9. Enabling IP-Based Smart Services

The number of wireless and wireline devices connected to the Internet has already suppressed 12 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach 25 billion in 2015. This is more than three devices for each human being on earth. The new effusively connected world poses a great challenge and opportunity for device suppliers, service providers, and network management companies. The challenge lies in providing scalable and superior degree of automation to ensure smooth service for end customers. The opportunity lies in the ability in defining a new model that automatically collects essential device and user-related information and then uses the outcome to provide enhanced features and services. Smart services utilize automation, intelligence-based embedded management agents, and intellectual capitals to provide a proactive, predictive, and preemptive service experience addressing the operations and health of the network. They turn manufacturers and other value chain intelligence of every connected device into inelegance to derive new businesses. Smart services bend the traditional linear value chain into a “feedback loop” through which the heartbeats of manufactured objects will continually flow back through the complex business systems that creates, distributes, and services those products. Adaptors of smart services are creating extraordinary performances and parries to competition, underscoring the strategic impact of intelligent device networking on after slates and service management. This chapter defines the basic principles of smart services for Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks. It describes the fundamental smart service requirements including Smart Agents to identify and discover the connected network and collect essential embedded and user management information, fortifying the collected and validated information with intellectual capitals and best practices, analyzing the results using intellectual algorithms, and proactively taking action before the services is impacted. Smart services allow vendors/partners to access the network to reconfigure services parameters via a secure connectivity service.