IBM and Cisco could be preparing a belated, but major new onslaught into the European IPTV markets, if their move to set up a European test bed, ahead of a March service launch is to be taken seriously.
The details came out in numerous ‘one liners’ in the media this week about IBM and Cisco setting up an IPTV testbed in La Gaude, France as a soft launch for IPTV services.
We get the feeling that the particular technology choice is not the issue here, but IBM and Cisco, realizing that Microsoft and Alcatel have fumbled the ball, may they feel they can jointly offer an end to end service, earmarked for a March launch, starting out as network and systems integration service, focusing on making IPTV systems work with existing billing and legacy back ends. The end game for all of this could be Cisco lending its expertise in IP networks to IBM Global Services making a credible bid for major telecommunications outsourcing deals across Europe.
IBM has never been able to offer more than taking care of the various server farms around a telecoms operator’s back end services, never having had the skills in networking. But as IMS and digital integration becomes the order of the day, IBM has a strong suit, further strengthened by Cisco’s mastery of all things IP.
IPTV is one very good place to start. Middleware that offers calls and transactions across multiple network types, homogenized by IMS structures, and legacy billing, accounting and customer provisioning, are all IBM’s territory. Whereas sizing and forwarding video packets across a pure IP network is a Cisco strong hand.
In a way it doesn’t matter whether or not the conditional access is the Widevine software that Cisco owns shares in, or Secure Media or Latens that IBM partners with in the US, or Verimatrix that is it using in this testbed. It’s the variety that strengthens their arm. They are saying, ‘What would you like to install? As long as it runs on IBM hardware and Cisco routers, we’re happy.’
So perhaps that’s why the VoD servers are not from Arroyo, a company that Cisco owns, but from Kasenna. But the middleware was always going to be from rising IPTV star, Minerva currently being courted by Nortel and possibly by Cisco as well, for acquisition. Both IBM and Cisco have experience partnering with Minerva, and the software is mature and has had a recent significant upgrade to version 3.0 of its iTVManager.
This new release opened up direct interactivity to remote servers from the TV screen, using a new type of XML enabled browser with direct calls to the middleware platform. This allows transaction boxes to be opened on the TV screen for interactive advertising and promotional offers, features which it says are bringing it renewed attention from its partners. This is one reason why Cisco has built a Minerva team in its US IPTV operations.
This French testbed also appears to have a mini-headend, which is HDTV capable, relying on Cisco networking and multicasting, running to Scientific Atlanta IPTV set tops, running Minerva middleware, and using the Verimatrix VCAS conditional access system, with a license server running on IBM hardware and the VoD software provided by Kasenna, again running on IBM servers.
The question is whether or not this is just a testbed for IBM to demonstrate its capabilities as a server provider and as a provider of software and hardware combinations which offer service delivery platforms, of if there are other possibilities, for instance where Cisco and IBM team up on a belated attempt to dominate the European scene for IPTV.
Twenty years ago we could not have imagined something like IPTV emerging without IBM’s technology being at the heart of it. But today IBM’s nature has changed, and it wants nothing more than to offer a supporting arm, hosting, installation, implementation, integration ‘ the IT services that are best represented by IGM Global Service, and perhaps shift as much hardware as it can. IBM’s attitude these days is ‘Let someone else get the credit for inventing it, just let us install and run the stuff.’
That could eventually take the form of IBM running large parts of telco networks for them, outsourced, and where better to start than solving the myriad problems that Microsoft has left behind, for instance integration with legacy telecommunications applications. Microsoft may be a good designer of core software components, but it wouldn’t have the manpower to attempt a customer data integration exercise for a telco, whereas IBM could do it in its sleep, for the right money.
The testbed is at the IBM La Gaude installation, which is one of IBM’s Innovation Centers for Business Partners, where it invites partners to come and ensure that their software and telecommunications services work with its three ranges of AIX Unix, Windows 2003 and Linux based servers.
IBM has tried to get in on the IPTV implementation world, and has a small piece of the AT&T U-Verse installation in the US, which is supported from its Austin Texas Telecommunications Solution Lab.
We visited there last Summer and it may not be widely known but IBM is providing the Service Delivery Platform for the AT&T IPTV services, using the old Rational Software toolset, linked to other services such as TiVoli’s security and systems management products and the more recently acquired NetCool service assurance software, all geared up to offer fast to market agile service creation.
IBM prays to the mantra which the world calls Service Oriented Architectures, but which almost nobody can explain. It has IBM Websphere working within an IMS context, mapping IMS calls onto older service definitions, through J2EE compliant Websphere Server components.
The Austin suite demonstrates rapid service creation, and the kind of flexibility that operators need so they can try new things easily, without a major upgrade to their existing customer record and accounting and billing systems.
But interestingly at Austin that facility the test bed is very different. It uses Secure Media conditional access, Minerva middleware and Kasenna VoD.
A set of Cisco IP architectures backed up by IBM’s gold standard for installation and integration, running around a freshly acquired mature IPTV middleware stack (possibly Minerva) would open the door of virtually every remaining European telco that has not yet launched a service, and of many of those that have, but which find themselves with continuing problems.
An IBM spokesman said that a package of joint IPTV offerings will be formally launched during March, but our feel is that these will be architecturally distinct from middleware, sets tops and server software and relate instead to IP integration using IMS, back end services, service delivery platforms and IP carriage, including Cisco’s new IPTV offerings based around its Visual Quality Experience announcement made last year.
In December Cisco virtually re-invented IPTV services by dropping VoD, network PVR, fast channel change and packet re-transmission down into the network layer, sitting on Cisco routers and servers in the network. It launched this under the title of Visual Quality Experience (VQE), effectively a network appliance that services requests for replacements for lost video packets, but which can also be configured to serve fast channel change.
Such a powerful combination would almost certainly be able to carve up a significant amount of IPTV market share, perhaps even big enough to rival Microsoft Alcatel.