Microsoft Mediaroom as a SOA for IPTV

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Microsoft Mediaroom as a SOA for IPTV
www.oasis-open.org
Majd Bakar Lead Architect Antonio Fontan Senior
Developer
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Agenda
www.oasis-open.org

• What is Microsoft Mediaroom
• High level Architecture
• System Interfaces
• Lessons Learned
• Future

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What is Microsoft Mediaroom

• Mediaroom is the brand name for Microsofts IPTV
  solution
• http//www.microsoft.com/tv
• It is an end to end platform for delivery of
  video over reliable IP networks based on
  commodity hardware

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IPTV Solution for Telcos

• Linear, on demand, and time-shifted content
  delivery over DSL networks
• Integrated content protection
• Rich and reliable meta-data for content discovery
• Extensible application framework
• Target Advertisement
• Rich data collection

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End to End IPTV solution
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Customers

• Over 2,000,000 television sets
• More than 20 of the world's leading service
  providers
• ATT, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Reliance
  Communications, Swisscom,
• http//www.microsoft.com/tv/Customers.mspx

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• Over 20 service providers worldwide
• 14 commercially deployed
• Over 2.0M TV sets and counting

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High Level Architecture
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Interfaces

• Why SOA?
• Enables a highly decoupled, modular, and
  interoperable architecture
• Current interfaces based on Web Services
• To Mediaroom
• Operations Support Systems
• Business Support Systems
• Inside the Mediaroom system
• Backend to Branch
• Client/STB to server

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OSS/BSS
Broadcast Feeds
VOD Assets
Backend
Branch Office
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OSS

• Interface for Telco Operations Support Systems
• Service and Channel Management
• System and Device Management
• Diagnostics
• Content meta-data for linear and on-demand

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BSS

• Interface for Telco Business Support Systems
• Principal (devices, accounts, users, and
  subscriber groups) Management
• Rights Management
• Billing Management
• Offer Management

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OSS/BSS

• SOAP based Web Services
• Transport level security
• Main issues
• Scalability in bulk processing
• Interoperability problems normally related to
  versioning and highly coupled APIs
• Solution Loosely coupled Batch APIs /
  Asynchronous Server processing

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Client to Server Interface
Broadcast Feeds
VOD Assets
Backend
Branch Office
Service Group
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Client to Server Interface

• SOAP based Web Services
• Proprietary message-based security
• Main issues
• Always needed data on the client
• XML processing is expensive in low-end hardware
• Solution Spreading of client requests, lower
  call load, reduce serialization needs

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Backend to Branch Interface
Broadcast Feeds
VOD Assets
Backend
Branch Office
Service Group
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Backend to Branch Interfaces

• SOAP based Web Services
• Transport level security
• Main issues
• Not many real-life problems experienced between
  backend and branch

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Current Status
ATT Upgrades DVR Service Company Uses Multiroom
Viewing To Take On Verizon By ANDREW
LAVALLEESeptember 9, 2008 Page B9 ATT Inc.'s
U-verse service will let subscribers watch
recorded shows on as many as eight television
sets, an upgrade intended to compete more
effectively with rivals' digital-video
recorders. The feature, often called multiroom or
whole-home DVR, is already available in San
Francisco and some nearby cities to subscribers
of U-verse, which allows users to view Internet
video as well as TV programming on their sets. It
will be rolled out to the rest of the Bay Area
this week and will be available nationwide by
year end, said Rick Welday, ATT's chief
marketing officer. It will be free as part of a
U-verse subscription, which costs from 44 to 99
a month. DVRs have become popular in millions of
households because they make it easy for users to
skip commercials and watch TV shows on their own
schedule. They have also emerged as a way for
phone, cable and satellite companies to compete
for market share. ATT has some ground to make up
on its main rival, Verizon Communications Inc.,
whose FiOS TV service has more than double the
subscribers -- 1.4 million, versus 549,000 for
U-verse. ATT said it plans to exceed one million
subscribers by year end. While it is unclear why
the average household would need to see a show on
eight TV sets, that stat gives ATT bragging
rights FiOS's version of the service allows for
only seven connected TVs. The one TV set with the
DVR will remain the only set that can record
shows. A subscriber could record and start
watching a show in his living room, then pause it
and resume watching in his bedroom. As many as
four TVs can watch recorded shows at the same
time. TiVo Inc. allows customers to transfer
recordings to another set, but each one must be
equipped with a DVR, which it sells for 150 to
600. Dish Network Corp.'s multiroom DVR
capabilities are limited to two TV sets, and
DirecTV Group Inc. said its multiroom offering
will be available in upcoming months.

• Great scalability numbers in commodity hardware
• Subscriber numbers increasing at a very high rate
• Mediaroom supports up to 8 TV sets with DVR

ATT
The Recorded TV menu, which ATT U-Verse Total Home DVR customers can access from any TV to playback their recordings.
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Lessons Learned (I)

• Web services used as RPC increased coupling and
  reduced agility.
• Trade off between well defined interfaces and
  change management/scalability
• SOAP limitations(costly serialization effort)
• Exposing/retrieving large resources
• Low end Hardware
• It is critical adding better control for
  accessing server resources

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Lessons Learned (II)

• Modeling unknown applications is hard
• Scalability impact due to incorrect granularity
  of the interface implementation
• Lack of understanding of scenarios
• Saying Contract first is not good enough
• Different ways of creating WSDL introduce lack of
  consistency
• OSS/BSS interfaces should be driven from the
  use-case scenarios for the application

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Future - Extensibility

• Better control of workflow
• Improve asynchronous handling of requests
• Prioritization of calls
• Simplify access to resources to facilitate
  application extensibility
• Reduce the number of overall requests between
  end-points

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Future - Design

• Scenario Driven development
• Better tools (DSL, Domain Specific Language) to
  capture scenarios and contracts
• Patterns of usage of the platform are better
  understood now
• Emphasis on modeling
• Access profile
• Layering of interfaces

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Thank You Questions