The Hype Around IMS Has Faded – What Now?

IMS has gone from promising blueprint to challenging puzzle in the space of a year.

Plenty of folks are still keen on this network architecture, whose key aspects have to do with abstracting the services layer from the network layer, in an effort to make implementing new services much faster; centralizing subscriber data in one repository, so it’s available to any application – no matter what the network type or endpoint involved; and infusing the network with the smarts to understand what kinds of packets are being transported so it can assign the appropriate bandwidth and QoS.

But, with IMS activity at the service providers still coming out in small dribbles, the hype around IMS has fizzled. And now, rather than talking about the great promise of IMS, many people are scratching their heads, wondering how service providers will justify the significant investment IMS will require, and unsure about just exactly what such an investment might yield.

The uncertainty around IMS is only being compounded by accelerating interest around the new generation of service delivery platform (SDP) solutions. SDP is a Web services-based approach to new service creation, integration and delivery that some see as complementary to IMS, but others say is an IMS alternative. (IT companies like BEA, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are leading the SDP charge.)

This state of affairs likely will result in some pretty interesting discussion at NXTcomm. (In fact, yours truly will be moderating an ATIS TechThink Technology Conference panel on the subject. It’s Tuesday at 2:15 p.m., come check it out.)

While true mass deployment of IMS is still years away, Jody Bennett, vice president of marketing at GENBAND Inc., a VoIP equipment provider and IMS proponent, says IMS is still the direction of service providers’ architectures. “Products are more in a test and limited deployment phase” at this point, he says, adding that over time IMS will be the architecture “that will dominate”.

Bennett continues that few service providers will be able to justify a massive overhaul to IMS, so most will move to IMS one application at a time.

Right now, however, ILECs are struggling to get their mass video offerings out, so they’ll focus on that first, says Bennett. Once that’s complete, he continues, they can start layering in advanced applications, which will target business users first, given that’s where the money is.

The focus on business-based IMS applications is relatively new. Michael Khalilian, chairman of The IMS Forum, recently told xchange: “In this quarter we are pushing the enterprise and business applications into IMS. Last quarter we were saying enterprise and business services were not part of IMS. The quarter before that we were saying that IPTV was not part of IMS.”

Every quarter, next applications have been added to the scope of IMS, he says.

So is there consensus in the industry that business services will drive service provider adoption of IMS? Maybe in some cases; but not as rule.

“There are as many ways to deploy IMS as there are customers and business cases,” says Michael H. Cooper, vice president of marketing and strategy for the convergence business group at Alcatel-Lucent, and a panelist on the ATIS panel I’m moderating on IMS.

One service provider might opt to transform its database systems first, consolidating all data within an HSS, says Cooper, while another might first move to an all-IP core, as BT and KPN elected to do. “Originally, people thought IMS was supposed to be big bang, but it doesn’t need to be,” he says.

While the IMS architecture is considered by some to be rather nebulous, Cooper goes on to explain that the industry recently has begun to reach consensus on what constitutes an IMS deployment. According to Cooper, that includes a CSCF (call session control function platform), an HSS (home subscriber server, a database of subscriber information) and an application server. “Some say it has to be more than one application, but if you have an application server, you’re in pretty good shape,” he says.

Still, Ali Kafel, vice president of telecommunications at Stratus Technologies, says people are using the term IMS very loosely. Many vendors claim to have IMS solutions, when in fact they are not IMS solutions, but use some IMS components, says Kafel, also a panelist on my ATIS panel. “A true IMS solution uses IMS components and interfaces with other IMS gear using IMS standards,” he explains.

The IMS Forum is working diligently to help vendors get to the point where their IMS gear can interoperate. The group just concluded its second IMS plugfest, which took place June 4 through 8 at the University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Lab (IOL). The event, which included such companies as Empirix and Sonus, addressed the services/applications layer, says Michael Khalilian, forum chairman. Specifically, forum President Manuel Vexler explains, the plugfest was an opportunity to demo VoIP applications like fixed/mobile convergence, sometimes referred to as VCC (voice call continuity, which is the IMS standard for FMC), on multivendor networks. At NXTcomm, the IMS Forum will offer the results of this latest plugfest via a video and documentation.

Alcatel-Lucent www.alcatel-lucent.com
BEA www.bea.com
GENBAND www.genband.com
IBM www.ibm.com
IMS Forum www.IMSForum.org
Microsoft Corp. www.microsoft.com
Oracle www.oracle.com

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