Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Unified Communications (UC) Federation connects productivity
services across enterprise boundaries, by establishing a
common, cloud-based platform for a wide range of collaboration
tools and services. UC Federation eliminates the need to create
complicated point-to-point UC integration projects between
companies. Point-to-point integrations are neither resilient nor
scalable, and are vulnerable to intrusion and security risks. UC
Federation allows Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to
rapidly deploy new UC revenue generating services with fast
positive ROI. Grand Research View projects the global Unified
Communication market size willreach $75.81 billion USD by
2020, growing at a CAGR of 16.3% from 2014 to 2020.1 The
report also says that North America Unified Communication
market is expected to dominate the global industry, contributing
to over 35% of the overall enterprise revenue. Enterprises can
collaborate seamlessly with external partners and suppliers
using encrypted connections for highly secure interactions.
1Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Introduction to Unified Communications Federation
What is Driving Service Providers Toward Federation?
According to an IDC 2015 report, the number of marketplaces
that support business networks by connecting suppliers,
partners, and customers in a single entity will increase by 100%
through 2017. 2
Instead of utilizing multiple cumbersome proprietary
collaboration tools that have constraints and o�er limited
integration experience, UC Federation o�ers seamless
interoperability across commonly used industry UC platforms.
Enterprises are able to seamlessly connect with multiple
cross-functional teams inside and outside their companies,
across disparate UC platforms, across collaboration services
and across fixed or mobile devices leveraging the same, familiar
UC applications the end customer uses daily. UC Federation
enables services such as messaging, presence, voice, video,
directory and others. In addition, UC Federation o�ers granular
and powerful policy capability.
Vendor UC solutions only support collaboration across their
proprietary platform which enables users to exchange presence,
instant messaging, data, voice, and video calls. Enterprises not
only need to communicate within the enterprise, but they need
instant communications with their entire ecosystem of partners.
Being able to leverage presence outside the enterprise firewall is
just as valuable as inside the organization.
Service providers are faced with a wide range of challenges,
including:
The need to integrate information across IT, telephony, and
mobile devices has led more and more enterprises to implement
UC. Enterprises require user presence information to be
reflected across fixed, mobile, and IP networks so that users are
contacted at appropriate times. Presence federation becomes
challenging when service providers try to integrate proprietary
vendor solutions across multiple devices. Enterprise UCC
solutions based on familiar technologies, such as telephony,
messaging and conferencing, are being supplemented by
rapidly developing communications architectures, platforms
and applications based on fast-moving networking technologies
Presence Integration Across PSTN/PLMN/ IP Networks
such as presence, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), unified
communications as a service (UCaaS), rich mobility solutions
and Web real-time communications (WebRTC). These will
facilitate deeper use of UC as an aid to improving individual
employee and corporate productivity, facilitating and
augmenting business processes. The availability of diverse
enterprise systems (Skype For Business, IBM Sametime, Google
Apps and Cisco Jabber) and public systems (Google Hangout,
Yahoo) poses a challenge for information exchange between
systems and creates the need for an integrated environment.3
22Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Because UC platforms support voice and video calls, users are
now able to escalate their chat sessions to voice or video
through the click of a button. Peer-to-peer and multi-party
voice and video calls, and ad hoc conferences across enterprise
boundaries, adds a new dimension to communication across
diverse and disparate UC platforms.
In addition to presence, enterprises are looking for exchange of
data between multiple UC vendor platforms, both public and
enterprise. Users should be able to easily exchange documents,
images, and videos across platforms subject to security and
data model preferences. Also, enterprises need interoperable
platforms that can seamlessly integrate with their current and
future IT infrastructure, thereby minimizing the risk of platform
dependency. Currently, many enterprise UC solutions use
proprietary protocols, which makes the UC system very rigid.
Enterprises are demanding protocol convergence across
di�erent proprietary standards. Service providers will need to
start selling systems based on open standards like Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP), Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP), Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP),
and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging
Extensions (SIMPLE) to serve a wide range of buyers.
Voice Video, and Data Across UC Platforms
To create an approachable, collaborative, and productive
environment, enterprises are looking for a federation solution
that can facilitate Enterprise Address Book and Calendar
sharing with federated partner enterprises based on their
outbound information sharing policies. Enterprise Address
Book sharing allows users to quickly and easily search for and
connect with partners. Calendar sharing plays an important
role in reducing delays in communications and decision making
by checking the availability of stakeholders across enterprises
before sending meeting invitations with defined agendas.
Address Book, Calendar Sharing Across Enterprises
With partners becoming a part of the enterprise
communication network, the need for secure policy control
increases. Policy control enables users to seamlessly exchange
relevant data across other users by monitoring the policies tied
up with corresponding users. The policy control preferences
define a particular user’s ability to view the presence of other
users, set up voice calls, and exchange instant messages,
documents, images, and videos across platforms. Enterprises
need to evolve their data model to protect confidentiality of
information being exchanged by imposing corresponding policy
control rules. Further, a need to audit information exchange is
imperative. The ability to monitor information exchange based
on properties, file type, file size, context, key words, and other
criteria is covered at a later part in this document.
Policy Information Security, and Audit
Currently, enterprises are creating mesh
point-to-point networks with partner enterprises
which have high financial and operational costs.
Managing, and maintaining these mesh networks
is costly, and often out of service due to a router or
network configuration change which did not
consider the mesh. Enterprises intend to leverage
a single federated solution which provides a single
interface to all federated partner enterprises.
Centralized Federation
Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation 3
Centralized federation solutions give service providers call control, presence and data exchange, policy management options, and much
more. The solution also enables users to connect across multiple devices by publishing the relevant information to these devices.
Federation can enable users across multiple enterprise
platforms to share presence information with other users.
Presence services not only share standard presence states like
“available,” “busy,” and “do not disturb,” but let users add
custom status messages to share with federated colleagues.
The federated presence capabilities across multiple platforms
collect detailed information on users and report the presence
statuses to others across di�erent enterprises. Advance
presence federation enables e�cient sharing of location
information of enterprise users.
Federation also enables peer-to-peer and ad hoc chat sessions
across enterprise boundaries.
Inter-Enterprise PresenceAnd IM Federation
3rd-Party Web Apps
UC Federation
ES RS
REST
Media
Signaling
Media
Signaling
InternetIntra/
Internet
Application Enablement
PBX
Public TelecomNetwork
Centralized UC Federation
IBM Sametime
Google Hangout
Cisco Jabber
Microsoft Skype for Business
Presence/1:1 IM/Multi-party IMVoice/Video/File Transfer
4Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Presence Across PLMN/PSTN, IP and IMS Networks
Access Levels
A federated UC solution enables tight integration of presence
not only with the diverse UC platform, but onto users’ fixed,
mobile, or IP networks. It also reflects each user’s presence
across the multiple modes of communications.
For example, when Bob wants to talk to Denis, he checks
Denis’s unified presence information via his UC client, or on his
IP phone. Knowing Denis’s presence increases Bob’s chances
of reaching him directly, as opposed to not knowing Denis’s
availability and thus being less likely to make a successful call.
Access levels provide a flexible authorization model for
enterprises/ users to control the amount of presence informa-
tion that others see. For example, if a user wants to always be
available to a group of selected federated users even when busy
or in a meeting, the user can assign those users to the Team
access level. In short, the user may choose to be accessible to a
select group or specific users.
Hub and Spoke Model
Centralized federation is represented by a Hub-and-Spoke
model, wherein UC Federation is the hub and the supported UC
platforms are the spokes. This solution leverages reduced
enterprise IT infrastructure requirements in order to federate
with partners. It is simpler to integrate enterprise and public UC
platforms with federation solutions that require minimal
maintenance, thus reducing financial and operational costs for
the enterprises.
Centralized Policy Management
Policy control plays an integral part in any enterprise, enabling
e�cient and e�ective configuration of user preferences and
capabilities. Service providers can configure policy control
settings at enterprise level or at a centralized location.
Centralized policy control enables enterprises to configure
settings in one place and then apply them across multiple
locations and departments. Federation delivers policy
management capabilities for enterprises through configurable
data models to define rules on how users from one enterprise
should be connected to users from another enterprise, and the
presence of each in terms of viz, instant message sharing, voice
and video call setup, data sharing, etc.
Web PortalProvisioning
WirelessNetwork
IMS (SIP)
ApplicationEnablement
Enterprise #1 Enterprise #2
Private Network
Private Network
DMZ DMZ
DMZ
XMPP
XMPP(TLS Optional)
SIP/SIMPLE
SMS/MMS3rd Party
ApplicationsUC Federation
Firewall/Reverse Proxy/TLS Proxy
Provisioning/Real-Time Charging/Call Control
Access Edge
Lync
MOCs
Gateway
GtalkClients
GtalkServer
5Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Policy Management - Use Case
A user belongs to an enterprise, which is segmented into
contact groups. Contact groups are defined hierarchically (i.e.,
sub-contact group belongs to parent contact group).
In the following example, the enterprise is defined as contact
group 1, containing all employees. The two sub-contact groups 2
and 3 are defined as Marketing and Support departments.
User A inherits from the default enterprise policies (contact
group 1)
User B inherits from the Marketing dept. policies (contact group
2), which overrides the default enterprise (contact group 1)
policies
User C inherits both the Marketing dept. and Support dept.
policies (the union of contact groups 2 and 3), which override
the policies of the default enterprise (contact group 1)
Hub and Spoke Model
Company 5Company 6
UC
UC
UCUC
UC
UC
Company 1
Company 2 Company 3
Company 4
Company 5
Contact Group = Enterprise
Contact Group 2 = Marketing Department
Contact Group 3 = Support Department
Company 6
Company 1
Company 2 Company 3
Company 4
UC Federation
A
C
B
Enterprise
Contact Group 2 Contact Group 3Contact A
Contact B Contact C Contact D
Enterprise Contact defined at Group Level (* Company.com )
Contact Group 2, Group 3, defined at Group Level(* Sales company.com ) (* hr company.com )
Additional contacts defined at individual level([email protected])
Enterprise Policy Modelling
Contact Group 1
Automatic Sensing of Activities
With the enhanced presence model, users’ activities across
devices are automatically collected and aggregated into a
presence status selected on behalf of the user. No user input is
required. For example, a user’s presence status is set to “on a
call” when that user places or receives a call on a landline or
mobile phone (assuming these devices are defined in the user’s
contacts) or to “in a meeting.” As a user signs in to O�ce
Communicator, attends meetings, places or answers phone
calls, or simply stops interacting via phone or computer, the
presence system continues to gather information about the
user’s status and then distributes the information to others.
The format needs work. The text and pictures are not aligned.
Why have 12 words after the picture? Move to paragraph above
picture.
Voice and Video Federation
Federation allows and manages policies for voice/video chat
and conferencing. Enterprise users can connect to peers in
another enterprise via their UC platform and perform two-party
communication or multi-party communication. These calls
involve signalling session and media session, on top of the
signalling session. UC Federation Policy management monitors
and enables such calls based on enterprise policies and rules
while media is shared directly between the enterprise users
(point-to-point).
6Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
The federation capabilities are allowed or denied based on the policies defined by federating enterprises in UC Federation solution. Examples:
Centralized UC Federation
Video over IP
MicrosoftSkype For Business, Lync
Enterprise #1
Video over IP
Enterprise #2
Policies are defined at Various Levels
Restrict sending/receiving file transfer capabilities of enterprise
users: Policies defined in Policy Manager to enable sending/
receiving of files by the enterprise users
Allow/restrict of files transfers of defined file type: Policies
defined in Policy Manager to inspect file properties viz and file
name, title, size, type, copyright, etc.
– Allow/restrict of files sharing based on file name, title, and
copyrights
– Allow sharing files with extensions DOC, DOCX, PDF, etc.,
while restricting the sharing of Image files with extensions IMG
and BMP; Music files with extensions MP3 and MP4; Code files
with extensions CXX, C, and PL by users across enterprise
boundaries
– Allow/restrict file sharing with defined size limits: Polices
defined to inspect the file size limits (e.g., file size of more than 1
GB is not allowed to be transferred across Enterprise bounda-
ries)
Allow/restrict file transfers after content monitoring: Rules
defined in Policy Manager to inspect the file content in order to
determine if it contains sensitive information of any kind (e.g.,
intellectual property, consumer data, etc.). Once it is
determined that the file contains sensitive information, proper
security action is enforced (block file transfer or warn the user
that the action is illegitimate)
UC Federation exposes APIs to interface with 3rd-party
Content Inspection and Monitoring solutions
– To provide a powerful combined solution for secure data
transfer
– Easily integrate into the existing enterprise IT infrastructure
having a Content Inspection and Monitoring solution
Whenever a policy breach is determined, a trace log is created
for the enterprise administrator to track the policy infringement
at enterprise.
Unified Communications Federation enables users to transfer
files by simply dragging and dropping them into a chat session.
File transfers can be attained by embedding the files as MIME
objects inside the stream of instant messages with MSRP
protocol. Also, secure MIME (S/MIME) can be used for ensuring
the integrity and confidentiality of the transferred content.
Legitimate file transfers allow receiving users to decide whether
to download a file based on information shared about the file.
7Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Centralized UC Federation
File Transfer over IP
MicrosoftSkype For Business, Lync
Enterprise #1
File Transfer over IP
Enterprise #2
The federation of presence, instant messaging, data, voice, and
video between two enterprises improved productivity through
e�cient information exchange resulting in improved
communications and accelerated deliverables. As the UC
market matures, federation will become critical to maintaining
seamless communication across enterprises. A federated
environment delivers a simplified architecture that can enable
users to overcome many of the inherent drawbacks and
challenges to day-to-day communication. Our UC Federation
solution will help an enterprise implement the simplest UC
integration strategy and improve secure productivity without
significant operational overhead.
Federation helps enterprises create collaborative environments
that improve productivity and accelerate decision making.
Whilst the centralized federation solution also helps enterprises
reduce financial and operational costs by leveraging the
centralized policy and eliminating costly point-to-point network
builds.
Federation delivers a framework that gives rise to a “world
without boundaries” where enterprises and users interact with
multiple vendors across networks and platforms.
Aricent UC Federation is a centralized application which
interconnects UC systems, including industry leaders such as
Microsoft Lync/Skype for Business, Cisco Jabber, IBM
Sametime, Broadsoft Broadworks, as well as public UC and even
IMS/RCS networks. The UC Federation is part of our Business
Communications Services portfolio. It includes applications for
corporate users, including a VPN / VPBX, a contact centre, a call
routing system, a toll-free service, a UC federation service and a
gateway to interact with Social Networks. UC Fed also provides a
unified set of interfaces for OSS/BSS integration, as well as
open APIs for third-party developments and end-user clients.
8Cloud-Based Unified Communications Federation
Summary
REFERENCES
-
1. https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/09/25/770978/10150609/en/
Unified-Communication-Market-Size-Will-Be-Worth-75-81-Billion-By-2020-
Grand-View-Research-Inc.html
2. Mobile unified communications: an unexplored opportunity
3. Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for-Unified-Communications-as-a-Service-Worldwide
Trademarks
Google Hangout is a trademark of Google.
IBM Same Time is a trademark of IBM.
Cisco Jabber is a trademark of Cisco.
Microsoft Skype for Business are trademarks of Microsoft.
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