OREANDA-NEWS. June 25, 2015. Oracle today announced the release of four products that underscore its commitment to provide communications service providers (CSPs) with a fully virtualized, network function virtualization (NFV)-ready solution portfolio.

Just as the cloud has transformed the IT industry, NFV is transforming the communications industry by enabling CSPs to move beyond the limitations of proprietary hardware to revolutionize service agility and speed to market. However, virtualizing networks is not enough; CSPs must consider how to transform the network to meet customer needs and grow the bottom line, while best leveraging existing assets in the new hybrid network reality.

With new releases of Oracle Communications Session Border Controller, Oracle Communications Converged Application Server, Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper, and Oracle Communications Policy Management, Oracle helps CSPs conquer the layers of complexity inherent in bridging physical and virtual environments as they continue on their journey toward NFV.

NFV-Enabled Oracle Communications Session Border Controller Helps CSPs to Quickly Scale New Services and Improve Network Agility and Responsiveness

The Oracle Communications Session Border Controller helps CSPs provide a complete range of secure and reliable fixed line and mobile services. The latest release delivers the product as a virtual network function (VNF) capable of running on a variety of hardware platforms, accelerating CSP networks toward a higher level of agility, elasticity, and flexibility. This release is the latest step in Oracle’s commitment to virtualize all of its network function offerings.

The new release of Oracle Communications Session Border Controller enables CSPs to:

  • Choose how they deploy the product to best meet their needs—on purpose-built hardware; a virtual machine; commercial, off-the-shelf hardware; or a hybrid configuration—as the design, deployment, and management of their networks evolves
  • Quickly respond to changing traffic volumes by adding capacity when and where it is needed, and freeing network resources when capacity is no longer required
  • Introduce new applications and services more quickly and adapt networks to support those services with minimal risk and cost by automating the building and deployment of session border controllers
     

Oracle Communications Converged Application Server Accelerates Service Innovation While Improving Resiliency of Core Network Application Servers

Oracle Communications Converged Application Server provides a carrier-grade, standards-based development and deployment platform for next-generation communications applications.  This upgrade—deployable as a VNF—supports the latest Java standards and is built on cloud-ready technologies, enabling CSPs to:

  • Use a modular architecture to build communications services
  • Accelerate service innovation, integration, and deployment by providing a simple and straightforward Java interface—familiar to any Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) developer—to minimize the complexity inherent in connecting services to network elements
  • Improve fault resiliency and scalability by building on the Oracle Coherence in-memory data grid technology, which provides fast, highly reliable data storage with shared memory and built-in event processing across application servers
     

Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper Simplifies API Creation to Reduce Operational Costs and Drive Revenue Growth Through New Applications

Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper manages the entire application program interface (API) lifecycle. With this solution, CSPs and enterprises can use a simple graphical user interface to generate APIs in minutes, enabling them to accelerate application development, onboard development partners quickly, and monetize assets to drive revenue growth. The solution also helps organizations reduce operational expenses through simplified administration. Supporting Oracle’s VNF mission, the upgrade of this solution is fully virtualized and deployable on commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and engineered systems, or in the cloud.

Oracle Communications Policy Management Supports Network Advancement Through VoLTE, IMS, and Virtualization

The newest version of Oracle Communications Policy Management is a key component in the deployment of next-generation LTE networks. As network virtualization continues to advance, CSPs require the flexibility, reliability, and depth of feature functionality that enables them to evolve their networks through LTE, Voice over LTE (VoLTE), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and virtualization. Oracle Communications Policy Management now takes the next step toward a fully cloud-enabled and virtualized policy management solution, preparing CSPs for NFV and software defined network (SDN)-enabled networks. The solution also:

  • Enables tight integration with charging and billing systems
  • Provides valuable network insights via an integrated policy analytics solution
  • Allows providers to serve all subscribers from a single policy management instance regardless of network access type

These four new product releases are the latest Oracle Communications offerings that will help CSPs on their NFV journey. Previous product releases that contributed to the NFV industry initiative include Oracle Communications Core Session Manager, Oracle Communications Application Orchestrator, Oracle Communications Network Orchestration Solution, and Oracle Communications Evolved Communications Application Server.

“The communications industry is in an era of major transformation and Oracle Communications is perfectly positioned to provide CSPs with a world-class, virtualized network,” said Doug Suriano, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications. “We have worked over the last year to provide a fully virtualized, NFV-ready portfolio to support this evolution. Communications networks are now software-based, and no one understands that better than Oracle.”

“Virtualization is changing the scale and economics of the technology landscape as services such as VoLTE and voice-over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) grow in popularity,” said Diane Myers, research director, VoIP, UC and IMS, Infonetics Research/IHS. “Oracle’s NFV-enabled solutions provide the capabilities needed to successfully virtualize communications service providers’ networks—including flexibility, scalability, automation, and maintainability.”

Oracle experts will be available to discuss network innovation, VoLTE, VoWi-Fi, and more during the LTE World Summit at Oracle booth 55. The event is scheduled for June 23 through 25, 2015, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.