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 MANAGED NETWORK SERVICES
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| Qualcomm's Managed Network Services allow companies to outsource the delivery of machine communications, account for the complex needs of their enterprise, and deliver reliable, cost-effective services. With this outsourced approach, companies can focus on their core competencies and have the confidence that their wireless Smart Services meet or exceed the expectations of their customers. |
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 Companies looking to network their products face tremendous possibilities in growing and expanding their business. The risk and cost of failure, however, cannot be overstated. The manufacturer's name and reputation are on the line, and the business of extending Smart Services onto products is dynamic and complex. Below are some of the key drivers that may be at play in your deployment:
- Critical business applications with a low tolerance for failure
- A mixed installation base in fragmented markets
- Diverse requirements for the machine interface and communications
- Global deployment requirements
- High standards for data security Installation and ease of use
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Common business requirements for today's leading Smart Services deployments include the following. Qualcomm's Managed Network Services address these requirements and more with a simple "plug and play" solution that applies the highest of technical standards:
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1. Data Security
Data security is one of the most important considerations when designing a Smart Services solution. The challenges in security span all communication methods, and loom larger when more than one method is required. Within the various communication methods used, the level of security ranges from none to strong encryption.
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With the Qualcomm's Smart Service solution, we can focus on our core competencies and have the confidence that our products will have reliable cost-effective connectivity now and into the future.
- Siemens Wireless
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Cellular transports have the best "as is" security available. Cellular transports — such as CDMA, GPRS, SMS, UMTS, and others — provide a very high level of encryption for all data (and voice) sent over the air. The one limitation of this scheme is that data is only encrypted from the wireless device to the carrier's respective wired networks. Once the data lands in the carrier’s network operations center (NOC), it is no longer encrypted. This creates an exposure in the Smart Services solution when the data is sent to the application server over the public Internet.
2. Cellular Technology
There are many options available to communicate machine sensor data throughout an enterprise. As one would expect, each comes with its own unique set of benefits and drawbacks relative to cost, reliability, and coverage. Cellular wireless has the largest impact for most large-scale Smart Services deployments going to market today. Cellular represents huge opportunities for product manufacturers because it eliminates the need to involve the end-customer IT departments to obtain approvals to connect to the local IT infrastructure.
Cellular options include GPRS, CDMA, SMS, EDGE, EV-DO, etc. For large-scale deployments, a communications strategy that supports all, some, or one may be required.
3. Two-way Communication
Two-way communication is a common business requirement for Smart Services deployments. We define this as the ability to initiate communications from either the remote device or from the server level. Server-initiated communications are required when a user would like to get the most up-to-date data or connect to a device to perform remote diagnostics, for instance. The biggest challenge is that you cannot easily communicate from a server down to a remote device with leading cellular platforms.
To effectively solve these problems, the application must be connected directly to the carrier's wireless infrastructure. This allows truly secure, two-way, end-to-end communications.
4. Multiple Communication Paths
A key requirement of a distributed Smart Services solution is the ability to support multiple carriers and multiple communication methods. However, supporting multiple communication methods introduces the challenges of disparate data, routing, carrier contracts, and effective global support.
Disparate data refers to the fact that data sent via the various communication methods may have different formats. These data formats may be at the application level or at the byte level. The disparate data problem at the application level is illustrated by the example of attempting to use SMS and any of the other communication methods.
5. Communication Protocol
After meeting communication methods challenges such as multiple carriers, security, dynamic public IP address schemes, data normalization, and routing, there remains another roadblock to a successful Smart Services deployment: What is the lower level communications protocol that connects remote devices to back-end applications?
6. Availability
If you are working directly with a wireless carrier, where will the data be going? Is it going to a server under someone's desk in your office, or is it going to a high-availability state-of-the-art Network Operations Center (NOC)?
7. Costs
Most companies do not start off deploying 20,000 devices in their first six months of product rollout. But the costs for even low-volume deployments need to be economically viable, with volume discounts as the deployment increases. If you can get competitive pricing and a turnkey communications solution from a third-party solutions provider versus working directly with a carrier, you will probably want to work with the solutions provider.
8. Toolsets
- A single-standard, efficient protocol to address WAN communication needs
- Working sample source code for embedded and server side
- A hosted test environment
- Developer rate packages to quickly get their applications communicating over a wireless network.
9. Billing
The ability to have a single bill across multiple carriers and types of usage is critical in today's movement to simplify billing processes.
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