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Connected Services Framework (Sidebar)    
   

By Matt Rosoff [bio]
Posted: Nov. 14, 2005

The following is sidebar accompanying an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. Each month we make one or more key articles available to non-subscribers.

Introduced in Feb. 2005, the Connected Services Framework (CSF) is a highly customizable server-based product that runs on Microsoft's application platform, particularly Windows Server and the .NET development platform. The goal of the CSF is to make it easier for customers—particularly telecommunications providers—to offer new Web-based services to end users. These services could be provided directly by the telecommunications company or outsourced to a partner and might include Web-based e-mail, Voice-over-IP (VoIP), presence, advanced telephony (such as voice mail, multiparty conferencing, and hosted PBX systems that offer virtual phone extensions for each employee in a small business), document management, or multifunction services that gather data from multiple online services (for instance, a traffic advisory service that aggregates traffic information from a local government agency, location data from the user's cell phone signal, and mapping data from MSN's MapPoint service).

In particular, the CSF is meant to address the challenge of integrating these new services with one another and with telecommunications companies' back-end systems, such as operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS), such as billing systems. Today, there is no agreed-upon method for building a new Web-based service, and integration with back-end systems is accomplished through proprietary APIs—two factors that make it difficult to develop and add new services. The CSF addresses these problems by establishing a service-oriented architecture (SOA), in which all systems communicate with one another using Web services protocols and agreed-upon schema. Often, a proof of concept for a particular CSF solution is built by a solutions group within the Communications Sector organization, aided by Microsoft Consulting Services.

Components of a CSF-Based Solution

The CSF consists of the following modules:

Session management defines how multiple services are aggregated into a user session. The aggregation may be static or dynamic and can be short-lived or long-lasting.

Identity management authenticates users, authorizes them to use particular Web-based services, and enables single sign-on across multiple services. This element is built on Active Directory and Identity Integration Server (components of Windows Server).

A service catalog, built on the Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration (UDDI) registration service (which is supported in Windows Server) allows services to describe themselves to one another—for example, it contains information about the features each service offers, where it's located on the network, and how it can be accessed. Data is stored in SQL Server.

Orchestration lets customers coordinate the flow of events (workflow) among services and supports integration among services (through Web services protocols) and external systems (through adapters). It can be built on BizTalk Server.

Resource management tools let administrators configure and manage services. This component is built on Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

Standard Business Events (SBEs) are custom, reusable pieces of business logic that connect new Web-based services with existing OSS/BSS systems, and with services based on existing telecommunications protocols, such as Short Message Service (SMS) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

A development environment enables the design and development of composite services by providing a CSF Software Development Toolkit (SDK), which provides simplified APIs for particular functions (such as digital media encoding); a service directory, which allows developers to discover and reuse components from existing services; and a development environment provided through an add-on to Visual Studio.

Several companies have deployed or announced plans to deploy CSF-based solutions, including AT&T, Bell Canada, Celcom Malaysia, and Qwest in the telecommunications sector, and Sony Pictures in the media and entertainment sector.

Additional Products

The Communications Sector group also encourages customers to deploy other products and solutions from Microsoft and partners, and then integrate them using the CSF. Candidates here include the following:

  • The Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration is a set of hosted applications that includes Exchange Server 2003, Live Communications Server 2005, and Windows SharePoint Services
  • The Microsoft Solution for Enhanced VoIP Services combines the Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration with the Applications Feature Server from partner Sylantro, which offers hosted PBX capabilities
  • Microsoft's IPTV platform lets customers deliver television broadcasts over a dedicated IP network
  • Microsoft's MapPoint Location Server simplifies development of applications that track cell phone users' locations and display them on maps.
 
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