildtheir own? The key drivers can be categorizedinto three distinct pressure points:30 / CompactPCI and AdvancedTCA Systems / June 2005
Consumer pressuresService providers must simultaneouslyaddress customers’ demands for increasingapplication complexity while deliveringservices at lower cost. At the sametime advances in technology, especiallythe network, are driving demands for highbandwidth 24x7 services.Business pressuresWe still have the development cycles weinherited from the dot-com era, but notthe financial exuberance. Service providersare expected to accomplish more andin less time, but for less cost than everbefore. R&D budgets and operationalcosts are being slashed, yet at the sametime providers must increase margins.Competitive pressuresTo add to the problems, in today’s confusinglyfast-paced business environment,product differentiation is more importantthan ever. The competitive field is stronger,and providers must get to market faster withbetter functionality than the competition.One way that NEPs are relieving thesepressures is by creating universal platformsthat can be reused to build futureproducts. This is where the use of reliable,commercial grade COTS components canprovide significant cost benefits frombuilding in-house solutions. Open sourcesoftware enables leading edge technologyand best-of-breed commercial solutionsfrom ISVs and HW vendors. In addition,NEPs have access to all the functionalitythey need to develop state-of-the-art NGNsolutions while also providing them withthe control they need over their individualprojects. Using these COTS-based platformsallows the NEPs to focus on theircore value and still differentiate theirproducts and services. These COTS-baseduniversal platforms can then be reused fora multitude of NGN network elements,driving down costs and time to market.Industry organizationsdriving COTSHistorically one of the challenges thatNEPs face in achieving COTS solutions isthe high cost and difficulty of integratingthese COTS building blocks into reusableand interoperable components. In orderfor these COTS components to be trulyreusable and interoperable, standardsmust be created to define the availableservices and the APIs that interface tothose services. Many industry organizationshave formed over the last few yearsto help grow and promote the ecosystemfor COTS components being used in thetelecommunications industry.Open Source DevelopmentLabs (OSDL)Recognized as the center of gravity forLinux, OSDL is dedicated to acceleratingthe use of Linux in all markets. OSDL isa key contributor to the COTS TelecomSolution Stack through sponsoring theCarrier Grade Linux Working Group. Thisis a group of Linux distributors, HW platformproviders, and NEPs that are drivingspecifications for the standardization of aCarrier Grade Linux (CGL). Already inits second release, the CGL specificationis the foundation of most COTS-basedsolution stacks being designed today.PCI Industrial ComputerManufacturers Group (PICMG)PICMG is a consortium of more than 450companies who collaboratively developopen specifications for high performancetelecommunications and industrialcomputing applications. Recently,PICMG announced the developmentof a new series of specifications, calledAdvancedTCA, for next generation telecommunicationsequipment, with a newform factor, and based on switched fabricarchitectures. AdvancedTCA’s successin the market has far exceeded initialexpectations. Nearly every major NEPis planning AdvancedTCA-based NGNsolutions.Service Availability Forum (SAF)The SAF goal is the adoption of openstandards to enable the industry to buildhigh availability network infrastructureproducts, systems, and services. TheSAF is driving interface specificationsto ensure high availability of services. AsNEPs move towards a COTS model, theywill need assurances that these new COTSapplications will have the same level ofservices and availability as their legacyin-house solutions. The SAF is definingkey services and the interfaces betweenthe hardware platform, the operatingsystem, and the High Availability (HA)middleware. The SAF is driving three keyinterface specifications:■ The Hardware Platform InterfaceSpecification (HPI) defines the interfacesbetween the hardware and theoperating system and middleware.■ The Application InterfaceSpecification (AIS) defines interfacesfor how HA middleware services communicatewith each other and with theoperating system. The AIS defines keyservices required for a complete HAsystem, including messaging, clustermembership, check-pointing, eventmonitoring, and frameworks.RSC# 31 @www.compactpci-systems.com/rsc
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