atca ebook final

8/8/2019 Atca eBook Final

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/atca-ebook-final 1/7

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Early prognosticators may

have been a bit too optimistic

in their orecasts about ATCA

(Advanced Telecommunication

Communications Architecture),

but as VDC Research points out,

early results have created what

they call ‘a solid oundation within

tier 2 and 3 telecom equipment

vendors and integrators.’

One advantage these tier 2

and tier 3 vendors have over

large incumbents is that they

have not been as impacted by

the economy nor do they have

to support legacy standards and

protocols.

Since ATCA initially hit the

airwaves in 2001 when the rst

specication (PICMIG 3.0) came

on the scene, ATCA has since

branched out into various standards,

including the ATCA, AMC

(Advanced Mezzanine Card) and

MicroTCA. All o these elements

are commonly reerred to as xTCA.

As ATCA industry members

continue to drive the adoption and

use o Commercial o-the-shel

products (COTS), a complementary

group o industry consortia are

lending a helping hand to promote

and educate the emergence o

ATCA in the telecom service

provider and vendor communities.

These consortia include the

Thank you To our sponsors:

Service Availability Forum, Open

SAF Foundation, SCOPE Alliance,

and CP-TA.

In this latest eBook rom

FierceTelecom, we will examine

the standards, the technologies,

and adoption drivers o ATCA. We

hope you enjoy this eBook and look

orward to hearing your eedback.

sean Buckley

s et /// FT

Demystiying

ATCA

It seems like a long time since

ATCA hit the streets and was

predicted to take over the world

in a matter o a ew short years. It

was really only eight years ago at

the end o 2001 that the specica-

tion (PICMG 3.0) rst emerged

and 2003 when the rst fedgling

products began to appear. To adaptan old proverb “One product doth

not a market make.” It takes a com-

plete ecosystem and groundswell

o support or traction to take hold.

That can easily take 3-5 years (at

best) or: (a) the standard to evolve

(b) enough varied product to be

available and (c) sotware to mature

to enable new applications.

ATCA may well be a little tardy

but MicroTCA is only really at the

3 year point and xTCA as a whole

has had to deal with what some

have labeled as the worst eco-

nomic environment since the great

depression. With all that in mind

plus a positive outlook rom the

analysts the time or xTCA may well

be at hand. What will drive uture

success, a “killer App,” “new

markets,” or “economic stimulus?”

Ultimately it will probably be a com-

bination o all three.

Somewhere in most COTS

“blurbs” there are statements

about how the equipment manu-

acturers will benet as will their

customers the service providers.

The story or the TEMS is pretty

clear and the adoption o xTCA

at the T2/ T3 level is clear proo.

Translating this to a direct s

provider benet has always

rather tenuous. Multi media

always been held up as an e

o a market crying out or ne

technology. This is true but

Bogen, VP o Digital Enterta

at In-Stat puts things into pe

tive when he says what serproviders really want is to “

existing revenue streams an

new customers.”

Even though things move

quicker than they used to i

telecom world there is still

amount o legacy that has

dragged along. The true “g

eld” opportunity or xTCA

more easily blossom as th

technology networks overt

old. The wireless cellular n

have been a transition grou

where old met new and pa

telephony began to take ov

providers look to add new

they are asking “can I impl

across an IP Network?” Th

the IP inrastructure takes

(many would say it already

the more opportunity or m

multiunctional and standa

equipment (sounds like xTC

(Long Term Evolution) build

represents the next big ste

is clearly ull o potential “k

applications” or xTCA.

The economy o the last

years has hardly helped any2xTCA

Adoption

Drivers

3Deconstructing

COTS

Consortia

5Simpliying

the Build vs. Buy

Decision

*Sponsored

Content*

7Industry Q&A

with Joe Pavlat,

President

and Chairman

o PICMG

8Choice and

Innovation: the

xTCA perspective

*Sponsored

Content*

9xTCA

By The

Numbers

12Carrier Grade Open Platorm

Solution or High-Perormance

Network Elements and ATCA-

Based Systems

*Sponsored Content*



frclco.co

and to promote the use o the

middleware.

So what’s the dierence?

It’s actually pretty straight

orward, SA Forum develops

speciications and OpenSAF

is an implementation o those

speciications. The Open-

SAF Foundation is just like an

independent vendor with the

exception that it’s a consortium

and happens to have an open

source business model.

According to John Fryer, Vice

President o the OpenSAF Foun-

dation, “the tier 1 TEMS didn’t

want to risk being locked into a

proprietary solution.” “The industry

needed a true open project that

everybody could use and the TEMs

had lots o expertise which they

were willing to share.”

Support continues to grow

evidenced by the mailing list

(1000+ recipients) and the R3

OpenSAF release with over 200

contributions. The open source

model appears to be working with

2 signicant releases in the rst

18 months. R4 is due by the end

o Q1 next year and should include

sotware and platorm manage-

ment (SMF & PLM), key enablers

o virtualization. (opensa.org)

SCOPE AlliAnCE

SCOPE Alliance is committed

to accelerating the deployment

o carrier grade base platorms

or service provider applications.

SCOPE doesn’t create specic

tions, but they do establish pro

that provide guidance to the ind

try groups that do create them

ultimately the vendors that use

specs to create products. SCO

ocuses on existing open speci

tions it believes best meets the

needs o Service Providers and

identies areas where additiona

work is needed (Gaps).

The Alliance has achieved a lo

with proles and gap analyses

completed or xTCA, CGL & SA

Forum and use case and requir

ment documents or virtualizat

Paul Steinberg (Technical Co-

Chair) told us their Middleware

ATCA was the brain child o

PICMG, a consortia o com-

puting and communications

companies who came together

to create hardware standards

that would enable and promote

the use o COTS or Commer-

cial o-the-shel products.

There are now numerous con-sortia that each play a distinct

and crucial role in the COTS

enablement world and the pro-

motion and adoption o xTCA.

SErviCE AvAilAbility

FOrum

The Service Availability Forum

develops, publishes, educates

on and promotes open speci-

cations or carrier-grade and

mission-critical systems. SA

Forum specications enable

COTS ecosystems or highly

available platorms.

With the addition o the

Platorm Management Service

(PLM), in release 6, to the

well established HPI (Hard-

ware Platorm Interace) and

AIS (Application Interace

Specication) the SA Forum

specications have reached a

high degree o maturity.

The specications “now

have critical mass” says Asi

Naseem, president o SA

Forum, “and we now want to

ocus more on how to incent

the application and system

developers to adopt.” With this

in mind, the orum has created

an education webcast pro-

gram. Aimed at developers, the

webcasts show how to use the

specications and build highly

available applications. The 3rd

in the series will be available

in November. Check it out at

saorum.org.The standards continue to

evolve and work progresses

on V6.1 which will include

Java mapping. SAForum is

also making the specication

“virtualization aware.” Asi told

us, “We need to address a

virtualization environment when

resources are controlled by a

layer below the middleware.

SAF needs to know what to

do i it goes away and under-

stand the impact when physical

resources are virtualized. V7.0 is

a work in progress slated or a

2010 release although specic

contents are still TBD.

OPEnSAF FOundAtiOn

Any discussion o SAForum

leads to OpenSAF as the two

are obviously closely associ-

ated. OpenSAF is an Open

Source Project established to

develop a base platorm middle-

ware consistent with Service

Availability Forum specica-

tions. The OpenSAF Foundation

is a nonprot organization

whose goal is to acilitate the

work o the OpenSAF project

however, as budgets were slashed

across the board this reduced the

development capabilities o the big

manuacturers. That along with the

top level telecom consolidation has

lead to more potential or COTS

designs. Even with the downturn

ATCA design win activity has been

strong. 4G LTE gateways and inra-

structure applications are prevalent

but so are carrier based service

delivery platorms or messaging,

video and multimedia in general.

From the service provider per-

spective they need unctionality

not just a hardware platorm but

this only helps to increase the xTCA

opportunity as the TEMS most

ocus on providing that unction-

ality and the next new way or

the service provider to generate

income. Norm Bogen suggested a

great application that as consum-

ers we may not be delighted about

but we know is coming - Targeted

Advertising; or an advertiser, oer-

ing them the answer to “How do I

get to my perect client/customer?”

Could xTCA play a major role in

creating this new service delivery

market? Time will tell. l

thr ll a hu aouo lac (cholo)

ha ha o b dradalo. th ru “rfld” opporu or xtCAwll or al blooa h w cholowork ovrak h old.

Dcoruc COts CooraBY FierceTelecom

t p

t f pg 2

th PiCmg ca ohr o cra hardwar adard ha would ablad proo h u o COts or Corcal o-h-hl produc.



frclco.co

portability document will be pub-

lished this year. “To get the benet

o COTS one need to be able to

choose rom best in class suppli-

ers and to be able to use disparate

HW across HA middleware at the

core” said Paul. “The Middleware

portability use cases V1.0 will

help us get closer to this goal.”

SCOPE is also working on bench-

marking and power management.

(scope-alliance.org)

CP-tA

CP-TA (Communications Plat-

orms Trade Association) is

highly ocused on the successul

adoption o open speciication-

based xTCA platorms. They see

interoperability and compliance

as the key and work on tests and

tools to ensure this happens.

Aligned directly with the PICMG

xTCA specications CP-TA creates

ICDs (Interoperability Compliance

Document) and TPMs (Test Proce-

dure Manual). ICD 3.0 & TPM 3.0

were released earlier this year that

marry with the PICMG 3.0 R3.0

ATCA Base Specs.

In theory, we might think that i

a product meets a standard it will

automatically be interoperable. Not

quite so says Brian Wood, Chairman

o CP-TA’s marketing workgroup,

“standards leave all sorts o attri-

butes open to interpretation” and

“there are also things that are not

addressed in a standard.”

The SCOPE Alliance proles are

used as a datum and CP-TAs com-

pliance docs and test proceduresocus on delivering on the prole’s

requirements. With the aim o see-

ing Interoperable xTCA products

rom multiple vendors CP-TA looks

at three distinct areas, thermal,

manageability and data transport.

Not only does CP-TA dene the

TPMs it develops and approves

test tools.

Next on the roadmap are some

new test tools or ATCA thermal

airfow and manageability plus a

complete set o ICDs and TPMs or

AMCs and MicroTCA. l

prime-driving actor in market suc-

cess. Instead, the ability to oer

new capabilities and pursue new

revenue opportunities quickly has

become more important to NEPs

than modest advantages in band-

width or call volume.

In-house design, build and integra-

tion entails a signicant opportunity

cost due to its long time to market.

Development o a new telecom-

munications system rom scratchcan take as long as 36 months

and includes hardware design and

prototyping as well as sotware

development and debugging.

On the other hand, integrating

standards-based modules rom

third-party suppliers rather thandesigning rom scratch allows

developers to cut 12 months rom

that timeline, adding many thou-

sands o dollars to gross margin

over the project’s lietime.

Taking it a step urther, NEPs

sourcing a ully-developed system

platorm can cut another 12 months

rom time-to-market and urther

increase margins by eliminating

hardware design and integration

while allowing in-house resources

to ocus on application sotware

creation. Plus, i the application

sotware is already developed and

simply needs porting to the new

platorm, total product develop-

ment can be reduced to 6 months

– a huge competitive advantage

when compared to the original 36

month baseline.As the market has changed,

a robust standards-based sup-

plier ecosystem has evolved. The

oundation is composed o orga-

nizations working both to address

telecommunications system design

needs as well as to ensure interop-erability among standards-based

building blocks. The Communica-

tions Platorms Trade Association

(CP-TA), or example, has devel-

oped a set o interoperability

guidelines and test procedures so

the industry has a way to make

“apples to apples” comparisons

among products and ensure that a

blade rom vendor A works wit

chassis rom vendor B and sot

ware rom vendor C.

Individual company R&D exp

ditures cannot match the large

cumulative investment o the

supplier ecosystem, either in

dollars or man-hours. Further, a

proprietary design approach ha

the development team working

in isolation rather than leveragi

the collective experiences andaccomplishments o others. W

standards-based design approa

on the other hand, a system

vendor is ree to concentrate it

development resources on its

opportunity to add value: the a

cations sotware.

Clearly, then, the telecommu

cations inrastructure market ha

changed dramatically. It is now

hyper-competitive and ast-pac

placing signicant burdens on

development teams. In the ac

rapid market changes and the t

and cost advantages o purchas

system components and plato

proprietary or even standards-

based in-house hardware desig

no longer a sustainable approa

or NEPs.

Fortunately, the advent o rob

standards, equipment based onthose standards, and multi-ven

interoperability among product

rom the ecosystem now provi

system developers with a com

ling “buy” alternative.l

According to xTCA (ATCA,

MicroTCA, AMC) market data

recently published by analysts at

Heavy Reading, approximately 50

percent o Network Equipment

Providers (NEPs) implement-

ing xTCA standards are building

products in-house, while theother 50 percent are sourcing

commercial o-the-shel (COTS)

products. Analysts predict the

COTS portion o the xTCA market

to increase signicantly over the

next several years. The reasons

or this shit are clear: an evalua-

tion o the build vs. buy decision

that considers the entire prod-

uct liecycle shows signicant

advantages to sourcing COTS

or everything rom modules to

entire systems.

The telecommunications mar-

ket has experienced enormous

changes in the last ew decades,

and the pace o its evolution is

increasing. Twenty years ago ven-

dors could reasonably expect that

their system design would have

an extended market lietime over

which to recoup developmentcosts. Now, however, demands

or new communications capabili-

ties are continually arising, and

Moore’s Law is helping propel

new technology innovations at an

exponentially growing rate.

A byproduct o this rapid

market change has been a shit

away rom perormance as the

SPOnSOrEd COntE

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frclco.co

The PCI Industrial Computer

Manuacturers Group or PICMG

is a consortium o companies

that originally came together in

1994 to extend the PCI standard

to new markets. With many othe industry’s key players as PIC-

MG members they collaborate to

develop open specifcations or

high perormance telecommuni-

cations and industrial computing

applications. Many standards

have emerged rom PICMG com-

mittees including the amily o

AdvancedTCA and related speci-

fcations. FierceTelecom recently

sat down with Joe Pavlat, Presi-

dent and Chairman o PICMG, to

talk to him about AdvancedTCA

and MicroTCA.

FT: Hindsight is 20/20,

however, looking back across the

development timeline o the vari-

ous PICMG standards, where do

you see you hit the proverbial nail

square on the head?

pvt: Looking back at whatPICMG has achieved since we

started back in 1994 I can see 3

clear home runs, each improving on

the other. The rst was undoubt-

edly the original PCI-ISA Passive

Backplane Standard (PICMG 1.0),

sales o these products are still in

the ew $100 million every year.

The next was CompactPCI. It was

timely, had better mechanicals than

PCI and o course more slots. Com-

pactPCI also bridged the switch

abric worlds with the 2.16 standard

that came out around 2001 and is

still used in many VoIP and media

gateway like applications. Then

there is our biggest suc-

cess to date, the ATCA

PICMG 3.0 specica-

tion which came about

in the 2002 timerame.

The major Telcos have

now almost universally

adopted ATCA.

FT: How has the

recession aected the xTCA amily?

pvt: The recession has caused

the telcos to be very careul with

their internal resources and con-

centrate on their own intellectual

property (primarily sotware) while

outsourcing as much as they can.

Recent briengs we have had with

key players have conrmed this

strategy.

From a product prolieration

perspective, the recession has

fattened out the growth curve

or ATCA. However, the market

remains healthy especially where

new inrastructure is required.

FT: With ATCA aimed

squarely at telecom and communi-

cations markets has the continuedindustry consolidation changed the

xTCA opportunity and how?

pvt: ATCA was very telecom

centric but is now also migrating

towards military applications. The

telecom consolidation has changed

the playing eld but each player

has a wide portolio o products.

Some o them are very high volume

while others are at the bleeding

edge where time to market is more

important and cost is less sensitive.

It has become clear that with the

consolidation the big three are all

squarely behind ATCA and will insure

it stays on track and is

successul.

FT: Hard-

ware and sotware must

work in unison to create

a solution. How does

sotware actor intoPICMG’s world?

pvt: We are primarily a HW

organization but Sotware is obvi-

ously important and PICMG did

create the rst open standard or

system management. We are get-

ting requests to look at how you

do diagnostics and dynamic sot-

ware updates. I expect we will see

a couple o committees ormed

by the end o the year to look at

these mainly sotware issues. We

do work closely and cross ertilize

with all the sotware olks such as

The Linux Foundation, SAF and

OpenSAF where most o the open

standard sotware heavy liting

goes on.

FT: Many sources are

now cautiously optimistic about theeconomic uture and the market

or PICMG based products. What’s

your view on what we might

expect to see over the coming

12-24 months?

pvt: From an ATCA perspec-

tive major deployments really only

idur Q&AwiTh Joe PavlaT,

PresidenT and

chairman oF PicmG

BY FierceTelecom

As standards based speci-

cations, ATCA and MicroTCA

continue to be a ully viable busi-

ness and technology solution or

the industry, with the TEM (Tele-

com Equipment Manuacturer) and

NEP (network equipment provider)community showing a high level

o support or COTS in general

and, ATCA and MicroTCA, more

specically. The opportunities or

dierentiation or them are at the

application layer, which translates

into ne-tuning their in-house

engineering resources rom hard-

ware-centric to sotware-centric.

As an active participant in the

xTCA eco-system, Kontron is cur-

rently shipping its th generation

o ATCA products, which provide

an overall scalability o 1GbE to

10GbE backplane and switching

implementations, with both single

core and multi-core components

and platorms.

The adoption o ATCA has been

primarily in the wireless network

inrastructure, typically as a

singular or multi-unction sys-tem or HLR/HSS and subscriber

data management, Base Station

Controller, LTE, IMS, WiFi and

WIMAX, and content delivery

systems. Standards-based hard-

ware provides the reedom o

choice to select the best perorm-

ing “general-purpose” components

or optimal platorm congura-

tions. It also provides the ability to

use “specialty” ATCA blades and

AdvancedMC modules. Depending

on the network application, these

multiple component elements

include SS7 or signaling, ATM,

DSP, network processing, and

WIMAX or WiFi building blocks.

Meanwhile, the PICMG orga-

nization is currently revising the

PICMG 3.1 specication and is

under development o Revision

2.0 to incorporate 1000Base-KX

and 10Gbase-KR. This implemen-

tation into the ATCA standard will

provide a higher speed Fabric

Interace with 2x4x10GbE to a

total bandwidth o 40GbE in a

redundant conguration per blade,

and does create new market and

application opportunities or xTCA,

specically within the elusive core

network environments.IEEE is currently nalizing the

802.3ba specication, a data link

layer o standards or Ethernet LAN

and WAN applications. The objec-

tive is to support speeds aster

than 10 gigabits per second (Gbit/s)

and should support 40 Gbit/s and

100 Gbit/s transer rates. The IEEE

is projected to have the specica-

tion implemented into xTCA by

beginning o 2011.

As switch silicon vendors na

their roadmap in line with the s

dardization roadmap, expect a t

generation o ATCA products to

the market in 2011 and 2012 int

ed or core and edge network

elements, such as or ber-to-t

home (FTTH) and GPON (gigab

passive optical network) netwo

Future 40GbE-designed ATC

platorms – with a total platocapacity o 574 Gbit/s wit

4x10GbE KR – could be us

or optical line terminals (O

or point-to-multipoint GPO

network inrastructures,

optimized or the delivery

o video services, quality

voice and high speed inte

access.

Since its start in 2002,

ATCA continues to evolve a

expand. The emerging 40G

technologies will give the TEM

NEP market a whole host o de

opportunities. As market resea

rms expect continued growth

– IDC sees xTCA to reach $2.6

billion in 2013 – it is clear that x

certainly has plenty o growth

potential.

Contact Sven.Freudeneld@

ca.kontron.com or much moreino. Sven handles North Amer

can Business Development or

Kontron xTCA (ATCA, MicroTCA

Platorms and components.

(kontron.com/oms) l

SPOnSOrEd COntE

Choc adiovao: h xtCAprpcv

t pg 9

Kontron

application-

ready ATCA

GbE/10GbE

platorm.

Pavlat



frclco.co

Computer Manuacturers Group)

derivatives were hit equally hard. As

2009 began to unold it seems like a

slow thaw is underway. Across the

board, industry analysts are report-

ing “cautious optimism” with more

than a hint o a positive outlook. We

may still be quite a ways rom $3

Billion but the graphs do look to be

headed up and to the right.

What originally started as ATCA

(Advanced Telecom Computing

Architecture) has grown into mul-

tiple standards, the original ATCA,

AMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card)

and MicroTCA. Collectively they are

oten reerred to as xTCA.

When it comes to the embedded

technology markets, Massa-

chusetts based VDC Research

has always been one o the key

places to turn or analysis. We

recently spoke with Eric Heikkila,

Contributing Editor, and Direc-

tor o VDC research’s Embedded

Hardware Practice. Eric is the

author o VDC’s “The Global xTCA

Opportunity: Market Demand and

Requirements Analysis .” The report

provides “an in-depth investiga-

tion and analysis o the markets

ATCA and MicroTCA compone

and systems.”

ATCA results, while disappoi

ing by comparison to the early

orecasts, have created a solid

oundation. This oundation say

Eric “has a solid grounding with

the tier 2 and 3 telecom equipm

providers and integrators.” Unli

the major telecom players the T

T3 companies have not been h

quite as hard by the recession.

Their revenues are also less de

dent on legacy technologies wATCA does not play.

The total market or ATCA p

ucts (as dened by VDC) whic

comprises Blades, Basic Plato

and Integrated Systems totale

nearly $500M in 2008. Polling

both the supply and buy sides

o the equation Eric says “200

looks to stay fat.” Given what

happened in most markets tha

pretty good going. When we l

at the VDC numbers or 2010

beyond we start to see a retur

healthy growth and the total A

It was 2001 when ATCA

rst emerged as the stan-

dard, designed rom the

ground up, with the com-

munications market rmly

in its sights. By 2003 there

was lots o excitement and

even early prognosticatorswho orecast a market size

o over $3 billion by 2007.

It was clear to many at the

time that this may have

been rather overly optimis-

tic but it did underline the

potential opportunity repre-

sented by ATCA.

2007 came and went along

with a major dose o indus-

try change and upheaval

coupled with the start o

a global economic winter

that hit all sectors includ-

ing telecom and its supply

chain. ATCA and its amily o

other PICMG (PCI Industrial

(In millions of dollars) 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 201

aTca Blades $258.3 $312.4 $340.2 $396.4 $492.2 $597.5 $718

Basic plaTForms $47.0 $55.5 $66.0 $92.3 $142.3 $214.9 $322inTegraTed sysTems $71.0 $114.9 $126.9 $177.5 $301.2 $466.1 $662

aTca ToTal $376.3 $482.8 $533.1 $666.2 $935.7 $1,278.5 $1,70

amc cards $21.0 $49.8 $55.1 $65.4 $95.5 $162.1 $273

Basic plaTForms $2.9 $7.1 $12.6 $18.1 $33.6 $42.7 $62

inTegraTed sysTems $3.8 $12.1 $19.4 $38.1 $76.1 $147.7 $266

microTca ToTal $27.7 $69.0 $87.1 $121.6 $205.2 $352.5 $601

xTca ToTal $404.0 $551.8 $620.2 $787.8 $1,140.9 $1,631.0 $2,30

t p

began last year and has continued

into this year. Most analysts are

predicting this year to be fat with

a signicant uptick by 2011. I agree

with the “cautious optimism” how-

ever the “caution” is more to do

with the current economic climate

rather than whether the technology

is right or not.

FT: What were the

key drivers behind the development

o the MicroTCA standards?

pvt: ATCA was heavily market

driven rom the start but once

the engineering community saw

the potential o AMCs, MicroTCA

quickly evolved. The base require-

ments were a high speed serial

abric i.e. 10 Gbps Ethernet, it

should be able to be built in both a

low cost simplex and a highly avail-

able duplex ashion, and it should

be physically small. And o course

it should use existing AMCs.

FT: Some detractors

might say that MicroTCA remains

too expensive to gain major adop-

tion. How do you see the challenge

o unctionality vs. cost and do you

believe that MicroTCA will be able

to meet the “value point” required

or success?

pvt: I see a lot o conusion

and misconception in this area.

MicroTCA will never be an ultra

low cost technology. Given some

o the specics o the technology

it will always carry some orm o

price premium. There are however

a variety o cost reduction activi-

ties being worked on in the vendor

community and a sub $1000 level

is realistic.

Ultimately we are still in a

Chicken and egg scenario. The

Only thing that drives price down

is volume and MicroTCA is only 3

years in and nowhere near volume

deployment. It maybe year 5 to 6

beore it will get signicant trac-

tion. At that time we will see how

cost reduction and volume have

aected price.

FT: Enabling technolo-gies are oten looking or a “Next

Killer Application” to lit them to

high volume levels and commercial

success. What could/will be the

“Killer App” or MicroTCA?

pvt: I think it may still be too

early to tell what the killer app or

MicroTCA may be. I think we can

see a “killer industry” (no pun

intended) in the military. They like

the small size, the robustness

and above all else the managed

architecture. New applications are

emerging all the time.

FT: What’s next or

PICMG?

pvt: ATCA continued rene-

ment, higher speed abrics,

broadening the platorm or appli-

cations outside the central oce,

lowering the costs and standardiz-

ing some o the sotware eatures.

We are at revision 3 o the ATCA

spec, it works and most things

have been covered so we are look-

ing at incremental improvements to

increase the available market and

make it go aster. l

xtCA B thnubrBY FierceTelecom

t f pg 7

Ulk h ajor lco plar ht2/t3 copahav o b hqu a hard b

h rco. thrrvu ar alo ldpd o lac

cholo whr AtCA do o pla.

th oalark or

AtCA produc oald arl

$500m 2008



frclco.co

this with recently updatedMicroTCA segment data rom his

report “MicroTCA Fits into Smaller

Places to Grow a Bigger Market.”

Ernie shows that by the end o

2009 Mil/Aero will represent 65%

o the MicroTCA market (see pie

chart above).

As chairperson o the ATCA

Summit Ernie is in constant touch

with all the players. In his view

ATCA is “gaining momentum”

and he sees “much more activity

in the pipeline.” With the embed-

ded business having such long

“design-in” cycles large contracts

may be awarded (and counted)

long beore revenues appear

number looks to nally break the

billion dollar level (annually) in the

2011/12 timerame.

The same early optimism

suraced when MicroTCA rst

emerged, however, it would be air

to say that economically the timing

sucked. MicroTCA hit a mixture

o “The Perect Storm” and “The

Day Ater Tomorrow” as compa-

nies, projects and budgets were

hit by giant waves and ice storms.

Based on the AMC, MicroTCAwas seen as the way orward to

a congurable low cost, small

ootprint platorm. The majority o

MicroTCA sales to date have been

taken by AMCs. Although the num-

bers are still small (~$32M in 2009

according to VDC) MicroTCA basic

platorms and integrated systems

are orecasted to grow by over

60% during 2009.

Eric told us that the Military/

Aerospace segments “will be a

major infuence” on the growth o

MicroTCA and “the orm actor is

attractive and price is less o an

issue.” Ernie Bergstrom o Crystal

Cube Consulting (CCC) conrms

t f pg 10

0.0

0.3

0.6

0.9

1.2

1.5

n avTca

n mTca

advancedTca / microTca revenue GrowTh ProJecTions

$0.86B$0.21B

$0.39B

$1.45B

2009 2010

The increasing demand or

broadband voice, video, and data

services is driving rapid changes in

the communications industry. Ser-

vice providers are quickly moving to

build out their network inrastruc-

tures with next-generation 3G and

4G technologies that will help them

deliver new revenue-generating

services. This build-out is creatingsignicant opportunities or net-

work equipment providers (NEPs)

that can deliver reliable products

that help accelerate the deploy-

ment o new services, improve

overall network perormance, and

reduce operational costs.

To seize this opportunity, NEPs

must nd ways to rapidly exploit

advances in new technology while

at the same time provide unique

unctionality that dierentiates

their products rom the competi-

tion. Increasingly NEPs are turning

to standards-based o-the-shel

systems and carrier grade open

platorms as a common starting

point rom which to build multiple

network elements.

Wind River, the leading provider

o embedded sotware or net-

work equipment, has developeda carrier grade open platorm

(CGOP) solution that has quickly

become the most commonly used

oundation or a variety o next-

generation network elements,

including ATCA-based systems.

The CGOP is an reerence plat-

orm that oers fexibility to utilize

industry-leading commercial and

open source sotware components.

At the platorm’s oundation are

VxWorks and Wind River Linux,

the two most widely used operat-

ing systems or network elements.

Wind River operating systems have

been integrated and optimized with

the leading multicore processors

and ATCA commercial o-the-shel

(COTS) hardware systems.The platorm solution, through

Wind River’s ecosystem, oer

a variety o pre-integrated and

validated middleware and sotware

technologies that can be used to

develop application and design-

specic products. These sotware

technologies include hypervisors,

high availability middleware, a

variety o networking protocol

stacks, databases, and network

management. In addition, equip-

ment providers can rely on Wind

River’s world-class services and

support organization to get throughdevelopment hurdles at any point in

a project lie cycle.

Network equipment providers

that leverage Wind River’s CGOP

solution can gain signicant mar-

ket advantages:

s t-t-t:• Pre-inte-

grated and validated components

o sotware and hardware can

signicantly reduce time spe

integration and quality assura

r vt •

t xt tf

f: Standardizing on a comm

carrier grade open platorm o

multiple projects can reduce

development cycles and cost

Ongoing enhancement to a

commercially supported CGO

ensures that leading-edge te

nology will be incorporated, t

extending the platorm’s lie.aw t f•

-v t: Ut

ing a CGOP eliminates the ne

or an equipment provider to

all the component technologi

within a product. This allows

engineering resources to ocu

development on high-value s

ware applications and service

pv t •

f -vbt, w-

t-t, ,

-f ngn q

t: The cornerstone o th

platorm is its hardened carrie

grade operating systems and

partner ecosystem compone

In addition, the CGOP solutio

has been optimized to exploit

processing power o multicor

processors to ensure high-pe

mance network elements.For more inormation about

Wind River’s solutions or next-

generation networking, contact

[email protected]

or visit http://w ww.windriver.co

solutions/network-equipment/

SPOnSOrEd COntECarrr grad Op Plaor soluoor Hh-Prorac nwork el ad AtCA-Bad s

(bookings vs. billings). Accordingto Ernie’s discussions, suppliers

say sales and real orders are now

taking place. Ernie and CCC have

also been counting the totals or

xTCA and you can see in gure Y.Y

that these orecasts, updated in

August, remain positive about the

upcoming eighteen months.

Bergstrom may be a little more

bullish than Heikkila but the key

take away rom both these ana-

lysts is a signicant upward trend.

Even as this article is being written

general economic news is looking

brighter and that can only add to

the general optimism regarding the

uture outlook or xTCA. l

CliCk

tO viEw

diAgrAm

20%

8%5%

2%

65%

microTca disTriBuTionBY verTicalYear-end 2009

n Comm:

nMil/Aero: 65%

n Industrial: 5%

nMedical: 8%

n Other: 2%

Source: Crystal Cube Consulting, 10/09



Wd Rvr Carrr grad Op Plaor rawork

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