Zeugma Introduces Smart Series Applications
Vancouver – Zeugma Systems, a privately held supplier of open telecommunications solutions, today announced the Zeugma Smart™ Series applications that run within the highly flexible Zeugma Open Application Sandbox (OAS), which facilitates rapid, cost-effective development of new services. SmartVideo™, the first application in the Smart Series, enables service providers to monetize the video traffic already traversing their networks by creating a high-quality, always-available premium internet video service that they can sell to their residential customers for an incremental fee. SmartVideo enables service providers to turn streaming internet video into a premium opt-in video experience by identifying and allocating the appropriate amount of bandwidth to video traffic, including high-definition (HD) video, yielding a viewing experience approaching that of a locally attached DVD player.
The Zeugma Smart Series provides a range of applications opportunities in the Zeugma OAS, which runs on an extensible compute grid directly within the Zeugma Services Node (ZSN). The ZSN is a service delivery router (SDR) that combines massive compute resources with next-generation capacity, service awareness, and subscriber awareness. Service providers can identify new service requirements with the Zeugma OAS, roll them into their network via the ZSN, and quickly launch new services.
Wireline service providers can reap a number of benefits from using Zeugma SmartVideo:
- SmartVideo is an umbrella for developing applications for video streams from premium video-content providers such as Netflix, YouTube, Apple iTunes, Hulu, and others
- Providers can quickly, easily, and cost-effectively create, test, and implement premium video services that will result in increased ARPU
- The availability of premium internet video services will help attract and retain customers and reduce customer churn
- Such services will enable providers to gain a better share of the broadband market compared to their cable competitors
“Service providers can drastically shorten time to market for video services—and cut development costs—with the Zeugma SmartVideo application,” said Tom Meehan, vice president of product line management at Zeugma. “Typically it takes a tremendous amount of time and money to develop new video services and determine if they work properly and will be profitable. With SmartVideo, providers can develop premium video services, test them, refine them, and, if they fail to achieve market traction, discard them, all in internet timeframes. Providers can thus move forward with their best ideas quickly, saving both time and money.”
A survey of U.S. consumers conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows conclusively that consumers want to watch premium video and are willing to pay incremental fees for a better Internet video service. About 94 percent of respondents saw value in dynamically allocating premium bandwidth to traffic such as video, and 26 percent would be willing to pay additional fees for premium bandwidth services. A majority of respondents, 54 percent, said they would actively seek to change service providers if another one offered such services.
SmartVideo Provides Everything Needed for Premium Service
Zeugma SmartVideo performs all six functions that are prerequisite to offering a premium internet video service:
Session identification. Using deep session inspection (DSI) technology, SmartVideo observes all downstream subscriber traffic and identifies the initiation of streaming video sessions.
Policy determination. SmartVideo next checks the policy for each session to determine if the subscriber has purchased premium video services.
Connection admission control (CAC). SmartVideo determines if the appropriate network resources are available to provide the necessary bandwidth for the entire video session. CAC is especially important as networks become more and more congested.
Dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA). If CAC determines there is sufficient bandwidth, SmartVideo reserves bandwidth for the duration of the subscriber’s session. The combination of CAC and bandwidth allocation is of prime importance to ensuring the subscriber has a high-quality video experience. Solutions that simply slap priority 1 tags on video packets as they go by do not ensure that the network has adequate resources and do not enable service providers to make quality guarantees. Such solutions cannot differentiate video traffic from other priority 1 traffic or ensure that when many subscribers are watching priority 1 video simultaneously that each will receive the appropriate bandwidth.
Quality of experience (QOE) monitoring. Monitoring the quality of a connection ensures the provider is delivering the high-quality video experience demanded by subscribers. The QOE of video delivered via SmartVideo approaches that delivered by a locally attached DVD player, even a Blu-ray player. Quality monitoring is also important for troubleshooting, customer care, and other functions.
Session settlement. Necessary for billing and auditing purposes, session settlement releases bandwidth and generates settlement records that allow the database to record what happened during the session, when it happened, and what the session’s QOE was.
With the above core functions handled by Zeugma SmartVideo, service providers are freed to very quickly and inexpensively identify new video service requirements, create new services, roll them into the network for testing, determine whether or not they are successful, and if they are, implement them—all within the space of a few weeks.
“In these tight economic times, service providers worldwide are trying to protect their revenue base by the introduction of new applications, especially those involving video,” stated Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. “Even though providers are spending over $12B a year in applications development, they are experiencing problems in getting the right applications to market quickly. Tools such as SmartVideo will be attractive to telcos faced with these challenges.”
Availability
The Zeugma SmartVideo application is available now. Contact Zeugma for pricing information.