Oracle launches 'Carrier Grade Framework '

NEW DELHI: Oracle Corp. today announced the launch of Oracle Carrier Grade Framework (CGF), a new initiative designed to help communications service providers (CSPs) and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) leverage standards-based technology to meet customer demands and improve time to market for new services including high-speed broadband content and 3G mobile applications.

"Much like the shift from mainframe to distributed client/server architectures forever changed the IT landscape, this paradigm shift - replacing proprietary, siloed communications technology platforms with a modular, standards-based architecture - will allow communications service providers and network equipment manufacturers to realize dramatic new cost efficiencies and speed time to market for new services," said Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Database Server Technologies at Oracle. "Oracle's leadership and expertise in database technology positions us to work with service providers, network manufacturers and our partners to evolve the network IT landscape."

A New Paradigm

The introduction of 3rd generation communications technology is resulting in an unprecedented range of sophisticated high-bandwidth services and personalized digital content. As CSPs strive to increase their competitive margin in this arena, they face growing pressure to lower prices, provide superior service and speed time to market for new services.

Core network communications technology platforms, like home location register (HLR), are traditionally built on proprietary database software and are under increasingly complex demands to quickly enable rich new services and content. At the same time, the platforms must maintain carrier grade availability and performance. These new generation demands overwhelm the existing infrastructure, leading to slower development and deployment of new services. Furthermore, both network information and technical architecture is separate from mainstream customer relationship management (CRM) systems, resulting in high maintenance costs and a fragmented view of useful customer information.

Oracle Carrier Grade Framework, built on Oracle Database 10g, will allow CSPs and NEMs to replace expensive proprietary communications technology platforms with commercial software. This offering will drive standards-based modularization of the communication technology platform, separating applications from the database to run on a shared computing architecture.

Because the Oracle Carrier Grade Framework is built on open standards, it will enhance efficiency throughout the entire communications value chain - freeing CSP and NEM resources to develop and deliver next generation applications like location-based emergency services (911) quickly and cost-effectively, while maintaining carrier grade availability and performance. In addition, by replacing proprietary data stores with a commercial architecture, CSPs will be able to lower their total cost of ownership, due to improvements in resource utilization and administration, as well as a reduction in costly application communications methods.

A Winning Partnership

In addition, Nokia, a leading provider of mobile network infrastructure and service delivery platforms for mobile operators, is working with new architectures and product platforms that will enable it to focus on driving next generation mobile multimedia applications.

"The cost and time to market benefits of modular platforms are clear to Nokia. We are consistently supporting open industry initiatives and Oracle Carrier Grade Framework is a representative example of open database architecture," said Ari Virtanen, vice president, Nokia Networks.

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