Just what is a media server? And how large is the market for them?
The telecom industry has several definitions and a multitude of projections. If you Google
the term "media server", you get the gamut of hits, from PC-based streaming-media devices all the way to carrier-class, SIP-based media processing servers. Closer to our industry, in February 2006 Moriana Group defined the "media server" as a shareable media resource providing play, record and transcoding between various media formats and/or synchronizing of audio and video.
Normally a media server is controlled by separate application servers through a SIP or H.248 control pipe and a markup language of some sort
(eg.VoiceXML). This is what defines a modern media server. In a 2005 report entitled "Leading IP Media Server Vendors Vie for IMS Positioning," Yankee Group predicted the media server equipment market to reach $400M by 2008. In the following article I will address trends driving the emergence of second-generation IMS-oriented media servers, the SIP application servers that drive them, why applications need them, their characteristics and why they will succeed in the market.
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Technology Mega-Trends Drive New Applications
There are two technology mega-trends that are driving the need for growth in enhanced telecommunications services: Voice over IP (VoIP) and mobility.
VoIP is creating a whole new market of broadband telephony callers from services like Skype and Vonage. In addition, VoIP technology is tearing down old circuit-based systems from the enterprise to the carrier and replacing them with more cost-effective and highly flexible packet-based systems that can enable a whole new classes of applications.
While cell phone use in the developed world has created a new market for anytime-anywhere access to services, the greater story is perhaps the explosion of cell phone adoption in the developing world where the subscriber uptake is staggering. These new cell phone users will need enhanced network services ranging from voicemail, prepaid cards and self-service to video blogging, hosted enterprise communications and conferencing. Perhaps more important to the cell phone operator is the need to differentiate their offering through applications and content delivered to the end user.
SIP Applications
Media servers are a critical adjunct to SIP application servers. According to the Yankee Group report "IP Multimedia Subsystems and Service Delivery Platforms Will Drive SIP Application Server Adoption," "Service providers are increasingly using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) application servers in their networks because in an intensely competitive market, they need to become more agile and responsive to competitive threats and, at the same time, gain the flexibility to proactively pursue new types of customers."
This report shows the CapEx spending forecast on SIP application servers world wide by 2009 will be $4.8 billion.
Business Processes Changing Industry Behavior
In addition to the technology mega-trends, the telecommunications equipment industry is undergoing massive structural changes.
One of the most striking transformations is that all vendors described as "equipment makers" are focusing their core values away from equipment manufacture and towards application development, systems integration, hosted services and professional services. This trend is creating new opportunities for other vendors to fulfill common equipment needs across many vendors.
The technology changes just discussed are also associated with a wide range of very detailed and complicated implementations that must be mastered in order to get products to market. As this world gets increasingly complex, it is decreasingly feasible for application developers to both develop a platform for their application to run on and build competitive products. As the market is continuing to invest in new technologies, like video processing, there needs to be a convenient way for application developers to absorb these new technologies with little risk and effort.
Application developers need to reduce complexity. The complexity of media processing needs to be modularized and structured to allow a commonality of access to appear. This is not a new concept it has been applied in the Internet for years.
Telecom Transition to an Internet Economy
The behavior that enabled a new breed of Internet companies over ten years ago is starting to infect the telecommunications industry. In the way that Internet companies use highly modular distributed computing servers like database and web servers in order to rapidly construct new applications at very low investment, telecom application developers are now starting to adopt these techniques. This has given rise to the evolution of available standards-based protocols to address the complex media server functions.
Importance of the Media Server Control Protocol
Proprietary API-level products that are the foundation for most existing media processing applications are bound tightly to a specific board vendor's hardware through a compiled interface that only supports the C and C++ languages. Although highly valued in the past because of its ease of use, this closed, lower level architecture is very fragile and scalability is difficult to achieve. These limitations force a very long product development cycle and provide very little support for building high service availability.
Control protocols based on Internet technology allow applications to remotely control the media server over a network. Because the protocols use industry standards like SIP and XML, any language or rapid development environment (like Java/J2EE and C#/.NET) may be used to build applications. The control protocols also enable scalable applications to be developed for high service availability, at minimal effort, by exploiting the properties of SIP to provide service discovery, load balancing, server failover and other features that are well established for building distributed Internet applications.
First-Generation Media Server Products -- What Went Wrong?
While most of the telecom applications market used purpose built media servers, some based on merchant board level components, a commercial market for media servers was developing led by a few startup companies. There demise was based on the lack of market adoption indicating that the early-adopter market is stalled at "the chasm." Various aspects of the market/business/technical strategy of these startups contributed to the reluctance of the mainstream market to adopt commercial media servers:
- One function box -- an inflexible approach that couldn't adapt to customers' needs for different forms of media, densities and compute vendors
- VoIP interfaces only -- the world is still circuit-based, and the requirement for external gateways was too expensive for early un-proven applications
- Limited adaptability -- the strict adherence to DSP architectures prevented adaptability as customers also demanded HMP-based software solutions
- Focus on high-density -- the focus on high-density media serving sacrificed other important functions like support for VoiceXML processing
- No applications -- carriers don't buy infrastructure without applications, so early selling to carriers did not advance the market
- Lack of standards - the industry did not have a widely accepted standard for controlling or programming media servers
Media Servers for IMS
The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for next-generation wireline and wireless networks will be one of the primary consumers of IP Media Servers, which within IMS is referred to as a Media Resource Function Processor (MRFP). IMS applications need the multiple values that IMS-ready media servers bring to the market, such as:
- Evolution of vertically integrated media solutions - transcoder boxes vs. all in one solutions
- Cost effectiveness -- pick the box with the right size and interfaces for your application
- Flexibility -- a wider range of solutions, small to large, that can be controlled with out programming changes via a common interface
- Consistency - from a programmers perspective this is what SIP, VXML, MSCL will bring
- True choice based on standards -- Operators now have a plausible means to deliver on the IMS value based on accepted industry standards
Media Servers Evolving Forward
So while the second generation of media server developers have emerged, the important message here is watch and see which vendors embrace open standards at the programming level, support for IMS protocols for integration with SIP application developers platforms while delivering the broadest range of solutions, both TDM and IP.
About
the Author
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Mike Katz is
Director of Product Marketing at NMS Communications and has over
20 years of in-depth communications market experience. Katz has
held high-level product marketing and management positions at
communication market leaders including Boston Technology, Voicetek, and
now NMS, as well as next-generation network application pioneers such as
NetPhone and Iperia. As chairman of the Distributed Computer
Telephony working group, Mike has a history of leadership in new
markets, including the early computer telephony market, and is a
"patented" early innovator in the VoIP space. He now
brings his market insight and career experiences to the burgeoning
mobile video arena.
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About NMS
Communications
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NMS
Communications is a leading provider of technologies and solutions
for mobile applications and infrastructure. NMS develops products that
enable new mobile voice, data and video applications and improve the
performance and quality of wireless networks, helping our customers grow
their revenues and profits. Visit www.nmscommunications.com for more
information.
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