FREE ADVISORY REPORT

Softswitch 2008:
Disaggregating Toward Extinction?

| August 8, 2008 | IP Services Infrastructure | Advisory Report

| Analyst: Joe McGarvey, Principal Analyst, IP Services Infrastructure

A definitive description of the softswitch has always eluded observers in the telecommunications industry, mostly due to confusion over the uneven distribution of various signaling- and media-handling components of the technology across the service delivery infrastructure. The situation is only going to get worse, however, as softswitch makers have recently engaged in a new round of disaggregation that is literally breaking up the softswitch into multiple pieces.

Being able to offer carrier customers cost and performance efficiencies associated with distributed and modular architectures is a driving force behind this movement. Equally important, however, is the fact that the further disaggregation of the softswitch will enable operators to smoothly and incrementally move their service delivery infrastructures to an IMS-based architecture.

There are multiple questions surrounding this latest trend in the softswitch market:

• What will be the movement’s impact on existing softswitch providers and will disaggregation favor softswitch vendors with legacy TDM experience or those that have constructed their products on a SIP/IP foundation?
• What is the overall lifespan of the current softswitch?
• Once the technology is reduced to a collection of components scattered around the networks does it cease to exist?

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