The Latest Word on IMS

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

Plenty of folks are still keen on this network architecture, which abstracts the services layer from the network layer in an effort to make implementing new services much faster; centralizes subscriber data in one repository, so it’s available to any application — no matter what the network type or endpoint involved; and infuses 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 provider level 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.

However, although press reports and xchange’s sources indicate IMS is not taking off as quickly as expected, Chris King, senior director of worldwide telco markets at BEA Systems Inc., counters that industry adoption of IMS is far better than “the doom and gloom” he’s been hearing. In a mid-April conversation with xchange, King said “we have several IMS [activities] starting in the next 60 to 90 days … so it’s rolling along and moving quite nicely.”

What It Is

While IMS is a standardized framework, just how service providers will implement it and what a “true” IMS deployment entails still seem to be up for grabs, according to many.

Michael H. Cooper, vice president of marketing and strategy for the convergence business group at Alcatel-Lucent, says the industry recently has begun to reach consensus on what constitutes an IMS deployment.

According to Cooper, that includes a call session control function platform, a home subscriber server (HSS, 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 simply IMS components, says Kafel.

“A true IMS solution uses IMS components and interfaces with other IMS gear using IMS standards,” he explains.

We Believe

In any case, many important players in the industry are holding firm on IMS, although they emphasize that IMS is just one piece of the network — and service — transformation happening at service providers.

At the NXTcomm show earlier this summer in Chicago, AT&T Inc.’s new leader, Randall Stephenson, unveiled Video Share, which the company mentioned is its first IMS-based offer. But Siroos Afshar, a chief architect for AT&T, was quick to point out to xchange that the IMS architecture is just part of a much larger strategy the company calls CARTS, which stands for Common Architecture for Real-Time Services. The intention of CARTS is to provide a consistent user experience; seamless transition between networks and devices; a single, common service platform with uniform treatment of access technologies; and communications and entertainment that adapt to the customer’s lifestyle.

“AT&T has spent an enormous amount of intellectual capital and time to define CARTS,” Afshar says, adding that AT&T is building a single architecture, not a service based on IMS.

But just how IMS might fit into a service provider’s network plan varies widely depending on that service provider.

One service provider might opt to transform its database systems first, consolidating all data within an HSS, says Cooper of Alcatel-Lucent, while another first might 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,” Cooper says.

The bottom line, as Arun Sobti, chairman of IP Unity Glenayre, aptly puts it, is those first to implement IMS will be those whose businesses depend on it. So, expect the wireline operators losing money to wireless, and service providers that have bet the farm on 3G and now need to monetize that investment, to be first to the IMS plate, he says.

In fact, it is service provider giants including AT&T, BT, KPN and Sprint who already have thrown their considerable weight behind IMS.

In announcing the launch of Sprint Wireless Integration services late last year, Sprint said the service was based on the IMS architecture. Sprint Wireless Integration is a product that extends customers’ premises-based PBX features and functionality to their mobile phones. It gives users one phone number that simultaneously rings the desk phone and mobile phone; the service also includes a converged enterprise voice mail inbox.

Kim Ganote, Sprint’s director of integrated solutions, explains that the service employs an application server that connects to Sprint’s IMS network. Lyle Paczkowski, product manager for Sprint, adds that Ericsson provides the proxy server, which is surrounded by Alcatel-Lucent media gateways and gateway controllers, which are connected to the IMS core and then to Sprint’s mobile switching centers.

The value-add of IMS in this application, adds Paczkowski, is that because it’s all IP, the company doesn’t need to route calls across the PBX. Instead, all calls within the enterprise stay on net so they don’t need to clog up the PBX or fill up costly PRIs to the PSTN.

But this application is just one example of how Sprint plans to leverage IMS, says Paczkowski, mentioning it also will encompass WiMAX, 3G, presence, unified communications and more. “IMS is about more than VoIP, it’s about media,” he says. “VoIP is just one element on it. Sprint is looking at IMS as a step into all future IP media.”

Hold Up!

At the same time, creating drag on this new, IP-based network architecture known as IMS is the fact that many of the service providers moving in this direction have legacy equipment they can’t get rid of anytime soon because it still is depreciating. At the same time, many companies still are uncertain about how to go about implementing IMS because parts of the architecture — and business plans around the move to IMS — have yet to gel. And, interoperability efforts are just out of the gate.

For example, Jim Hansen, senior vice president of network services at EMBARQ Corp., calls IMS “the ultimate connector” and says the company believes IMS will be part of its future because it wants to flatten its multiple networks. Still, the company is not ready to deploy IMS just yet, he says.

Alcatel-Lucent www.alcatel-lucent.com
BEA Systems Inc. www.bea.com
BT www.bt.com
EMBARQ Corp. www.embarq.com
IBM Corp. www.ibm.com
KPN www.kpn.com
Sprint www.sprint.com
Stratus Technologies Inc. www.stratus.com

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