Web communication services and the PacketIN® application hosting environment

Large telecommunication customers are migrating their network infrastructure to support new converged services, while containing their operating costs. Deploying converged services on the networks today represents great opportunities to network service providers for new revenue generation. It brings big challenges as well, due to the requirements for a service platform with high capability to deal with the complexity of the network infrastructure, the difficulty of interoperability between different service platforms, and the diversity of signaling protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs). The Lucent PacketIN® application hosting environment (AHE) provides a solution that empowers network service providers to deliver a wide variety of enhanced services over the converged (packet and circuit, wireline and wireless) networks. It enables the creation and deployment of enhanced services on converged networks via the open service platform with interoperability, programmability, scalability, and wide protocol compliance. In particular, a new class of services is presented to demonstrate the transformation of telecommunication services that is enabled through Web presence. This article gives an overview of the PacketIN AHE with the focus on the customer values, the architecture, and enabling capability to deploy advanced applications and services. A new service portal, enterprise communication, is presented as an example of the innovation and implementation enabled by the service enabling environment. The enterprise communication provides Web access to presence information, instant messaging, third-party call management, and location. This convergence of features is enabled by the PacketIN AHE integration of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), session initiation protocol (SIP), and H.323 protocols through standard open APIs. The voice communication protocols are combined with a Web access interface to establish a new Internet presence, while leveraging existing switching products and reusing deployed communication networks and services.