Highlighting the benefits of InMobiles’ new platform Apollo, Charbel Litany, CEO, explained to Telecom Review how this platform benefits operators, service developers, and end users. “Apollo will shock everyone,” he said, confident that it will transform the whole industry.
InMobiles decided to launch their new platform to help carriers in the first place who were struggling to launch the core network infrastructure product that is considered as a value-added product. CEOs and CMOs who are responsible for the launching and increase of revenues from new products were suffering the most.
“Many vendors were trying to deliver innovative services and products. However, the launching process was taking not less than nine months which is agonizing for service owners. To solve this problem and empower the CEOs and CMOs, we tried to eliminate the resources’ involvement in the services launching process and built a solution as an infrastructure that we name Apollo”, Charbel Litany explained.
Apollo will be integrated with the mobile operator’s network elements through the Apollo Core layer which directly communicates with the upper layer called Apollo Connect. This layered architecture provides high scalability and convergence so any service provider or service developer won’t interface directly with the operator network but with the Apollo.
Apollo was introduced to solve challenges hampering the launch of new innovative products, such as High service CAPEX due to vendor lock-in, long time to market for new service delivery and lack of innovative services.
The platform can host third-party services and allow instant changing of service logic. This concept helps telecom operators separate service purchasing from platform purchasing, and use Internet resources to serve their customers. Meanwhile, the service developers get benefits from service sales/revenue. Through Apollo OSG, the operator can establish a WIN-WIN-WIN ecosystem for the operator, service developers, and end users.
“In the past, launching a service required a long process including legal agreement, commercial discussion, security assessment, technical integration and finally UAT which takes around nine months. Apollo Core already has this part covered, so service developers only have to go through the last 2 phases from integration to UAT. Launching the service will only take two days to one week”, said Litany when asked about the benefits of this new platform.
Apollo helps as well telecom operators to benefit from mature developers who are already familiar with JAVA and JSLEE and eliminate service vendor lock-in. It is also very flexible as it allows telecom operators to buy and load RAs as per their network environment requires.
Operators can get the revenue generating service right after the platform delivery. They don’t have to wait for 3rd party service vendors to develop and deliver services. Another advantage is that if a group has several affiliates, the Core will be integrated into all affiliates and the developer will do his job once in the cloud.
Apollo OSG solution is compatible with mainstream NFVI (Network functions virtualization Infrastructure) vendors, and it has already been tested and passed the validation cloud environment. State-of-the-art technologies and methodologies such as Docker and DevOps are applied in the system designing and operating processes. Other technologies such as SDN and big data can be integrated into the platform to facilitate a more agile and profitable platform.
InMobiles CEO concluded by announcing that this platform will be adopted soon after MWC 2018 and will be presented as an academic platform to train startups and developers to use Apollo’s RA so that they can create the services themselves and introduce them to the operators’ market. “The accessibility to operators’ nodes that this initiative will give to developers will enhance the entrepreneurship mentality and promote creativity,” he concluded.