September 28, 2007
D-mystifying ‘DCAS’: Downloadable Conditional Access System
There is a lot of activity in the cable industry lately related to improving consumer choice. One of the most challenging activities in recent times was the “7/07” transition. For those that may need a refresher, ‘7/07’, the name that the cable industry gave to July 1, 2007, was the date that the FCC mandated that new cable set-top boxes that arrive and deploy in the field must be equipped with separable security. The technology that is inserted into the set-top boxes to meet the separable security requirement is a multi-stream CableCARD. A CableCARD is a temporary removable security mechanism that, when inserted into a certified television or other device enables delivery of digital video programming and also allows the cable service provider to authorize protected subscription features for a specific subscriber. By mandating that all set-top boxes include separable security, the FCC is allowing consumers to choose to obtain their set-top box hardware from alternate sources other than their local cable operator, (i.e. retail, etc.) while still being able to subscribe and access the digital video services offered by their cable operator. Consumers may also choose to forgo the set-top box and purchase a CableCARD-enabled television to receive their digital programming services.
While progress with 7/07 has been made and shipments of CableCARD set-top boxes are underway, the cable industry has been focused on a number of developments that could some day render the CableCARD obsolete. Scientific Atlanta is playing a leading role in the development and engineering of a technology called Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS).
Conditional Access Systems (CAS) are comprised of the system, software and components needed to provide consumers selective access or denial of specific content services in their cable operator’s network. Access to services is controlled by first encrypting the video, audio or data content before it is transmitted over the network. This transforms the data so that it can not be easily “snooped” while in transit or at rest in the network. Then, authorization is achieved through key distribution and entitlement messages sent to client devices. Until recently, the client portion of most CASs was embedded in predominantly fixed hardware such as secure microprocessors and encryption-handling ASICs.
With the convenience of the Web, CAS has been made available in a downloadable fashion which permits a more dynamic security solution. The download may be to relatively-generic host CPUs or to specialized hardware like a set-top box that provides a highly tamper-resistant perimeter for storage of CAS operating code and cryptographic parameters such as keys. Data carousel elements in the network store the CAS operating code images and can repetitively broadcast or multicast the common parts of the CAS. When personalized information is needed for a specific client device, this can be unicast to the device.
Of course, Downloadable CAS approaches bring new security challenges with them. In previous embedded CAS solutions, the CAS operating code and personalization parameters were usually put into the client device in secure factory settings. With DCAS, the operating code and other CAS elements must be secure as they travel across the network. Further, the client device must be able to trust the source of the downloaded CAS. These requirements for privacy and authentication can be met with cryptographic methods, some of which are found in the conditional access systems themselves. Thus, DCAS is really a security and networking framework for the private and authenticated downloading of CASs.
With downloadable security, sometime in mid-to late 2008, consumers could buy a digital-cable-ready TV, plug the cable connection to the back of the set and then call their cable operator, who could then send a software download to the TV to activate two-way digital video service. While our next generation set-top box family was designed to support the latest CableCARD technology, we have also integrated features into those set-top boxes that will enable the deployment of DCAS once it is available.
Posted by Tony Wasilewski at 11:20 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
September 27, 2007
Ecosystems at WiMax World
This week, I had the privilege of speaking on a panel at WiMax World in Chicago. My fellow panelists and I spoke about the advantages and challenges of WiMax, with a particular emphasis on the ecosystem surrounding the technology. In fact, "ecosystem" (as defined by Dr. James Moore) was the key buzzword at the conference, as participants realize the advantages of this technology will only impact the market if a critical mass of companies work together. We did our part, with the Cisco ASN gateway interoperating in the booths of several WiMax radio vendors.
Berge Ayvazian of Yankee Group moderated the panel, and he lightened the mood by bringing three foam balls on stage, bearing the Sprint WiMax brand XOHM. He challenged panelist Jeff Thompson, founder and CEO of Towerstream to juggle them, and Jeff rose to the challenge with several deft cycles. Not to be outdone, Atish Gude, another panelist and senior vice president of Sprint Xohm, juggled at least as well. Both earned a round of applause from the audience. Clearly, my conference speaking skills need to move towards circus tricks, perhaps fire eating or sword swallowing.
While WiMax still faces a long road ahead, one service provider with whom I spoke has already completed successful multi-vendor interoperability tests. He showed me a USB-based "dongle" used to connect laptop PCs to WiMax service. (USB seems poised to displace PCMCIA as the PC connection of choice, in part because it works with desktop PCs, not just laptops.) Not yet a full WiMax ecosystem, but good first steps.
Posted by Larry Lang at 09:38 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
September 25, 2007
What’s it going to take for the Yankees to get back to the World Series?
Thank goodness as we look at the opportunities for ourselves and our service provider partners -- where we need to invest -- the question is not as difficult to answer!
We are going through such an exciting time in the industry. The consolidation that has and continues to occur is driving all of us to work smarter and approach things in new and evolutionary ways. Our Service Provider partners are investing to provide yet another wave of industry impacting services and like no time in the past we are well positioned to partner with them to mutually grow. A key element of our strategy this year and a big bet for us is Managed Services.
Last week in our Executive Briefing Center in San Jose I had the opportunity to have an in depth conversation with one of our customers, an Emerging Service Provider. As I prepared for the meeting, I considered their rapidly changing environment yet the abundant opportunities. During the meeting I listened to them outline their challenges and looked for opportunities for us to partner and accelerate their business.
Unlike the incumbents, the Emerging Providers face additional limited resource challenges and tend to focus more on the quality of service (QoS), rather than the breadth of offerings. But all Service Providers, regardless of their size, want to accelerate the deployment of innovative services while reducing the cost of these deployments, increase revenue and subscriber retention, improve the return on capital expenditures, provide differentiated offerings, and ultimately improve the customer experience. Regardless of their size, they all search for new ways to monetize opportunities and increase wallet share.
Although “managed services” describes a wide variety of services, essentially a managed service exists when a partner such as AT&T, Verizon, or an emerging partner such as Savvis, provide a finished solution which allows the end customer to focus on their core business. As IT and communication organizations are forced to do more with fewer resources, managed services are increasingly attractive to enterprises and empower them to focus on cost control and new market opportunities for revenue growth as well as reallocate resources to strategic projects that address core business requirements resulting in greater productivity for employees across the organization.
At the end of the day managed services make sense for any business – SMB or Enterprise. It’s one way to increase revenue from existing customers while simultaneously securing the relationship with the client. At Cisco, managed services are a key element to long-term success for our partners and their customers.
Go Yankees!
Posted by Nick Adamo at 10:39 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
September 20, 2007
Virtualizing Managed Services
Although most service providers have turned their attention towards services for the consumer, Managed Services for both Commercial and Enterprise business customers will continue to be a major growth opportunity for the service provider community. This opportunity will drive the vendors of commercial and enterprise products to look to the SP channel to scale the sales of their products, but will also require them to accommodate the operational needs of the service providers. These basic needs include zero/low touch deployment capabilities and common interfaces using standard protocols to monitor and troubleshoot HW and SW once it's deployed.
Over the next several years, in order to greatly decrease the operational burden of managed services, there will also be a push to virtualize them. This will also allow service providers to easily add incremental capacity in order to meet increasing customer demand. It will also allow for much higher availability as services lost in one environment can quickly be reestablished by seamlessly moving the customers to another network resource that has the capacity to support them.
This layer of complexity in the service provider network will require an even greater focus on software as virtualized services are delivered on common hardware running LINUX and are interconnected via a "services bus." The creation and management of this services bus across networks with global diameters will be a huge challenge to traditional service providers who are comfortable with the paradigm of one interface/piece of hardware per customer. This is why the service provider vendor community must focus on building a common, scalable framework for rapid service enablement within the network infrastructure.
This framework must not only provide services that blindly ride the bandwidth provided by the network, but must also take advantage of unique network capabilities such as application awareness and optimization in order to ensure the services delivered by the service provider are of extremely high quality. The layering of these types of services - application awareness on top of VPNs, for example - will greatly reduce end user churn and increase the average revenue per user (ARPU).
Posted by Joe Wojtal at 02:50 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
September 19, 2007
Unified Communications = Opportunities for Service Providers
There continues to be lots of “buzz” in the marketplace around Unified Communications (UC). Just last week I met with several enterprise customers in Europe and there was consensus amongst them that service providers can play a key role in the delivery of UC.
Some observations that I gleaned include the following:
1) The definition of UC is all over the map. Some people include integration of identity management and presence in their definition of UC; others include desktop video and collaboration tools. Still others fall into the camp of defining UC just as simple IP telephony I see this broad interpretation of UC as an opportunity for service providers to provide leadership and clarity to their enterprise customers.
2) Rates of deployment vary. Some companies have already deployed 60,000 IP handsets….others are just beginning to roll out an IP telephony deployment across their enterprises. My take on this is that there isn’t one “correct” way on how or when to implement UC. Service providers have the opportunity to differentiate their offers in the marketplace and meet the needs of enterprise customers.
3) It’s not just about technology. One thing that everyone agreed on is that UC requires security, regulatory compliance, and risk management. UC is a transformational technology which requires the enterprise customer to evaluate the business processes associated with these capabilities. UC is not about the technology, but it’s more about the business process involved and the implementation and operations of the technology.
4) Interoperability is essential. The adoption of UC will only happen if vendors such as Cisco, Microsoft, and others recognize that the enterprise customer wants an open platform.
Overall, the demand for UC is high. Service providers have an excellent opportunity to consult with their customers and assist them in their efforts to apply UC to their business.
Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 02:28 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Where Worlds Collide
My group at Cisco works on mobile Internet products, so I follow the news in this area closely. A common theme is the stresses that arise along the boundary between two business models: that of the mobile industry and that of the Internet industry. Analogies that come to mind are crystal grain boundaries (I live in Silicon Valley) or platectonic boundaries (near the San Andreas fault ), regions of dislocation and instability. While some might argue about which business model is superior, a more useful observation is that both have proved fabulously successful, even though each is aligned differently. As these two successful industries increasingly intersect, their distinct directions drive many news stories and trends we observe.
I think of the Internet as aligned "horizontally," with a multitude of players adding value in distinct layers, with competition and partnering happening around de facto standards. For Cisco, the most important standard is the Internet protocol (IP), which allows many kinds of information (web pages, MP3 files, phone calls, YouTube videos) to flow over many kinds of links (Ethernet, phone lines, WiFi). The broader Internet has many such standards, including HTML, Flash, BIOS, PCI-e, and so forth. Because of this variety, new players emerge easily and evolution happens rapidly. While this change and innovation create a vibrant and stimulating industry, they also cause some chaos as a byproduct.
Meanwhile, I think of the mobile industry as aligned "vertically," with fewer players taking on larger roles. The small number of spectrum licenses constrains the number of mobile operators (compared to the explosion of Internet service providers), while the rapid growth of mobile networks developed a small set of highly integrated equipment providers. Despite many standards, the radio interface between handsets and base stations is the main focus of interoperability, and even there, operators choose the handsets they offer their subscribers. One could lapse into polemics that this approach is "too closed," but by constraining chaos, the mobile industry has reached the largest scale of any communications technology around the world.
Enough theory, time for an example. In February 2007, Skype (now part of eBay) petitioned the FCC to declare that the 1968 Carterfone decision applies to mobile networks. Just as Carterfone allows connecting any non-damaging device to the public telephone network, Skype would like to connect any compliant device to mobile networks, even if operators object. (Currently, the operators alone decide what devices may connect.) Presumably, Skype would like to create a device that carries voice-over-IP phone calls, mobilizing their existing PC-based service, leaving the operators just to shuttle IP packets. Also presumably, the operators would prefer to maintain control over all voice calls on their networks.
Each side of this argument cites logic from their respective worlds. In their petition, Skype recalls the wonderful innovation that the open Internet has brought forth, adding "in stark contrast to open development standards that exist on the Internet, wireless carriers have exerted control over devices as well as the mobile operating systems upon which they run." They cite Columbia Law professor Tim Wu, whose corroborating paper on "wireless net neutrality" was conveniently published less than a week earlier. Meanwhile, the CTIA mobile industry group responded with warnings of the chaos that such unconstrained choice would unleash, claiming "the entire network suffers, [by] subjecting all wireless users to the experimentation of the few subscribers interested in alternative devices..."
Who's right? Some mobile operators have disabled features they find threatening, including voice-over-IP, WiFi, and some Bluetooth profiles. But opening the Pandora's box of government intervention is a blunt weapon to brandish. As Senator John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) emphasized at a recent CTIA gathering, Carterfone was imposed when the Bell System enjoyed a strong, government-supported monopoly. The mobile industry is much more competitive, and the forces of competition seem likely to generate attractive consumer choices.
The recent Apple iPhone introduction gives good evidence of the power of competition. Apple took advantage of its enormously popular iPod to negotiate an agreement with AT&T Wireless allowing them unprecedented control of the mobile device, its software, and even the split of revenues. In exchange, AT&T Wireless enjoys a period of exclusivity to offer the iPhone, encouraging existing customers to renew contracts and prompting customers of other operators to switch to AT&T. Real innovation, in both technology and business model, with no government intervention at all. And an example of the intriguing shifts along the boundary between the mobile industry and the Internet.
Posted by Larry Lang at 08:53 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)
September 18, 2007
My Epiphany Mashup
In the past 15 years, I’ve had two business epiphanies. 
While living in Toronto in the early 90s, I had the idea for a phone-based service that could provide answers to questions of any kind for a fee. This was pre-Web so telephone seemed to be the most efficient way. I was going to call it 1-800-ANSWERS. In my mind the questions could range from “Who was the 15th president of the United States?” to "Was April 7, 1263 a Wednesday?" to "What was the name of my second grade teacher?" In our current Web world of Google, Ask.com, and TellMe, it’s clear there’s an insatiable need for answers, and information. This was my first epiphany.
My second epiphany occurred shortly after joining Cisco in 1999. After being exposed to the then-explosive growth of the Internet, and after carefully querying my own Internet behaviors and preferences, I had a daydream of the future “connected life.” It was this: we (mankind) will not be satisfied until we can watch a live sports program in high definition on an oversized wristwatch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In today's terms, we want ubiquitous, powerful, quad-play. I still believe it is where we are collectively marching.
The mashup of these two epiphanies equals a mandate similar to this: at my fingertips, on any of my screens, I want any and all information available to me and I want it fast - anywhere, anytime - for free or for a reasonable price. That is good news for Cisco. And it's good news for consumers because smart companies are trying to satisfy our needs. What I did not contemplate those many years ago was what humanity would want to do once we had such information and such ubiquity.
For me it was limited to sporting events, movies and perhaps phone calls. I hadn't thought through basics like email. So, now we're in 2007. We have just enough bandwidth and ubiquity so we can experiment in this new environment. And, oh, are we experimenting! Blogs, wikis, RSS subscriptions, YouTube, SecondLife, discussion forums, etc.
For me the strategic questions for Web 2.0 for TODAY are:
• What is a fad and what makes them slow down?
• What current trends are lasting and will they continue to grow?
• What is the next trend or experiment?
To stimulate dialogue, here are a few of the Web 2.0 mega trends I see.
• Social Networking: Watching and listening to my son play "World of Warcraft", I believe that socializing is at the top of his list. Other than email, the social aspect of the Web means nothing to me. I don't chat on the Web. I don't play games. Candidly, I go to the Web to get away from people. How about you?
• Gaming: Many people want to compete, with or without money. There is often a social aspect but that is separate from the gaming itself.
• News and Sports: In my view, this fundamental staple will always be needed.
• Wikis, blogs and the ability to democratize and share: This is my bet for the single most compelling driver of Web 2.0. I believe that the "1+1=3" effect will continue to astound us.
• Video: No-brainer. We like video. We even seem to like poor-quality user-generated content (UGC). Overall video will stay and grow although I hope UGC will lose its prime spot on stage.
• The Long Tail: The ability of the Web to economically enable niche hobbies and communities is a good thing and will grow.
We live in exciting times!
Cory Ellsworth, Senior Director, Cisco Systems
Worldwide Service Provider Operations
Posted by Carlos Dominguez at 09:49 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
September 17, 2007
Experience Provider ABC’s
Today we expect to be seamlessly connected anytime, anywhere, and on any device – what we all want is a Connected Life. Service providers that can deliver a premium end-to-end “Connected Experience” to their customers will be rewarded with greater customer loyalty, brand recognition, and increased profitability. What’s this means is that service providers have to make the transition to becoming Experience Providers.
There are three main attributes, or ABC’s, in transitioning into an Experience Provider. These are:
1. Accelerating the Connected Life
2. Boldly taking on new innovative business models
3. Changing the equation from quad-play to any-play
Over the course of my next few blog entries, I will discuss these three attributes and invite you participate in the discussion.
Today’s topic is “Accelerating the Connected Life”. A Connected Life requires providers to deliver personalized experiences that include seamless communications, collaboration tools, personalized content, and rich applications and mash-ups. Customers want a provider who’s dedicated to the end-result whether it is over cable, mobile, satellite, or a landline. The Connected Life experience weaves in a multitude of applications, opening up a multi-faceted on-line “connected” dimension and includes not only traditional providers but also those over-the-top (OTT) providers, including Yahoo, Google, MySpace, etc.
NTT DoCoMo is a great example of a provider delivering unique experiences in Japan. By accelerating the Japanese Connected Life and pioneering the “lifestyle infrastructure”, NTT DoCoMo has weaved their services into the lifestyles of millions of users.
According to Takeshi Natsuno, Senior VP, NTT DoCoMo, if I was a consumer in Japan, I would never have to open up my wallet. Instead, I could use my mobile phone to book and purchase an airline ticket, then hop into a taxi and head for the airport, download my e-boarding pass, pay for the cab at the airport, buy something to eat, drink and read, as well as book a hotel room while waiting for the flight, and then take a cab to the hotel after I land.
People all over Japan today are enjoying such connected lifestyle experiences. Masao Nakamura, President/CEO of NTT DoCoMo said “the mobile phone has become something people keep nearby constantly, 24 hours per day.” Clearly there are many other service providers that are transitioning into experience providers and I plan to cover a variety of examples in future blog entries.
Increasingly customers will lose patience with multiple-step relationships with their providers. One face, one experience with seamless connectivity and interactivity is the goal. Providers with a relentless focus on the connected life experience will win their fair share of the market and surface as the brands to follow.
Achieving this Connected Life requires providers to boldly take on new innovative business models. In my next entry, I’ll show some risk-taking moves that are yielding big-time results.
Posted by Suraj Shetty at 09:41 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (3)
September 13, 2007
Designing the Connected Life
At Cisco, we’ve been working with service providers around the world to help craft their new “offer” – no longer will they be offering just voice, or video, or data, or mobility, but rather integrated experiences that blend all of these throughout their subscribers’ daily lives, whether they be at home, at work, or on the move. We call this the “Connected Life” and are actively working to enable it for providers to deliver. But we recognize that while we have had many ideas on this and are actively innovating on many of them, we certainly don’t have a monopoly on them. So many of the participants on the Human Network have some great ideas as well.
We wanted to add their voices into the process as well, and one of the ways we are doing is to invite consumers to participate through a contest called “Help Design the Connected Life.” We’ve received ideas from all over the world – in fact, many more than we anticipated, and the ideas have covered the gamut in terms of creativity, enthusiasm, and vision. We’ll be higlighting some of their ideas on this blog in the weeks to come, but if you’re interested in participating, there is no time like the present, as the contest ends on September 14th. (click here to submit your idea).
But even if the timing doesn’t work for the contest, please know we’re always interested in getting your thoughts and opinions, whether in this new SP360 blog and the many other interactive forums we host. Thanks for visiting with us today and for your collaboration to help design the Connected Life.
Doug Webster
Director, Marketing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Posted by Doug Webster at 02:37 PM Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)
IPNGN in a Cube
The IPNGN vision provides the SP community an architectural framework within which to rationalize networking solutions. The great thing about the IPNGN framework is its simplicity, neatly summarizing in a logically layered 3 dimensioned model all the functionality required for supporting NGN services.
But this apparent simplicity hides the intricate complexity of all the interfaces and protocols that need to be implemented to enable any specific IPNGN service. An inkling of this complexity can be gleaned from the NGN Protocol Reference Model (PRM), shown below. This is a “Rubik’s Cube” of Layers and Planes and, most importantly, the complex interplay between them. In effect, the PRM encapsulates ALL the essence of the IPNGN - in a cube!
Each Plane- Transport, Management, Control - is a world in itself, but relies on the others to be effective. The separations may be more virtual than real, but they help us understand the whole as more than the sum of its parts. Revenue generating services are created from the interplay of control and management messages, knitted together by applications embedded on either side of the user-to-network interfaces.
The IP suite of protocols forms the “common element” in the NGN PRM framework. The use of IP as the common packet transfer mode dictates how the desirable NGN attributes, such as QoS, Security, Survivability, etc., are implemented.
So how does this cubic NGN PRM abstraction help us build better networks, and by implication, more profitable services? Consider security for example. Every operator wants security as an essential element of their network. The IPNGN cube shows us that in order to deliver security in all its facets, we have to consider the security aspects in all the Layers and Planes of the IPNGN. The question is, if we disregard any one of these aspects, do we end up with a potential “Achilles heel”?
The same is true for the elusive notion of QoS, much talked about and desired, but hard to achieve in practical terms. In its broadest sense, QoS capabilities rely on functions that are spread over many Layers and Planes of the NGN PRM cube. A bottleneck in one Layer could lead to impairments elsewhere. The cube encourages us to take into account the complex inter-dependencies. Whoever said ubiquitous QoS was going to be easy!
As transport plane capabilities become increasingly commoditized, the IPNGN cube raises the question as to how we can more effectively leverage control and management plane capabilities to generate profitable services?
And what of the need to interwork with existing services and networks? How are the legacy services to be accommodated in this IPNGN vision?
The IPNGN vision provides a very useful tool to conceptualize networking solutions. The IPNGN cube helps get to a deeper understanding, another conceptual tool that illustrates inter-dependencies between the protocols we must rely on, and helps us build better networks.
Rajiv Kapoor
Director, Standards & Architectures Marketing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Posted by Rajiv Kapoor at 12:28 PM Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
September 12, 2007
Welcome to SP360: My Connected Life
At last week’s Cisco Financial Analyst Conference in San Jose, John Chambers made no bones about how video, on-line collaboration and social networking are placing incredible loads on the network today; such traffic is likely to increase for the next 10-15 years! Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported consumer video will be responsible for a significant portion of the Internet-based traffic increases in the next few years, with video streaming and downloads making up 30% of all consumer Internet traffic (see Cisco research).
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that the way we communicate today with peers, family, or friends is dramatically different than it was just a few years ago. In fact, I don’t even give it a second thought now when I get a text message or quick call from my teenage son or daughter…..I’m able to stay in touch efficiently, around-the-clock…what more could a dad want? More, of course.
Some providers, like AT&T, are offering tighter parental controls around mobile phone usage. But for me, it’s not just about whom my kids are texting with or what they’re downloading. I want to see the industry come up with on-demand GPS-related service, helping me to pinpoint my son’s whereabouts at 11pm on a Saturday night (or at least where his mobile phone is at). I’d like something like Sprint’s Family Locator, but with live streaming video and built-in mash-ups. In my connected life, not only could I see my son, but I’d want an interactive GPS map detailing the people he’s hanging out with (names, photos, and mobile numbers). And have this data sent to my TV, laptop, or mobile phone.
Unfortunately I am not eligible to submit my wishful ideas to the Cisco Connected Life Contest but I can share them with you here on the Cisco SP360 Blog. This new blog will include contributions from a team of Cisco leaders and executives. We will use this space to cover the latest service provider trends and technologies and topics including Video, Mobility, Managed Services, Technology and Standards, and overall Industry News and Trends.
We look forward to sharing our voices and opinions with you and welcome your comments and interactions. I hope to interact with other bloggers in this space including Smith on VoIP, Light Reading Blogs, Telco 2.0, VoIP IP Telephony and many others.
Jeff Spagnola
Vice President, Service Provider Marketing
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Posted by Jeff Spagnola at 09:28 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
