A number of recent contracts with operators in China, Australia and Brazil clearly confirm that Ericsson is on the right track to becoming a market leader.

SDP is mainly a way to create, manage and sell services over different networks. For operators it is now crucial to find new, flexible and fast ways of offering new services as their voice revenues decline. An SDP will enable this while overcoming the technical hurdles between users and services and making it easier for content and service providers.

There is no single standardization organization for SDP, but it is an open, dynamic world, ruled by the market. SDP follows the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles and is all about integrating software and interfaces in the operator's infrastructure.

Ulf Olsson, from Ericsson's Business Unit Multimedia, says: "We work very close with our customers to understand which components they need and how we best integrate them. Our solutions consist, to a large degree, of commercial components and System Integration customization, but also include key Ericsson parts."

Jan Gabrielsson, from Ericsson's Multimedia Services Group, says the company focuses on three solutions for operators in its portfolio:

• SDP media - for content
• SDP connect - how the operator handles resources and works with partners to build the value chain
• SDP launch and management.

Underpinning these three solutions is SDP Foundation, which collects common functionality across all solution areas. In a typical customer engagement, discussions would start from a revenue generator such as IPTV. This would introduce SDP media, and the solution would be completed with SDP Foundation.

"From that point, we then have an excellent starting point for discussing further services with the operator, leveraging SDP assets that are by then already in place," Gabrielsson says.

"The SDP area is very exciting as it is at the center of how operators will manage the flow of new services that will shape the future communication landscape."


Lars Cederquist

SDP in brief

• SDP is addressing services - not connecting nodes
• The operator's business processes are as important as its network structure
• Java EE and XML Web Services are key technologies
• Business Process Execution Protocol (BPEL) describes the different steps in the business process and cuts time by automating what was previously done using document exchange
• IMS and SDP live very happily together, serving different purposes: IMS implements a growing, dynamic set of new services, while SDP makes them manageable.