BroadSoft

The BroadWorks Platform

• Network Elements
• Geographic Redundancy and High Availability
• Capacity and Scalability
• Network Management
• Xtensibility

Network Elements

BroadWorks' system functionality is distributed across a number of platform network elements to enable maximum scalability, reliability and overall performance. View Diagram

Application Server

The BroadWorks Application Server operates at the core of BroadWorks and is responsible for the execution of all enhanced personal and group features. The server's database maintains user and group profiles, as well as service and subscription data. The Application Server supports a variety of access side protocols in including SIP, MGCP and NCS.

Network Server

The BroadWorks Network Server enables BroadWorks to achieve massive scalability and geographic redundancy. It acts as a centralized SIP redirect server providing location services, as well as dial plan/digit translation and a rich set of routing policies, such as least-cost routing, E911 route selection, and enterprise-focused network applications such as Voice VPNs and web-configurable private dial plans.

Media Server (Media Resource Function)

The BroadWorks Media Server is an open standards-based SIP media server supporting scripting languages such as VoiceXML and CCXML, as well as media control protocols such as NetAnn, MSCML, and the new SIP Media Control Framework. The BroadWorks Media Server provides announcements, record, playback. digit detection, mixing and repeating functions.

The BroadWorks Media Server is also a fully compliant IMS Media Resource Function (MRF), deployed in operator networks worldwide. All industry standard audio and video CODECs are supported on a highly scalable software based platform using off the shelf hardware. This enables operators to deploy media rich features such as Unified Messaging, N-way conferencing and Auto Attendants without investing in expensive proprietary hardware based media server platforms.

Access Mediation Server

The BroadWorks Access Mediation Server (AMS) is an optional, stand alone server that enables support of Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP) devices that are deployed in businesses of all sizes. The AMS supports the most popular BroadWorks business features, enabling a comprehensive and competitive offer. It also allows SCCP Devices to interface with BroadWorks enabling M6 Migrations. The AMS allows support of SCCP and SIP devices cross-enterprise, providing end user growth, and a reduction in deployment costs with retention of existing CPE.

Element Management System

The Element Management System (EMS) simplifies BroadWorks' integration into a service provider network by providing a single point of access for managing the fault, performance and configuration of all BroadWorks network elements. The EMS offers an integrated view of BroadWorks system resources for network monitoring and simplifies network wide tasks such as software patching and user migrations.

Web Server

The BroadWorks Web Server (WS) is a complete service management and self-care web portal solution. A multi-tenant hierarchy allows multiple administrators roles for operators to perform subscriber and service management. A group administrator and end-user portal allows enterprises or families to self manage their individual lines and service configuration. The Web Server can be deployed standalone or integrated with another portal using external authentication APIs or third party single sign on solutions.

Xtended Service Platform

The BroadWorks Xtended Service Platform (XSP) enables a variety of ancillary interfaces on BroadWorks. The primary interface exposed by the XSP is the Xtended Services Interface (Xsi) – which provides a rich set of Web 2.0 interfaces for integrating BroadWorks services with desktop clients as well as Internet based applications. The XSP also hosts the Device Management interface (DMI) so phones, soft clients and gateways can download their latest configuration files and software loads.

Profile Server

The BroadWorks Profile Server (PS) provides a central repository for configuration files, access device firmware, client software, treatments, announcements and localization files. Centralizing all resources files in the Profile Server eliminates the management of keeping files in sync across multiple application servers and media servers in the network.

Call Detail Server

The Call Detail Server (CDS) offloads call record management from the Application Server. While the application server provides a basic call log feature – when using the CDS operators can offer hundreds of logs per user with much more detail per call log. The CDS deployment enables providers to collect a broader array of call data and distribute those records to other systems in real-time. When deployed in conjunction with the XSP, operators can make these call logs available to end user applications via the Xsi.

Geographic Redundancy and High Availability

To meet competitive service level agreements, today’s network operators demand highly reliable solutions. BroadWorks was designed from day one to provide carrier class availability. Deployed commercially since 2000, BroadWorks is a mature service delivery platform with a proven track record of five 9's commercial reliability in the field. BroadWorks not only offers full network element redundancy – with no single point of failure – but it can also be deployed in a geographically redundant configuration. View Diagram

Capacity and Scalability

BroadWorks has been validated to support tens of millions of subscribers in a single deployment. Running on commercial off the shelf hardware and standard OS platforms -- operators can to take advantage of ongoing industry trends in hardware capacity. BroadWorks systems scales horizontally, increasing capacity through added network elements.

For instance – for more subscriber capacity, Application Servers are added to the network; for more media ports, Media Servers are added to the network. Network integration with back office systems is simplified by location services that route requests to the right network element in the system. For instance, when accessing a user profile, the provisioning system will be automatically redirected to the right application server hosting that user. Whether you are a small carrier just getting started in VoIP, or a large multi-property tier 1 network operator transforming or updating your network to the latest technology – BroadWorks can scale to meet your current and future capacity needs.

Network Management

As operators scale their BroadWorks platform from a few network elements to a few hundred network elements, it can become expensive to manage each network element individually. Centralized network management on BroadWorks is provided by the Element Management System (EMS). The EMS is designed to streamline the operations and management tasks of a large-scale BroadWorks deployment. It provides a network wide view of the health of all the BroadWorks network elements. It simplifies remote login through the CLI or web portal. It provides centralized tools for managing software patches, system configuration and troubleshooting. To simplify integration with a standards based network management system – the EMS can expose one centralized SNMP interface and provide an aggregate view of all the faults, alarms and performance metrics in the system. View Diagram

Xtensibility

Today's competitive landscape for communications services is forcing operators to look for higher value, differentiating solutions to offer to their customers. While BroadWorks provides a rich set of enhanced capabilities for voice and video communications – end-users are demanding that these services be easy to access and manage wherever they go.

In addition to the self-care web portal and a variety of desktop client applications, BroadWorks provides a very rich set of open programmable interfaces called the Xtended Services Interface (Xsi) that allows operators, ISVs and even end users to build their own niche applications around the services offered by BroadWorks.

The Xsi is a RESTful HTTP based interface that uses simple commands to enable service configuration, click to dial and other call control primitives over the web. The BroadSoft Xtended program gives operators access to a growing community of software developers that have adopted the Xsi and are building innovative applications and web mashups based on the BroadWorks platform.