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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*
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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.
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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
spl h Buld v.Bu Dco
t f pg 4
th Allac haachvd a lo, wh
profl ad apaal copld or
xtCA, CgL & sA oruad u ca ad
rqur docuor vrualzao.
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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
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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
8/8/2019 Atca eBook Final
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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
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
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Wd Rvr Carrr grad Op Plaor rawork