Pipeline Profile: Susie Kim Riley

SCTE member since 2003 Title: CTO, Camiant, Inc. Broadband Background: Prior to founding Camiant, Inc. in March 2003, Riley was an architect for ADC’s Cuda cable modem termination system (CMTS) product line. She focused on quality of server (QoS) and PacketCable functionality. Your service controller just received PacketCable Multimedia qualification. Is PCMM market-ready? Yes, PCMM is market-ready, but qualification is really just one piece of the puzzle. There are a number of other things that have come together recently that are really important as well. In the last six months, we have gone through the gauntlet of operator-driven testing for things like application integration, policy integration, policy routing, scalability, reliability, OSS integration, reporting, support—critical functions necessary before the technology can be deployed. We are now on the cusp of several years of work coming to fruition. You presented a paper at the SCTE’s Conference on Emerging Technologies (ET) in January. Could you summarize? The message was that if you do it right, PCMM can turn big pipes into smart pipes. Some people think of PCMM as just D-QoS (dynamic quality of service) for non-PacketCable telephony—but PCMM goes far beyond telephony services, into other compelling applications such as streaming media and rich media communications services. We also believe as more applications are launched under PCMM, sophisticated policy functions will be critical in enabling operators to reconcile their business priorities with application delivery. As a continuum of the smart pipe, control-plane intelligence is a key part of the next-generation network architecture (NGNA), which looks to converge the operator’s network infrastructure to maximize the investment in the access network to efficiently deliver multimedia content. What are you going to be talking about at Expo? As Packetcable 1.x and Packetcable Multimedia services get rolled out, operators need to start thinking about how to best converge the two infrastructures—otherwise we will be stuck with 2 silos—one for NCS (network call signaling)-based voice, and the other for all other multimedia applications. A movement that is gaining momentum is to turn PacketCable 1.x CMSs (call management servers) into yet another PCMM application server that is requesting QoS through the policy server. This way, all resource domain control resides in the policy infrastructure, and the applications can focus on what they do best—application session management. This harmonizing interface enables operators to align business priorities across all applications, as well as improve on the statistical multiplexing of their resources by collapsing the silos. In the context of voice, you must also look at SIP (session initiation protocol) and PCMM; together they provide a powerful framework for delivering next generation multimedia communications services. What should we know about the relationship between PCMM and SIP? On one level, SIP and PCMM have no strict relationship since they do totally separate things. SIP handles session management for applications that use SIP as a session setup protocol and PCMM handles QoS for a variety of applications. But on another level, PCMM is the secret sauce that will make a cable’s SIP services stand out from anyone else’s. Vonage and the other "over the top" services have all proven that revenue potential exists, even if the service is spotty. But think about how easy it is for people to get into the SIP business—it is a perfect formula for a low-margin business. PCMM allows an MSO to do something different—or even a number of different targeted things if you use our "smart pipes" approach. You’ve announced a number of partnerships lately. What does a session border controller bring to the table? Session border controllers (SBCs) can do a few things for voice over IP services around border security and hosted network address translation (NAT) traversal. In deployments where there are SBCs acting as the first-hop proxy, we need to interface with them. The joint solution allows an operator to do all the things that PCMM allows, while maintaining network security for voice services across another operator’s network. What about an IP service control device? IP service control devices use deep-packet inspection to allow an operator to detect and potentially traffic shape application sessions on their network. In many instances, operators are reluctant to deploy the deep-packet inspection devices ‘in-line’ because of the single-point-of-failure scenarios. By being ‘in-line’ these devices can traffic shape different kinds of sessions. By using the deep-packet inspection boxes in conjunction with PCMM, where they signal to the policy server and the policy server instructs the CMTSs to either provide QoS or throttle traffic, these devices can be deployed ‘off-line.’ That greatly mitigates the single point of failure issues, and the traffic can be controlled at the source, which is obviously much more desirable than trying to throttle the traffic once it has reached the IP network. What will drive the large-scale deployment of PCMM? PCMM will grow like most other new disruptive technologies—slowly at first based on a few key applications, and then tremendously as operators become comfortable with the technology and experience the strategic value of PCMM. The great thing about PCMM is that there are a number of applications that could drive large-scale deployment: telephony, video telephony, streaming media, or it could be some application we don’t know about yet. What will you be demonstrating at Expo? We will also be showing streaming TV, video telephony, video IM and some business-oriented telephony and data services. We will also be demonstrating OSS integration and our monitoring and reporting package. We are also working with six or seven partners to demonstrate a variety of PCMM-enabled services in their booths. Where else is the discussion of PCMM heading now? In our case, the discussion of PCMM has moved from "Will it work?" to "What else can we use it for?" It has been gratifying to see something that started out as an idea amongst a few of us technology people move to the point where VPs of marketing can now discuss it in a fairly sophisticated manner.