Thursday, February 6, 2014

Metaswitch Unveils Cloud-based, "Clearwater" IMS Core

Metaswitch Networks introduced Clearwater Core, a software subscription service capable of delivering voice, video and messaging services to millions of users.


The company said its Clearwater Core provides a foundation for complete wireline and wireless IP communications while effectively removing the typical cost barriers to deploying IMS-centric Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Rich Communications Services (RCS). This enables network operators to leverage their standard compute resources while incurring a minimal software subscription fee based on the number of virtual CPU cores utilized.  The IMS core implementation, which is fully supported by Metaswitch with custom engineering, bespoke professional services and consultancy, could be run within network functions virtualization (NFV) environments as a virtualized network function (VNF).

“NFV has far-reaching effects in communications networks and this new approach to building networks will provide numerous benefits to network operators, including reductions in both capital and operating costs and the promotion of rapid innovation in the services space,” says Dave Reekie, general manager of Metaswitch’s open source business unit.

"We’re pleased to be easing network operators into the NFV revolution with Clearwater Core, where we can provide individual network operators ongoing support and maintenance of their cloud-based IMS Core on a software subscription basis,” says Reekie. “Like Project Clearwater, the open-source effort that started us down this path, Clearwater Core is completely unique in the industry.”

http://www.metaswitch.com/clearwater
http://www.projectclearwater.org

In May 2013, Project Clearwater, an open-source IMS core initiative for the cloud, launched its website and opened its doors to software developers and systems integrators.


Metaswitch Networks contributed the initial codebase for Project Clearwater and is sponsoring the initiative.

Metaswitch said the goal of Project Clearwater is to deliver critical call and session control functions, along with Telephony Application Server (TAS) capabilities, within any virtualized data center.  Clearwater is being developed for massive scale and "telco-grade" reliability in private or public Cloud environments, together with exceptionally low running costs of around 2 cents per subscriber per year based on Amazon AWS pricing.

Clearwater provides SIP-based call control for voice and video communications and for SIP-based messaging applications.  It is designed for deployment on Amazon Web Services or other private cloud infrastructure.