The last time I checked the status of IMS deployment to generate some revenue generating applications and services - I did not find much - Dec 2007. However, there is a lot of interest and curiosity among the Service Providers and Mobile Operators to see the newly found "Diamond Factory - called IMS". Majority of the Telco's, Cable MSOs and Mobile Operators are struggling with several moving parts:

1. How to integrate IMS with existing legacy networks - TDM, VoIP and Cellular?
2. How to provide common customer experience across any device - desktop, laptop, mobile handsets etc.?
3. How to deliver something "more" with less and convince existing customers to subscribe to IMS enabled services - IP Telephony and IP Connectivity as a start. We will talk about UC, FMC later??

The IMS message becomes really confusing when the executive discussions take place in the board rooms and one of them asks why do we need this now when Google, IBM and Microsoft are delivering the UC and other enterprise applications without IMS?

So where is the diamond in IMS?

Service providers are struggling to put their arms around several moving parts with IMS, SaaS and GRID computing environment, while trying to set the roadmap for convergence. Majority of the Telco’s and Mobile operators are suffering from the existing inertia associated with business processes, networks and support structure of provisioning and billing. In addition, the lack of IP trained professionals and end-to-end service delivery platform make them more difficult to design and develop applications and services for customer IT and telecom environment on a turn-key basis (4-6 months). This requires a complete overhaul of mindset and changes from top executives to the assembly line engineers to enable timely execution.

One way to handle the risk of moving to new convergence platform is to create an ‘Ecosystem’ of service provider, vendors, suppliers and third party integrators to enable the environment of partnership and win-win scenarios. This requires a break with traditional practice of single-vendor be-all, end-all solutions and a vision to trust the new paradigm shift in communications industry. To this effect, IMS is like a raw diamond which needs to be polished and shaped according to customer requirements in such a way that the final products and applications become a desirable and ‘must have’ items for customers. SPs must demonstrate their full conviction and thrust behind this vision, mapping out a detailed roadmap of their ecosystem, partnerships, testing/verification methodology and phased delivery of feature rich services and applications that will suit the customers’ existing IT and Telecom infrastructure. In doing so, customer’s fears about security and reliability will be calmed and their excitement about ‘continuous improvement’ model with new and advanced technologies will be kept alive.

I can add more colors, if anyone is interested. See my comments below about IMS deployment by AT&T.


Prabhat Kumar
Managing Director
PVS Marketing, Inc.
New Jersey, USA
prabhatkuma@gmail.com
============
RE: AT&T moves ahead with IMS, unveils VoIP service for its IPTV customers
by Prabhat_Kumar
AT&T is headed in the right direction with IMS. The challenge lies ahead to create Quadplay offers and Mobile media and content distribution platforms for both consumer and enterprise markets. Lastmile bandwidth crunch will soon be a major issue to deliver even Triple Play services with QoS and meet customers' expectations with ease and common experience across any device. IMS will solve the access issue with any media. But, the service blending and application layer will have to be carefully developed to reap the REAL BENEFITS of IMS platform. Application vendors will play the key role to develop an Ecosystem with SPs to leverage the "Revenue before CAPEX/OPEX" models.

posted January 31, 2008

William,
let me a little change the perspective from which people look at IMS.

I don’t know whether IMS will be the next big thing or not. Evidences from real world are still confusing. What I know is that most of the IMS underlying concepts are becoming true. Let me give an example:

My company deployed a real-time convergent authorization, rating and charging solution for non traditional telco services for a mobile European operator in 2007.
We are interfacing the Service Delivery Platform (SDP) by using a truly standard Diameter interface. The SDP vendor, a giant in this field, tried to use a “non standard” Diameter, but in spite of the lower solution cost that was not accepted by the customer.

Now we’re managing more than 3.5 million prepaid and postpaid subscribers, by interacting in real-time with the SDP according to standards. Subscribers can have any number of concurrent simultaneous service sessions. Each session is managed as a transaction. Content providers can easily add their offerings. And legacy prepaid and postpaid billing systems are not affected by that (and still continue to manage traditional voice and messaging without risks for the operator).

Maybe this is not what a lot of people meant by IMS, but I do think evolutions in architectures, standards and business models are usually a smooth process.

Hope this can help.

Ciao

posted February 1, 2008

This is an interesting article - things are a bit confused however there are positive progresses - see the article :

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=138038

...Cheers... !

posted February 1, 2008

AFAIK there are tens of IMS deployment around the globe. At the moment, there is no alternative, which is so open, standardized and proved.
Operators need to provide IMS, even if there is no killer app yet. I personally expect that building real IMS ecosystem will take 2-5 years. The point is, that either operators will build a platform for fast and easy service deployment and integration, which is well known and standardized, thus open for 3rd party service providers, and will build an ecosystem of services, which are attractive and available from any location and on any device, or will become just ISP selling bandwitch to skype/google/microsoft/any other internet player.
The trends are clear, customers want convergence, and they're moving towards IP services, available on IP capable devices, where bearer is not important. They won't care if they skype through GPRS (in case of flat rate) or their office wifi. On other hand, the most attractive services are being developed by small companies, where's nothing more than IP standards knowledge and good idea.
The dream of IMS is to have one platform, where you can use almost any known service you like, from any device you own, and these service will cooperate.
Imagine, you're in the office and you have planned meeting in your PIM. All calls are automatically routed to the voicemail, there the automated receptionist explains the caller when you will be available.
While sitting in your car, all calls will be automatically handshaked as voice calls and managed through internal hifi.
After long day, you'll come home, turn on your web TV. Your daughter will see in her presence application, that you're home and will make a video call, which is routed to this TV.
While you're walking, you will see an interesting scene. You will just take your mobile, make few pictures/video, record some notes, and send it to your blog.
Ecetra ecetra, IMS can make life much more easy. Don't expect it as a revolution, just evolution, offering much better level of convergence, where services are available independently on the bearer and end user device, and these services can cooperate in an intelligent way.

posted February 6, 2008