Nokia Siemens is positioning its new Liquid Applications platform at the heart of the trend to shift mobile processing power to the edge of the network. During the Mobile World Congress event in February, it announced an alliance with IBM, and now it has added another giant of data processing and servers, Intel.
Carriers are increasingly interested in reducing the strain on the centralized packet core, by moving tasks like video caching close to the cell site, and in supporting personalized service levels, by placing tools like packet inspection close to the user. Intel has already helped develop this concept with its collaboration with Ubiquisys, to create a Smart Cell (a companion device which carries out processing next to a small cell base station). Now it is teaming up with NSN.
The two firms said they have agreed to a ‘common set of objectives’ to accelerate the delivery of media-rich services and content directly from the base station. This aims to ‘accelerate development of an enhanced mobile broadband experience that gives operators new revenue and differentiation opportunities’.
The collaboration centers on the Liquid Applications platform, which NSN hopes to use to drive a mobile edge computing ecosystem that it can control. That would be a valuable differentiation for its RAN business, which is under heavy pressure from cost cutting and larger rivals, and would tap into the shift to small cells with location and subscriber awareness. It now aims to attract potential cellco partners like over-the-top providers, software houses and application service providers to the ecosystem, to encourage new business models to be developed.
The new alliance will also give Intel another chance to extend the reach of its x86 architecture in wireless infrastructure, by pushing low power Crystal Forest processors into cell sites, specifically into NSN’s RACS (Radio Applications Cloud Server) platform, the engine behind Liquid Applications. RACS supports localized processing, content storage and access to the real time information in the base station.
‘Mobile operators have an extensive network of base stations in numerous locations,’ said Dirk Lindemeier, head of Liquid Net at NSN. ‘Placing applications and services in the base station will turn the base station into an intelligent part of a mobile operator’s network, to serve and deliver local content. Other content providers in the ecosystem can also benefit from the proximity of applications to mobile users.’
Two critically important trends in mobile networks are starting to converge, as seen in an alliance announced last week between Nokia Siemens and Intel. One is the convergence of
IT/data platforms with the network itself, allowing applications to tap into both customer databases and real time network performance data simultaneously. That can enable a richer approach to customer service, responding to a subscriber’s network experience at any one time. That is further enabled by the second trend, to place far more RAN intelligence and processing close to the cell site. This not only reduces strain on the central core functions and on backhaul, but also enables operators to adapt services according to a user’s location and preferences.
All that intelligence and processing power/storage distributed throughout the infrastructure from cell site to cloud server can ‘ theoretically and with clever tools – enable resources to be allocated flexibly and dynamically where they are needed at any one time, allowing the carrier to get far more mileage out of its network investment while improving quality of service. That idea has been promoted by many optimization and OSS firms, and by major vendors ‘ particularly, perhaps, Nokia Siemens, with the evolution of its Liquid Net platform over the past couple of years. Its logical extension is full SDN (software defined networking), where the hardware elements themselves can eventually become fully commoditized. For that to become reality in the mobile world will require not just standards efforts, like the NFV (Network Function Virtualization) initiative, but the cooperation of players which have, in the past, been on opposite sides of the IT/telecoms divide.
An alliance announced between NSN and IBM earlier this year was a good example, and now the telecoms supplier has added Intel to the platform it is trying to build around Liquid. This is indicative of the trends in the market, and highlights the way the chip giant aims to increase its power in the wireless sector ‘ by driving SDN, which will see a shift of functions from proprietary hardware to x86; by creating a wider range of specialized chips specifically for mobile networks; and by forging carrier and OEM partnerships around architectures that use its processors, notably Cloud-RAN and Edge Cloud.
Edge Cloud, created in partnership with Ubiquisys (shortly to be part of Cisco), involves installing a Smart Cell, or tiny x86-based computer, at the cell site, to carry out localized processing in areas like caching or packet inspection. Now Intel has built on this idea by joining forces with NSN, which added the Liquid Applications element to its Liquid Net offering this year, putting itself firmly in the movement towards placing processing power at the network edge.
The two firms said they have agreed to a ‘common set of objectives’ to accelerate the delivery of media-rich services and content directly from the base station, and support ‘new revenue and differentiation opportunities’ for operators.
The collaboration centers on the Liquid Applications platform, which NSN hopes to use to drive a mobile edge computing ecosystem that it can control. That would be a valuable differentiation for its RAN business, which is under heavy pressure from cost cutting and larger rivals, and would tap into the shift to small cells with location and subscriber awareness. It now aims to attract potential cellco partners like over-the-top providers, software houses and application service providers to the ecosystem, to encourage new business models to be developed.
The new alliance see Intel’s low power Crystal Forest processors moving into NSN’s RACS (Radio Applications Cloud Server) platform, the engine behind Liquid Applications. RACS supports localized processing, content storage and access to the real time information in the base station. Crystal Forest is one of a series of companion processors Intel has been creating to work alongside x86 chips like Xeon, to carry out specific network functions in an optimized way. Targeted at the data plane, it was ‘developed for the communications infrastructure space, and to integrate into non-standard environments and small base stations. Intel says it has ‘small footprint and exceptional energy efficiency … while also providing the performance needed to handle more extensive localized processing.”
Putting such IT hardware directly into the base station enables new services and operator behavior.
‘Mobile operators have an extensive network of base stations in numerous locations,’ said Dirk Lindemeier, head of Liquid Net at NSN. ‘Placing applications and services in the base station will turn the base station into an intelligent part of a mobile operator’s network, to serve and deliver local content.’
This is all part of a wider strategy to make the RAN more responsive to users’ needs, and better able to allocate resources where they are most needed. Just as 3G and 4G network cells are being designed to ‘breathe’ ‘ using greater or lesser resource as users come and go ‘ so applications and data processing needs to be flexible, and capable of being carried out either at the cell site, or in the cloud, depending on requirement. Either option involves inserting a rising number of servers into the carrier network, providing a strong opportunity for firms like Intel and IBM to partner with the wireless OEMs.
Liquid Apps is being trialled with SK Telecom and an unnamed US operator. The IBM deal sees NSN embedding IBM WebSphere application servers into its base stations, effectively creating a content delivery network at every cell site. The LiquidApps mobile services architecture on top of that infrastructure will support a wide range of applications from the network edge, including video, location and gaming services. That turns the RAN into a computing as well as a baseband processing platform.
Eventually, the logical extension of the Liquid thinking is that all functions will be virtualized and run as software on a chain of standard routers and servers ‘ putting NSN’s framework firmly in the move towards software defined networks, but also potentially transforming it from a hardware provider to a company differentiated by software. Indeed, NSN has acknowledged that Liquid Apps could theoretically run on other vendors’ base stations, though it would be optimized for NSN FlexiRAN hardware.
Further out, concepts like Liquid may morph into SDN and NFV, an area where Intel is also determined to be a major player in the telecoms world. It is forging alliances with telcos and integrators, including an NFV research project with British Telecom at the latter’s Adastral Park R&D facility in the UK. It also recently acquired Aepona, which provides APIs that enable operators to open up their assets to third party developers and over-the-top companies. Earlier this year it unveiled two reference platforms for SDN-enabled switches, its most clearly articulated attempt yet to set out its networking infrastructure stall and make the case for merchant chips. As it once argued in servers, it now says the explosion in mobile data traffic will put such strain on back end networks that the economics of specialized processors will no longer add up. That will raise challenges for the makers of telecoms equipment, which have always relied on the control and margins of proprietary, function specific kit. Nokia Siemens, with Liquid, clearly aims to forge strong bonds with IT vendors across the chasm, and plan its escape route should the days of specialized networking gear come to an end.