Service Delivery Broker (SDB) Catalyst Demonstrates the 4th Cloud Layer

  • Article

By Eric G Troup, Principal Architect Evangelist, Communications Sector, Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE).

Microsoft and Portugal Telecom SAPO collaborated on and demonstrated the Service Delivery Broker (SDB) Catalyst for Management World Americas held in Orlando, Florida 9-11 November 2010.

The SDB Catalyst was originally intended to test and validate the work of the TM Forum Software Enabled Services Management Solution (formerly known as the Service Delivery Framework), applicable parts of the TM Forum Frameworx, and certain other industry standards through a multi-company (SaaS) platform supplemented by a SDB and service lifecycle management governance system.

Portugal Telecom SAPO built up their all Microsoft technology based SDB to its current level of functionality over a four year period.  Today, the on-premise private cloud implementation provides production support for Portugal Telecom SAPO Web, MEO IPTV (Mediaroom), and Portugal Telecom TMN Mobile subscribers.  For purposes of this catalyst, Portugal Telecom SAPO ported the entire SDB and its supporting systems to Windows Azure and SQL Azure and demonstrated ten “Business Models as a Service” that could be associated with any new offer.  Remarkably, this was done by four developers in only two months.  
 

Today there are generally three recognized layers to the cloud, namely SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

The SDB actually sits on top of the SaaS layer. It could be thought of as an emerging “fourth layer” to the cloud that provides a governance model and prescriptive guidance for the service architect and service designer.  The SDB enables the creation of manageable services and facilitates end-to-end service management.  The SDB adds two additional key functions:

1. A product / service development environment that enables cost-effective and standardized service delivery across all service lifecycle phases (concept, design, deployment, operation and retirement). 
2. A common runtime SDB that provides efficient instrumented access to common services and service enablers.

With the porting of the SDB to Windows Azure, the SDB can be deployed as “SDB as a Service”, either on-premise, on Windows Azure, or in a flexible, hybrid cloud mode. 

For the Catalyst, the developer environment added a standard way for the developer to add Software Enabled Services - Management Interfaces (SES-MIs) to any individual service enabler or service mashup.  The Service Management Interfaces (SMI) facilitates end-to-end management and the rapid monetization of new services.

Core Catalyst Project Values identified include:

  • Cloud Service Providers interested in practical experience and best practices concerning implementing SES concepts within their own hosted service offerings
  • Architects interested in gaining a better perspective on architectural approaches and knowing more details about architectural decisions when designing and implementing new product offers, which leverage cloud resources
  • Service Designers interested in the unified user interface and how to implement prescriptive guidance for service templates
  • Managers interested in implementing new business models and opportunities
  • Operations interested in real-time statistics and reports that ultimately permit visibility into what drives Customer Satisfaction and operational expenses