Cloud Media Processing - Embedded Community - Intel

Overview 

White Paper | May 2012 

Cloud Media Processing 

Embracing Cloud Computing for MRF Media Processing and IMS Applications 

By: Adnan Saleem, Chief Architect, Radisys 

Ray Adensamer, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Radisys 

Cloud computing is gaining momentum as a substitute for traditional 

IT infrastructure, due in large part to its on-demand model for providing 

computing resources. In “Have it your way” fashion, companies and 

institutions can choose from different categories of service, ranging from 

basic server instances to complete application delivery platforms, as 

offered by Salesforce.com. Leveraging capacity already in place, businesses 

can quickly deploy new applications with less development effort, capital 

investment and ongoing support. 

Telecom service providers, looking to derive the same benefits, are now 

investigating cloud computing for delivering IP media services across 

public and private networks. A significant hurdle is that public Internet 

networks were not designed to satisfy the telecom industry’s more stringent 

requirements around real-time performance and reliability. In fact, the 

Internet operates on a best-effort delivery model, which poses issues for 

time-constrained multimedia data, such as video and audio. Still, cloud 

computing for IP media services using Intel ® multi-core server platforms 

is a viable option for telecom service providers who are aware of the 

technical challenges and take proactive steps to address them. 

For those developing cloud-based telecom solutions, this paper examines 

some of the major considerations associated with deploying IP media 

services, such as VoIP, video, fax and conference mixing. 

CONTENTS 

Basics of Cloud Computing pg. 2 

Transition to the Cloud— 

What Does It Mean? pg. 4 

Overcoming Challenges 

Around MPaaS pg. 5 

Requirements for Media Processing 

as a Service (MPaaS) pg. 9 

MPaaS Deployment Categories 

and Examples pg. 10 

Radisys Products for Cloud 

Communications pg. 13 

References pg. 14

Basics of Cloud Computing 

According to a US National Institute of Standards and 

Technology definition, “Cloud computing is a model for 

enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a 

shared pool of configurable computing resources that 

can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal 

management effort or service provider interaction.” 1 

The value propositions created by readily-available 

computing capacity and “pay-as-you-go” are the 

underpinnings of an economic model made possible 

by service-oriented software, virtualization and grid 

computing technologies, among others. Strong cloud 

computing momentum is reflected by IDC’s 2012 

forecast—80 percent of new commercial enterprise 

applications will be deployed on cloud platforms. 2 

Benefits of Cloud Computing 

Cloud computing leverages Internet networking 

technology and standard servers to create financial 

and infrastructure benefits for service providers and 

their customers. Financially, service providers can 

achieve significant cost savings by deploying lowcost, 

commoditized general-purpose servers and 

through high equipment utilization enabled by software 

consolidation. The value to cloud service customers is 

paying only for what they use and accessing additional 

resources (i.e., overflow capacity) when needed without 

making an upfront investment. In fact, the model 

dramatically lowers customers’ capital expenditures, 

minimizes depreciation expenses and improves cash 

flow. Since the computing platforms are already in 

place, customers can deploy services more quickly 

than if everything had to be done from the ground up. 

With respect to infrastructure, cloud computing is 

built with fungible computing resources that can be 

easily re-purposed, thus extending the useful lifetime 

of hardware and software investments. Capacity 

scales easily through the addition of new Intel ® -based 

servers, and the homogeneity of the equipment 

simplifies the management of datacenters and central 

office systems. Furthermore, compliance strategy 

is easier to develop and execute because of the 

consistency of the infrastructure. 

Cloud Media Processing | Radisys White Paper 

Fully Integrated 

Application 

Eg: Conferencing 

in Private Cloud 

Eg: Multimedia 

Ringback Tones, 

or Conferencing 

in Public Cloud 

Packaged 

Soſtware 

Soſtware 

as a Service 

(SaaS) 

Service Models 

Media Processing 

as a Service 

(MPaaS) 

Infrastructure 

as a Service 

(IaaS) 

Platform 

as a Service 

(PaaS) 

Figure 1. Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) 

The cloud is capable of providing services on many 

levels, three categories of which are represented 

by the acronyms IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. These service 

categories are defined by TechTarget 3 as: 

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) involves 

outsourcing the equipment used to support 

operations, including storage, hardware, 

servers and networking components. 

Eg: Media 

Applications on 

Base Hardware 


Eg: Network APIs 

for Application 

Developers 

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a paradigm 

for delivering operating systems and associated 

services over the Internet without downloads 

or installation. 

• Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software 

distribution model in which applications are hosted 

by a vendor or service provider and made available 

to customers over a network, typically the Internet. 

In acknowledgment of media processing functions 

(see sidebar: What is a Real-time Service?), this 

paper introduces another type of service, referred 

to as “Media Processing as a Service” or MPaaS. 

This service model has hardware, an application 

programming interface (API) and application elements, 

so there are delivery mechanisms consistent with 

IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, as shown in Figure 1. 

2

What is a Real-time Service? 


Real-time telecom services are differentiated by the need to meet time-critical parameters, including 

minimal end-to-end delay and jitter, to produce an acceptable quality of experience (QoE). For audio calls, 

the rule-of-thumb is the round trip delay cannot exceed 150 millisecond (ms), otherwise users will hear 

echos and get irritated. For this reason, VoIP is a classic real-time service. 

Video calling and conferencing are similar to VoIP, where delay must be minimized. Video conferencing also 

has “lip sync” issues caused by audio and video content being transmitted from source to destination on 

often separate RTP media streams; consequently, their paths and delay through an IP network will differ. 

To remedy this situation, the streams must be buffered and put back “in sync” at the receiving end by an 

IP media server, thus overcoming jitter and sync problems. 

In contrast, receiving an email and refreshing a browser screen are examples of a near-real-time service 

since users can’t detect or won’t care if it takes 150 ms or longer. Although users might get frustrated 

with slow Internet response, in most cases they will still use the service. Similarly, a 1-way video streaming 

service is considered near-real-time because the end user doesn’t know when the transmission was actually 

sent. Even with a bogged-down public Internet, YouTube or NetFlix streams are usually good enough for 

users to consume and enjoy the service. 

A real-time service is typically a true 2-way communication experience. In a real-time service, the users 

can immediately tell if the service is slow or not working properly. Today, this is evident with video calling 

and conferencing, where it is often “hit and miss” in terms of quality when streaming across broadband 

and 3G networks. 

The following lists examples of real-time telecommunication services: 

• VoIP calls 

• Video over IP calls 

• Multi-media conferencing 

• Video content streaming 

• Multimedia ringback tones 

• Interactive voice and video response (IVVR) 

3

• Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) provides 

access to specialized platforms, APIs or fullyintegrated 

applications that analyze and modify 

media data streams. These applications leverage 

functions such as audio and video mixing, 

multimedia transcoding, recording and playing 

a media stream, detecting the “loudest talker” 

or noisy connections, and applying voice or video 

quality enhancements. 

Types of Cloud Computing 

Clouds are classified as public, private, hybrid or 

community, based on the entities providing computing 

resources and networks. A public cloud uses the 

mainstream public Internet, which is operated by 

and shared across many external organizations. 

This model is typical for hosted conferencing service 

providers. A private cloud is operated for a single 

organization and is common among enterprises for 

data security, corporate governance and reliability 

reasons. A hybrid cloud combines both public and 

private clouds. A community cloud is setup for a 

common interest group, and the infrastructure is 

maintained by its members. 

Transition to the Cloud— 

What Does It Mean? 

Cloud computing is creating a paradigm shift that 

is closely aligned to guiding tenets around how 

computing resources are accessed and consumed, 

some of which are listed in Table 1. As a result, 

customers of cloud services can take advantage of 

new features, like dynamic resource allocation and 

consumption-based pricing models, that increase their 

agility and flexibility. 

From the perspective of telecom service providers, 

an industry migrating to cloud-based services is 

likely to experience fundamental shifts related to 

infrastructure, business models and competition. 

Drawing on insights from Morgan Keegan 5 at Equity 

Research, some of these changes include: 


Tenets Implications 

Abstract Resources Substitute references to physical servers 

and hard drives with instances and volumes. 

Cloud resources are fungible. 4 

On-Demand Provisioning Get more resources right when they’re needed. 

Give back unnecessary resources. 

Scalability in Minutes Scale out or in depending on usage needs. 

Pay per consumption Don’t pay for resources after they’ve been turned off. 

Automation Increase automation using APIs. The cloud provides 

access to scriptable infrastructure. 

Table 1. Tenants of Cloud Computing 

Infrastructure: 

• New on-premises infrastructure deployments 

give way to cloud-based systems located offsite. 

• Transcoding-intensive digital signal processors are 

substituted with virtualized COTS infrastructure 

based on Intel ® multi-core processor technology. 

• Large, upfront equipment expenditures are replaced 

by recurring fee (rent) payment models. 

Business Model: 

• ‘Conferencing as a business’ transitions to 

‘conferencing as a service.’ 

• Interoperability requirements expand from 

dedicated equipment to all computing devices. 

Competition: 

• New entrants take advantage of lower barriers 

to entry provided by cloud computing. 

• Greater reliance on public networks levels the 

playing field. 

• Improved interoperability enables new partnership 

opportunities. 

4

Overcoming Challenges 

Around MPaaS 

The motivations for the industry to consider cloud 

computing, and more specifically media processing as 

a service, are usually grounded on the financial benefits. 

That is why cloud computing is also characterized as a 

financial model first, but then also needs to be balanced 

with technical realities in delivering a real-time 

telecommunications service. 

Leveraging cloud computing for IP media services 

requires changes to the underlying network architecture 

in order to adapt the new ways data and applications 

will move between customer machines and central 

offices/data centers. For example, public access 

networks need to be upgraded to deliver greater 

bandwidth, higher quality of service (QoS) and improved 

reliability, among other things. Moreover, MPaaS must 

run on shared computing platforms and meet stringent 

QoS requirements despite the reliance on public 

networks, which are far less predictable than private 

networks. The following sections describe many of 

the challenges facing networking and telecom solution 

providers in the delivery of MPaaS, and how Radisys 

solutions are helping to address them. 

Real-time Network Performance 

Traditional Internet applications do not have strict 

real-time performance constraints. Most users wouldn’t 

complain if a web page download took a half second or 

longer, whereas such a delay is unacceptable for audio 

and video communications. Based on user perception 

studies, most people consider the benchmark of 150 

milliseconds (ms) as the maximum tolerable delay for 

a satisfactory voice call. If the delay is greater, users 

will notice the delay, which will negatively impact the 

communications experience. 

Today, many telecom service providers choose to 

purchase their own IP media processing equipment 

and QoS-enabled IP network infrastructure in order 

to deliver the real-time network performance needed 

to ensure an acceptable quality of experience (QoE) 

for subscribers. Likewise, control over equipment is 

especially critical for service providers who implement 


virtual private networks (VPNs) designed to improve IP 

communications quality through better performance, 

lower delay and less jitter than the Internet. When 

quality of experience is a top priority, it’s imperative 

that service providers test the end-to-end network 

performance of IP media services at maximum load. 

The same is true for those deploying IP media services 

on cloud infrastructure; it is important to closely look 

at the network performance, along with the costs for 

delivering that performance, with your service provider. 

Radisys Solution: Real-time performance is 

designed into Radisys media servers, enabling both 

DSP hardware-based and software-based versions 

in virtualized environments running on Intel ® multicore 

processors to satisfy comparable latency 

specifications. Employing patented technology, 

all Radisys media servers (see sidebar: Media 

Servers in the Cloud) implement a real-time control 

layer that sits on top of the operating system. This 

layer enhances DSP, multi-core and multi-processor 

architectures by providing real-time optimizations 

specifically tuned for the deterministic response 

times needed for IP media processing. 

The Radisys Software Media Server also utilizes 

Intel ® Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel ® IPP)— 

an extensive library of multi-core-ready, highly 

optimized software functions for multimedia and 

communications applications. Intel ® IPP functions 

deliver parallel performance beyond what optimized 

compilers alone can deliver, enabling Radisys to 

execute packet and jitter buffer processing within 

the strict 5-millisecond packet processing increments 

required by in high-performance telecommunication 

applications using Real-time Transport Protocol 

(RTP) media streams. 

In addition, the resource manager differentiates 

processing tasks (‘hard-real-time’ versus ‘nearreal-time’) 

and distributes them independently. 

Ensuring the hard-real-time processes have sufficient 

computing power, the resource manager reallocates 

CPU, DSP, memory and I/O resources as needed. 

This optimizes application performance based on 

the available computing resources, thus reducing 

cost for a given performance level. 

5

Availability and Reliability 

Representing the gold standard for reliability, carriergrade 

equipment is known for “five-nines” availability, 

which is often bolstered by robust failover. Cloud-based 

infrastructure supporting telecom services should 

integrate the hardware and software components 

capable of maintaining equivalent availability. 

Radisys Solution: Radisys Software Media Server, 

running on the carrier-grade Red Hat Linux operating 

system, can be deployed on a commercial-off-the-shelf 

(COTS) Linux appliance or blade servers, as well as 

AdvancedTCA-based computers delivering five-nines 

availability such as Radisys ATCA Compute Processing 

Modules based on Intel ® multi-core architecture. 

Resource Allocation 

As mentioned earlier, on-demand provisioning is 

a key tenet of cloud computing, which requires an 

infrastructure resource manager capable of adding 

burst capacity, when needed. Resource managers 

may also be called upon to route workloads to certain 

nodes, perform load balancing and manage a cluster 

of resources. These tasks must be carried out with the 

understanding that some computing resources may 

perform specific media services, like text to speech, pure 

transcoding or multi-media processing. Some scenarios 

that resource allocation should comprehend include: 

• Resource Management—Customers pay for 

what they need per service level agreement; and 

accordingly, the resource manager assigns servers 

and balances the load among all the resources. 

For example, a customer requests six servers total, 

where five are dedicated to media services and one 

to transcoding. 

• Burst Capacity—As an example, audio conferencing 

has a peak time, typically during work hours. After 

that time, a customer chooses to release the cloud 

resources to lower cost or to enable other services 

to reuse the same cloud infrastructure. 

• Geographic Resource Management—Services 

and features are tailored to individual geographies, 

making it necessary to manage dissimilar installations. 

• Server Redundancy—In the event of server failure, 

the cloud maintains a redundant server for failover 

to minimize disruption. 


Media Servers in the 

Cloud: Hardware-based 

and Software-based 

Cloud service providers offering media 

processing services have the option of deploying 

hardware- or software-based media servers, 

or a combination. For example, Radisys offers 

both types of media servers designed for 

real-time media processing performance. 

• MPX-12000 

˸ Broadband Media 

Resource Function (MRF) 

˸ Voice and video over 

LTE (VoLTE) 

˸ ATCA-based system can 

integrate load balancing blades 

• CMS-9000 

˸ High density, faulttolerant 

and NEBS 

compliant 

˸ Scalable up to 

22,800 ports 

• Radisys Software Media Servers 

˸ Runs on COTS Linux servers 

based on Intel ® multi-core 

processors, including the 

Intel ® Xeon ® processor 

E5 family 

˸ Patented design to maximize real-time 

performance under high system load 

˸ Utilizes Intel ® Integrated Performance 

Primitives (Intel ® IPP)—an extensive library 

of multi-core-ready, highly optimized 

software functions for multimedia 

and communications applications 

˸ Ongoing optimization for virtualized 

environments 

6

Radisys Solution: Radisys continues to improve 

our unique application programming interface (API) 

that allows cloud providers to monitor media server 

resource utilization (e.g., how many resources are 

still available) in real-time, thus greatly facilitating 

load balancing. Radisys also exposes measurements 

and statistics for any running instance. As a result, 

Radisys media servers are easy to manage on a per 

instance basis or cluster basis in the cloud. 

Media Processing in Virtual Machines 

When implementing software-based media servers, 

virtualization (see sidebar: Virtualization Technology) 

gives service providers far more flexibility to add/ 

remove services and features on the fly. This is 

because the software providing services/features run 

in virtual machines that can be deployed/undeployed 

while the server is running. This capability can be 

used to satisfy the abstraction and scaling tenets of 

cloud computing described earlier. However, caution 

is needed when using virtualization since it can slow 

down systems, as well as introduce unpredictable 

behavior that negatively impacts real-time 

performance, especially under high load. 

Radisys Solution: Radisys Software Media Server 

has been successfully tuned and tested on VMware, 

running on an Intel ® multi-core server. Radisys 

customers have also reported virtualized operation 

on Linux KVM. Radisys Software Media server will 

soon be properly productized and supported on these 

and other virtualization products in the future. Using 

virtualization, service providers can easily deploy 

multiple instances of the Radisys Software Media 

Server to increase media processing capacity. 

Another usage is to enhance reliability by creating 

a backup copy that is a hot standby media server 

in a virtual machine. 

Media, Control and Access Security 

Storing company information in the cloud can be risky, 

therefore incorporating encryption and authentication 

technology is critical, particularly for public clouds. 

Radisys Solution: Radisys implements standard 

security protocols to protect IP flows. 


Virtualization Technology 

Virtualization is commonly discussed in the context of cloud 

computing. The technology has been around for many years, 

most notably used in data centers where various applications are 

consolidated onto a single server. Virtualization software, called 

a hypervisor, abstracts a computer’s resources (CPU, memory, 

I/O, etc.) and creates virtual machines that act like independent 

computers with an operating system, memory, disk and an 

application. VMware and Linux KVM are examples of hypervisors, 

also called virtual machine monitors. 

Of concern to telecom application developers is the overhead 

introduced by hypervisors, particularly when the computer 

switches between virtual machines. This delay can diminish 

deterministic, real-time performance and lead to unexpected 

behavior. As a result, developers should take steps to ensure 

their software can run in a virtualized environment without 

perceptible performance degradation. This includes thorough 

end-to-end service testing—especially when the cloud media 

processing and associated cloud network infrastructure is under 

high system load. 

Therefore, telecom service providers should weigh the potential 

impact, both cost and performance, of a virtualized cloud 

infrastructure. There may be one option where a server instance 

runs un-virtualized on its own dedicated Intel ® computing platform, 

and another, where many virtual server instances run on the same 

physical machine. 

• Media Plane—The Secure Real-time Transport 

Protocol (SRTP) supports encryption and message 

authentication. Note: SRTP is an adaptation of the 

Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). 

• Control Plane—Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) 

and Transport Layer Security (TLS) secure 

IP communications by authenticating and 

encrypting packets. 

• Operations and Management—Hypertext Transfer 

Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for 

distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information 

systems. 6 Radisys is implementing the HTTP 

combined with TLS, called HTTPS, in the future. 

7

Service-Aware Load Balancing 

and Traffic Redirection 

Load balancing is an essential aspect of managing the 

workload sent to media servers because it optimizes 

resource utilization and minimizes bottlenecks that 

impact performance. Another important workload 

Load Balancing 


management task is traffic redirection, which is 

prevalent in teleconferencing. For example, a 

conference call may have three participants calling 

into the cloud, and all of the messaging and signalling 

needs to be routed to the single node supporting 

the call. Multi-party services and collaboration 

can make traffic redirection more complicated. 

Within the cloud, many identical servers may be required to provide services for many thousands 

(if not millions) of individual clients. Therefore, a vital component of a cloud service platform is the 

module that distributes traffic evenly across a dedicated bank of servers. 

Radisys offers two types of solutions for providing the load balancing function in an ATCA chassis. The 

first, ‘wirespeed’ load balancing, resides on the ATCA chassis’ internal switch/hub. The second, which 

provides an intelligent adaptable load balancing solution, is a software technology called ‘FlowEngine,’ 

designed to run on the Radisys family packet processing blades based on NetLogic and Cavium processors. 

Wirespeed load balancing leverages functions inherent within the switching silicon itself to parse packet 

headers for the fields that contain the identity of the particular user (client) or flow and to use the values 

found to select a service blade or thread to process the packet. Since the switch is able to perform this 

function on packets as they are received directly off the ingress port, there is very little additional latency. 

The switch can load balance all external facing ports at the full line data rate. 

A potential limitation of switch based load balancing is that the forwarding decision has to be made on a 

completely stateless basis. This means the identification of the target for the packet is derived solely as a 

mapping (or hash) of the bits in the relevant header fields. The target cannot be specifically assigned when 

any one connection is first made. In the context of a media server platform, where conferencing is a common 

requirement, it is important that packets belonging to a particular call can be sent to a specific blade. To 

address the requirement, FlowEngine-based intelligent load balancing is often a more appropriate solution. 

FlowEngine is a software technology that allows Radisys to create application-specific load balancing 

appliances on top of an ATCA packet blade. Such intelligent load balancers are able to look-up key packet 

header fields or hashes in a table to see if the packet belongs to a known connection or if it belongs to 

a new one (a previously unseen user/session), in which case a new forwarding rule has to be created. 

The new forwarding connection can be based upon a weighted round robin snapshot of recent server 

loadings or can be specifically created as part of the process of setting up the session/call by the control 

plane part of the media server platform. 

Both switch and FlowEngine-based load balancing provide high availability features to respond to the 

failure of a load-balanced service blade. Packets destined for the failed blade can either be redirected to 

a standby blade, or if a standby is not available, they can be distributed among the server blades which 

remain in service. Once the failed blade is restored, the load balancer can either return packets back to 

the original target, or in the case of FlowEngine, minimize further session disruption by using the restored 

blade only for new users/sessions as they appear. 

8

Radisys Solution: Radisys media processing 

solutions can be delivered with other Radisys 

products, including ‘wirespeed’ load balancing on 

ATCA chassis internal switch/hub. Alternatively, a 

Radisys software technology called ‘FlowEngine’ 

can deliver load balancing on the Radisys family 

of NetLogic and Cavium-based packet processing 

blades (see sidebar: Load Balancing) 

Developer API’s and Interfaces 

Developers of telecom applications need 

straightforward mechanisms to invoke media services 

that are compatible with a diverse set of application 

development and run-time environments. This 

typically entails an API that makes it easier to 

support multiple client platforms, such as Internet 

browsers, smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. 

Radisys Solution: Radisys media servers support 

standard-based APIs, including: 

• Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an IETF-defined 

application-layer control (i.e., signaling) protocol for 

creating, modifying and terminating sessions with 

one or more participants. These sessions include 

Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution 

and multimedia conferences. 7 

• VoiceXML (VXML) is the W3C’s standard XML 

format designed for creating audio dialogs that 

feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, 

recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, 

recording of spoken input, telephony and mixed 

initiative conversations. 8 

• Media Server Markup Language (MSML), described 

in RFC 5707, 9 is designed to provide feature– 

rich media processing control in an IP–based 

communications network. MSML has been adopted 

by dozens of vendors and is used to control many 

millions of IP media server ports in numerous 

service provider networks around the globe. 

• HTTP RESTful Interfaces, soon to be supported by 

Radisys, are growing in popularity because they are 

a good fit for cloud and other Web-based services 

due to their HTTP synergies and client-side scripting 

capabilities (e.g., web browsing). For example, JSON 

(Javascript Object Notation) or XML-encoded media 

control functions are well-suited for mobile web 


applications employing media services hosted in 

the cloud. In comparison, the protocols previously 

discussed are better suited for non-IP-based 

telephony. 

Requirements for Media 

Processing as a Service 

(MPaaS) 

Cloud computing is capable of supporting media 

processing services, due in large part to significant 

advances in computing and IP networking technology 

that are enabling a new class of real-time telecom 

services. The stringent performance requirements of 

MPaaS can be met, in many cases, by existing cloud 

network elements. Special considerations, in order 

of importance, are outlined in the following, where 

MPaaS is compared to other applications moving 

to the cloud. 

• Network I/O and Associated Load/Traffic 

Management—High Importance 

˸ Media processing controls and manipulates 

IP media streams, and like other applications 

involving multiple video sources, it can consume 

a large amount of network bandwidth. 

˸ High-quality network connections are critical 

to avoid network jitter, which can significantly 

impair the quality of experience (QoE). 

• Compute Resources—Medium Importance 

˸ Media processing is computing intensive, 

as are many other applications. 

• Element Management—Medium Importance 

˸ Perhaps more distributed than most applications, 

media processing can be complex to manage, 

especially when a service provider’s solution 

spans in-house service infrastructure and 

outsourced cloud computing infrastructure. 

• Billing—Low Importance 

˸ Billing is obviously an important aspect of a cloud 

media processing service. While normally not a 

function or top concern for the media processing 

layer, billing grows in importance when the 

service offering involves customer-facing 

application layer elements. 

9

• Storage—Low Importance 

˸ Comparatively, media processing typically 

requires minimal storage, unless the application 

uses a media library, like a multimedia ringback 

tone database. 

The cloud service providers best positioned to provide 

MPaaS have high-quality network connections and 

supporting QoS mechanisms. However, the costs 

to deploy high-performance network I/O can be 

considerable—often much higher than the compute 

resources themselves. 

For this reason the CFO, who likes the financial 

benefits of cloud media processing, should work 

together with the telecom engineers and service 

planners to achieve a balance between economic and 

quality aspects. They must identify when it makes 

sense to migrate media processing from a controlled, 

properly engineered, private telecom IP network, to 

a cloud environment that often has many variables 

and unknowns. For example, one strategy might 

involve a tiered approach such as: 

• Economical Telecom Services, which leverage cloud 

media processing and the associated cost benefits, 

are suitable for lower-end, price-sensitive service 

offerings. 

• Premium Telecom Offerings, which use existing, 

dedicated data center and IP VPN infrastructure, 

continue to deliver the highest quality of experience. 

MPaaS Deployment 

Categories and Examples 

When MPaaS (Media Processing as a Service) was first 

mentioned in this paper, it was suggested this service 

type fits into the most common cloud computing 

service models. This point is illustrated in Figure 2 

and described in more detail in the following: 

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

˸ Media processing services running on virtualized 

and media-optimized compute resources, 

network I/O and storage. 


Laptops 

SaaS 

PaaS 

IaaS 

Phones 

Monitoring 

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) 

˸ Application developers accessing media 

processing services using API’s and standard 

interfaces to enable mobile and wireline 

communications applications that leverage the 

cloud media platform and associated resources. 

• Software as a Service (SaaS) 

Servers 

Application 

Collaboration Finance 

Content Communication 

Platform 

Identity Queue 

Object Storage Runtime Database 


Compute Network 

Block Storage 

Figure 2. Media Processing as a Service (MPaaS) Aligning with 

Common Cloud Computing Service Models 

˸ Cloud hosted, fully-integrated communications 

services and applications, such as multimedia 

conferencing or communications portals, with all 

the necessary management and billing services 

included as part of the service. 

Media-Optimized Elements 

in the Cloud—IaaS Model 

Today, most telecommunication service providers have 

their own infrastructure, purchasing IP media server 

equipment and deploying it in their central offices 

or datacenters. With cloud computing, it’s no longer 

necessary to make this large investment; instead, 

service providers can get media processing capacity 

from cloud service providers on a pay-as-you-go 

basis. This kind of arrangement is likely to employ 

a private cloud, and a single cloud service provider 

would host some or all of the service provider’s 

media processing requirements and capacity. 

Desktops 

Tablets 

10 

Media 

Integrated 

Apps 


APIs & 

Interfaces 


Optimized 

Elements

To better serve cloud computing customers, media 

server vendors (i.e., equipment manufacturers) are 

optimizing media processing elements to enhance 

performance in these environments. Moreover, mediaoptimized 

elements will ease the deployment and 

provisioning of media processing capacity, and leverage 

virtualization technology to increase the flexibility 

and cost efficiencies availed by cloud computing 

infrastructure. For instance, web service provider 

Amazon offers their Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon 

EC2 10 ), where media processing elements could be 

optimized for rapid deployment to support on-demand 

resizable media processing capacity in the cloud. 

Example: Cloud Media Processing 

for Peak Capacity 

A successful service provider offering hosted telecom 

services has a growing business and needs to 

increase its capacity. Rather than increase capital 

expenditures (CapEx) to fund more infrastructure, 

the service provider obtains additional capacity 

from a cloud service provider during peak demand, 

just a few hours a day (Figure 3). When evaluating 

cloud service vendors, the telecom service provider 

considered network I/O costs, connectivity quality and 

overall network performance with respect to jitter, 

delay and QoS. Another key aspect was ensuring the 

management features could seamlessly integrate 

and hand-off calls from the existing infrastructure 

to the cloud provider. 

The cloud service provider offering included hosted 

media servers whose resources were partitioned as 

virtualized instances, allowing them to be provisioned 

and used, as required, during peak periods. In other 

words, the virtualized instances could be activated 

and brought online during peak periods, and later 

released when demand decreased. 

Benefits of outsourcing for service providers: 

• Saves capital and operating expenditures 

(CapEx/OpEx) to enable future growth. 

• Allows media processing resources to 

be gradually migrated to the cloud. 


Configure Network 

for Normal Traffic 

• Service Provider 

provisions infrastructure 

for normal traffic volumes 

Service 

Provider 

Application 

Server (AS) 

IP Media 

Server (MRF) 

Use IaaS Media 

Processing During 

Peak Traffic 

• Provision and utilize media 

processing instances 

during peaks 

• Service Provider AS routes 

overflow calls to cloud 

media processing 

• Turn off when daily peaks 

completed 

• Enables tiered-service offerings. 

Cloud Media 

Services 

Provider (IaaS) 

Virtualized 

Media Resources 

˸ Premium (highest QoS): uses the service 

provider’s internal network and infrastructure. 

˸ Economy (satisfactory QoS): uses the cloud. 

APIs and Interfaces for Media 

Services—PaaS Model 

Service providers are looking for new ways to offer 

real-time media processing services, in addition to 

hosting their own services. One promising avenue is 

to open up their platforms to third party developers, 

whose applications would interface with and utilize 

their real-time media processing as a service (MPaaS). 

This business model could be supported by the public 

cloud, which could also handle the billing for third parties. 

To pursue this opportunity, service providers must 

expose their media service APIs and interfaces in 

languages and formats that can be utilized by the 

broadest cross-section of the software engineering 

industry. The pool of software engineers that develop 

applications using SIP or other telecom-specific APIs 

make up only a small percentage of the software 

Consistent End 

User Experience 

• Same service quality, 

features and performance 

24/7 

11 

PSTN 

Phone 

2G 

Cellular 

Laptop 

with VoIP 

Client 

LTE 

Smartphone 

with App 

Figure 3. Outsourcing Media Processing to Add Capacity During Peak Demand

engineering industry. Instead, service providers should 

embrace more commonly-used Java or HTTP-based 

protocols. Moving forward, there are new standards 

under development to better support these business 

models, including JSR-309 for Java-based media 

control development and RESTful HTTP interfaces 

for control. 11 

Example: Cloud Media Processing 

for 3rd Party Developers 

A web-based contact center determines it could 

dramatically increase the efficiency of its support 

team using real-time audio/video communication 

features. For instance, customer contact begins 

with an over-the-web chat session, but then, using 

a “hotkey,” the customer can quickly start a 1-on-1 

real-time conversation with a customer service 

representative or product specialist. Tasked with 

creating this feature, an application developer 

reprograms the contact center’s call flow to 

incorporate the new real-time audio/video 

communication features, which the contact center 

accesses in the cloud, as illustrated in Figure 4. 

Example: RCS Video Services 

(Rich Communications Suite-enhanced) 

The GSMA driven RCS-e industry initiative is gaining 

widespread momentum within operators, device 

manufacturers, and application service providers. 

An important component of RCS-e is multimedia/ 

video share and video calling services operated and 

provided through carrier networks. Interoperability 

across a diverse set of handhelds, media codecs/ 

formats, bandwidth optimization, and inter-carrier 

media connects and interworking are well identified 

challenges. Hosting RCS-e video as part of a Cloud 

Service adds significant value to overcome the 

interoperability issues where the Cloud Services can 

be shared and the required Media Processing within 

the Cloud would provide seamless interoperability 

across RCS and non-RCS handhelds as well as 

inter-carrier networks, in real-time. 12 

Benefit of open platforms for MPaaS providers: 

• Generates new services and associated revenues 

driven by the imagination of application developers 

around the globe. 


Customer Care 

Interactive Web 

Session 

IP Access 

Internet, IP VPN 

LTE Mobile 

Real-time N-way 

Conferencing Session 

Cloud Customer 

Care Service 

Customer Care 

SaaS Application 

“Click to Conference” 

Request 

Web-based APIs 

MPaaS 

Conferencing 

Application 

Cloud 

Communications 

Service 

Figure 4. Cloud Media Processing for 3rd Party Developers in LTE Mobile Network 

Telecommunication Applications as 

Cloud Service Offerings—SaaS Model 

After making significant investments in unified 

communications (UC) infrastructure, some 

enterprises would like to transfer some of the 

support responsibilities to a third party. This presents 

opportunities for cloud service providers with 

offerings similar to hosted unified communication 

service offered by a telecom service provider using 

a subscription or pay-as-you-use billing model. One 

example is a hybrid, enterprise-class deployment 

model consisting of enterprise-owned equipment 

for headquarters or large branch locations, and 

cloud-based telecommunication services for smaller 

locations or remote workers. 

The key is for service providers to recognize and adapt 

their offerings for hybrid deployment environments. 

There may also be mid-sized enterprises that decide 

to outsource their entire communication services to a 

cloud service provider instead of buying and operating 

their own UC infrastructure. A hosted conferencing 

provider could also manage the application and media 

resources at the customer premises. 

12

PSTN 

Phone 

2G 

Cellular 

Laptop 

with VoIP 

Client 

LTE 

Smartphone 

with App 

Circuit Access 

PSTN, 2G Mobile 

LTE Mobile 

IP Access 

Internet, IP VPN 

Example: Enterprise UC Integrated with 

Cloud-based Communications Service 

An enterprise maintains a large multi-site UC 

infrastructure with on-premise PBXs deployed in large 

locations. It has become expensive to backhaul branch 

locations and remote workers, and a cost-effective 

option is to use conferencing services in the cloud. 

Therefore, cloud-based telecommunication services 

may be required to: 

• Provide WAN interconnection of remote workers 

and branch locations. 

• Provide backhauls and interconnects to workers 

in larger enterprise locations. 

Service providers who want to offer cloud-based 

host audio and video conferencing can easily 

build a solution by running the Radisys SIPware 

Reservationless Conferencing solution on Radisys 

media servers. 

Benefit of supporting unified communications 

for cloud service providers: 

• Creates more demand for media servers 

already deployed in the cloud. 


Gateway 

Cloud 

Communications 

Service 

Telecom Application 

Servers 

MPaaS 

Figure 5. Enterprise UC Integrated with Cloud-based Communications Service 

Enterprise 

UC Platform 

TDM 

Enterprise HQ Location 

Radisys Products for 

Cloud Communications 

IP 

UC Desktop 

Tools 

Desktop 

IP Phone 

Radisys is the leading supplier of media processing 

technologies and solutions for the telecommunications 

industry. Radisys media servers have a proven track 

record in supporting IP-based media processing 

in 3G networks and are already working in 4G/LTE 

deployments. A natural progression is the cloud, 

where Radisys has expanded its product offerings 

to include optimized cloud-based media processing. 

The Radisys Software Media Server (SWMS) is a 

Linux-based SIP media server developed for enterprise 

and IMS audio/video media processing applications. 

The software is designed to install and operate on 

Intel ® multi-core COTS hardware servers, such as 

blades in a shelf, and also run in virtualized machines. 

The product will evolve to support RESTful HTTP/ 

JSON and Java interfaces for 3rd party developers. 

Alternatively, Radisys hardware-based media servers, 

the MPX-12000 and CMS–9000, have a very large 

capacity, providing the scalability, performance, 

and reliability for large-scale hosted deployments. 

Their exceptional processing power and I/O 

throughput deliver very high performance for 

XML–based IVR and messaging applications, while 

expanding multi–service versatility for multimedia 

conferencing, IP Centrex, ringback tones, IP contact 

centers, video communications and complex audio/ 

video transcoding and transrating. 

13

When these media services are combined with the 

Radisys SIPware Reservationless Conferencing 

solution, service providers have a complete hosted 

audio and video conferencing solution built on cloudcomputing 

architectures and technologies. This 

portfolio enables hosted providers to increase their 

service revenues, and service providers to reduce 

infrastructure costs when outsourcing their telecom 

applications or media processing infrastructure. 

References 

1 Source: “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing,” 

by Peter Mell and Tim Grance, October 7, 2009, 

www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/upload/cloud-def-v15.pdf. 

2 http://gigaom.com/cloud/its-cloud-prediction- 

time-idc-gartner-and-i-weigh-in/. 

3 Source: TechTarget website, 

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/ 

definition/SPI-model. 

4 Fungible implies computing resources can 

be repurposed or re-targeted, as needed, 

to support other applications and services. 

5 Source: Report titled “The Video Cloud,” by Morgan 

Keegan of Equity Research, November 28, 2011, pg 1. 

About the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance: From modular 

components to market-ready systems, Intel and the 200+ global 

member companies of the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance 

provide the performance, connectivity, manageability, and 

security developers need to create smart, connected systems. 

Learn more at: intel.com/go/intelligentsystems-alliance. 


6 Source: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt. 


www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt. 

8 Source: W3G, http://www.w3.org/TR/voicexml20/. 


https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5707/. 

10 For more information, visit 

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/. 

11 For more information about GSMA OneAPI 

and HTTP/REST interfaces, visit https://gsma. 

securespsite.com/access/Access%20API%20Wiki/ 

Home.aspx. 

12 Further information on RCS-e and interoperability 

specifications are available from GSMA/RCS: 

(http://www.gsma.com/rcs/). 

14 

Corporate Headquarters 

5435 NE Dawson Creek Drive 

Hillsboro, OR 97124 USA 

503-615-1100 | Fax 503-615-1121 

Toll-Free: 800-950-0044 

www.radisys.com | info@radisys.com 

©2012 Radisys Corporation. 

Radisys and Trillium are registered trademarks of Radisys Corporation. 

*All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. 

May 2012

Cloud Media Processing - Embedded Community - Intel

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