Service Providers & Outsourcing: Winners by Category ISP Service-Level Agreement International IP Service Web Content Switching Electronic Bill Payments Web Content Management

One burgeoning market is the WCM (Web content management) space. Gone are the days when a single person or group could handle a company's entire collection of Web content. Now, large companies need software to manage the huge amount of data residing on their Web servers. In our test of WCM solutions, we found Documentum has the best set of management tools for Web sites (see www.nwc.com/1121/1121f1.html).

Turf War

Traditional ISPs can't rest on their laurels -- they need to work hard to compete with the influx of xSPs. In addition, new technologies have enabled smaller ISPs to compete with carriers and Tier 1 service providers for enterprise and small-business customers. For example, companies that have been getting their bandwidth via DS-1 or DS-3 connections are looking at alternatives and finding that DSL can slash bandwidth costs. DSL is no longer purely a residential service; increasingly, DSL modems and IADs (integrated access devices) are being marketed to businesses (see www.nwc.com/1206/1206f1.html). Even our labs have made the move from frame relay DS-1 to DSL-over-DS-1 services, which provide the same bandwidth at significant savings.

However, DSL isn't perfect yet -- as many customers have learned the hard way. While DSL can provide abundant, inexpensive bandwidth, a little thinning of the provider herd is in order. Until the economics of providing that bandwidth meshes with the needed capability of providers to keep up with new orders, the true abilities and myriad uses of DSL will go unseen.

ISPs also need to keep a wary eye on carriers, whose control of long-distance calling has kept them very much in the game. To keep business customers onboard, phone services can be added to other offerings, thus providing one-stop shopping and a single monthly bill. In the next year, even this advantage will shrink as services, such as softswitches, that offer large-scale PBX features without the PBX are rolled out by xSPs. Because feature-rich PBXes tend to be built for hundreds or thousands of users, an office with 10 employees can't justify purchasing one.

With all the focus on DSL, you might think analog modems are no more. Not so: They are alive and actively kicking the phone circuits with data. In fact, the number of modems still tying up valuable Class 5 switch resources is a concern for ISPs and CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers). In response, companies such as Rapid5 Networks are developing products that, sitting at the central office, pull modem calls off the network before they hit a switch and then route the calls over traditional data networks to the ISP.

Look, Up In the Sky

Although use of fiber optics -- today's preferred method of transmitting large amounts of data -- is certainly not going away, the range of methods for connecting customers to data networks will expand in the next year. Most notably, wireless technologies are growing by leaps and bounds (see www.nwc.com/1121/1121f4.html). While most think towers must dot the cityscape to enable wireless transmission, the idea of small dirigibles floating above cities and acting as low-altitude satellites intrigues us. This method would cut down on the permits needed to place towers, but the FAA no doubt will be concerned about the added airspace traffic.

Providers also offer point-to-point "wireless fiber" options they can use to distribute data. Wireless fiber may best be described as a microwave-transmission medium in the optical spectrum instead of in the radio spectrum.

ASPs: Back to the Future

ASPs are a great example of something old becoming new again. In the past, technology had been moving away from the server/dumb terminal setups of the early days of computing. Today's ASPs, which provide applications over a network to corporate users, bring to mind this earlier time. While, of course, the desktop systems that run the applications are not as dumb as the old terminals the poignancy factor of this approach can't be ignored (see www.nwc.com/1111/1111f1.html).

Even Microsoft has latched onto the idea of being an ASP, and it has the notable advantage of being able to offer the OS itself as a subscribed application. This will be an interesting experiment -- consumers would no longer be able to purchase a version of an OS and use that version in perpetuity without further charges. Instead, users would have to subscribe to the current version of the OS and pay for each year of use -- or until the ASP no longer offers that version for subscription.

Hey, MAN

Seeing as high speeds seem to be just what the campus enterprise ordered, some of the largest growth will happen among the baby carriers, more commonly known as MAN (metropolitan area network) service providers, led by companies such as Yipes Communications. All these services are IP-based and run packet-over-SONET networks or employ MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) for transmitting enterprise data to its destination. Offering megabits per second or even gigabits per second of bandwidth at reasonable prices, these MAN providers offer the best bang for the buck when connecting enterprise sites (see www.nwc.com/columnists/1201coldarrin.html).

Another factor that's working in the MAN providers' favor is the capability to offer customer provisioning; most enterprise customers like the idea of being able to fatten or narrow their pipes with little or no notice and usually without even having to call the provider.

Service providers have been around in one form or another since the first wires were strung for telegraph services, and they will continue to bring new services that will enhance our lives. If you don't want to be inundated with more services, however, be sure to keep your providers well apart so they can't breed.