Service Environments

Telecommunication service platforms are constantly challenged by evolving network architectures, over-the-top services and emerging service verticals. The concurrence of different technologies and architectures makes the rapid development and deployment of new value added services possible. These include service creation environments, development frameworks and methodologies for composing services out of smaller elements, the integration of access technologies at the application level and elastic scalability of services and platforms according to instantaneous needs.

Flexible toolkits and service provisioning mechanisms are of key importance to cope with the change on various layers. The OpenSOA Telco Playground is the testbed at Fraunhofer FOKUS where toolkits and SDKs for Smart Cities, communication services as MMTel and RCS, and machine-to-machine (M2M) services are developed and tested. Its main toolkits, the FOKUS Broker, FOKUS CloudBroker, OMA service enablers, and myMONSTER TCS client framework allow end-to-end service prototyping for NGNs. Exposure APIs for communication services based on OMA Next Generation Service Interfaces are extended for M2M infrastructures, cross-layer QoS and connectivity control based on the Evolved Packet Core. Elasticity within cloud-based platforms for service exposure and policy-based adaptation allow for integration with various service verticals enabling a broad range of innovative business models.

Visit the OpenSOA Telco Playground testbed for further information.

OMA Service Environment (OSE)
The OMA specifies enablers, which provide standardized components to create an environment in which services may be developed and deployed. The OMA enablers, the decomposition into these components and the interactions between them comprise the OSE.

OASIS – Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

SOA – Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web Services
A service-oriented architecture is an information technology approach or strategy in which applications make use of (perhaps more accurately, rely on) services available in a network such as the World Wide Web. Implementing a service-oriented architecture can involve developing applications that use services, making applications available as services so that other applications can use those services, or both.

OSGi – Open Services Gateway Initiative
The OSGi technology is designed to ease the development of new and exciting services and applications for the latest generation of networked devices. Adding an OSGi Service Platform to a device, enables to manage the life cycle of the software components in the device from anywhere in the network. Software components can be installed, updated, or removed on the fly without having to disrupt the operation of the device. By exploiting these unique after-market sales possibilities, device manufacturers, service providers and software developers are able to improve time-to-market.