Policy management needs definition before personalized services can take off

November 2007
Telephony

The old adage that says there are many ways to skin a cat certainly applies to the concept of policy management in carrier networks. Some vendors approach policy management from a network perspective, while others view policy management more as a function of operations and business support systems. Ultimately, it takes both to come up with the sticky, customized services that will make a network operator successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

There's little debate that integration and personalization of voice, data and video services is necessary if network operators want to remain competitive. Industry watchers say operators risk losing control of the broadband customer to market-savvy Web companies like Google and Yahoo! unless they start investing seriously in policy management tools that will help them use subscriber identity, preferences and location information to deliver customized, converged services.

"Service providers are not really investing in how to personalize services or how to improve the consistency of the user experience in a policy-driven way," says Mark Bieberich, vice president of the Yankee Group's Enabling Technologies Service Provider Infrastructure Solutions practice. But that may be starting to change. Yankee Group predicts that the market for policy management software, just over $60 million last year, could exceed $700 million by 2010.

The vendor community itself may be partly to blame for the slow uptake in the policy management arena, because there is no real agreed upon definition of what policy management is. "Policy management is a loaded term, and most vendors don't define it," says Peter Dragunas, director of network domain at Hewlett-Packard.

Grant Lenahan, vice president and strategist of service delivery solutions at Telcordia agrees. "If you talk to experienced network operators, they will tell you that everyone claims to be all things to all customers, but in reality you have your choice between 'wide and shallow' and 'deep and narrow'," he says. "Some companies have depth in an area but not breadth, and others are masters of nothing but marginally capable in all."

Yankee Group defines policy management and control as centralized software that performs functions such as subscriber authentication and access control; customer self-provisioning; service creation and deployment for carrier network administrators; and communication of subscriber profile data to BSSs and OSSs. "The policy management function has to be seen as a centralized database capability," Bieberich says. "It's a rules engine that queries a database full of subscriber data that's used to make a decision about how a service should be delivered," he explains. "The network layer is where the policies are enforced, and there's a very clear line between policy management and policy enforcement."

For its part, Telcordia tackles policy from a rating, charging and billing perspective. The company's Real-Time Policy software, part of its Service Delivery suite, lets service providers offer features such as separate spending accounts with spending controls, selective access, content filtering, calendar restrictions and allowed user lists. Telcordia not only sells the software but also offers it as a hosted solution. Several mobile virtual network operators including Virgin Mobile and kajeet use the hosted Telcordia solution.

Like Telcordia, Redknee also approaches policy management from the OSS/BSS side. The company's Unified Rating and Charging System competes with Telcordia's software, and Redknee also offers a product called the Unified Profile Server which helps mobile operators offer services based on a user's location. Redknee does not offer a hosted version of its software. Other vendors such as Amdocs, FTS and Leapstone Systems, which was recently acquired by Motorola, also offer policy management software with an OSS/BSS focus.

On the other side of the policy equation are companies that view policy management from a network perspective. The large network equipment providers like Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Nokia Siemens Networks and Nortel Networks either have developed their own policy management servers or they partner with a software specialist. Companies like Camiant, Operax and TAZZ Networks all offer software that handles real-time network resource control. "They take a real-time view of network topology and the congestion on the network and then making decisions about how bandwidth ought to be managed in the face of user requests," Bieberich explains.

Other companies on the network side focus on providing authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA). Bridgewater Systems, for example, started as an AAA vendor and has expanded its product line to include what it calls "subscriber-centric policy management." HP plays in the AAA space as well and also offers subscriber profile management and identity management tools.

What network operators have to do is find a way to build their own policy management platforms using pieces provided by various vendors, Lenahan says. "Telcordia has chosen to define a modular, federated framework in which we can provide certain areas with depth, but also provide the management to allow multiple policy servers to interact," he says.

Bieberich agrees. "If you're a service provider looking for comprehensive policy control solution, you might go to Telcordia for something optimized for the billing environment, to Bridgewater for AAA and to Camiant for the real-time network resource control," he says. "There are lots of ways to do it."

By Dawn Bushaus