IPSphere Forum to Announce Technical Release

Global service provider and supplier group IPSphere Forum will announce Tuesday the creation of a technical release that hardware and software vendors can use to help carriers move to next-generation IP networks supporting advanced IP services.

The IPSF has been working on the framework of Release 1 since the group was restructured and added Cisco Systems Inc. and Alcatel two years ago. The group will be filling out the spec in the coming months, with products expected to be available in the first half of next year.

Leveraging the strengths of service-oriented architectures (SOA), IPSF said the IPsphere specification outlines a universal operational framework that offers transformational flexibility to its stakeholders and users. At the heart of this framework is the ability to abstract and compose telecommunications and IT resources into unlimited service possibilities via a standardized messaging structure.

What remains unclear is if, and when, equipment vendors and software providers, will begin to act on the work of the forum.

“Things are progressing well, but without vendors with actual implementations, it’s all kind of an academic exercise,” admitted Kevin Dillon, longtime chairman of the IPSF. “Service providers are expected to write IPSF requirements into their equipment tenders.”

Carrier members include Verizon and Canadian provider Telus Inc., as well as BT, France Telecom, Korea Telecom, Telenor, Telefonica, Telstra and VSNL Interntational. IPSF infrastructure members include Alcatel-Lucent, Avici, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, HP, Juniper, Meriton, NEC, Nokia Siemens and Tellabs.

“The service providers in this forum recognize the need for an IPsphere framework,” said remarked Lee Himbeault, senior strategy manager for Telus. “It is the method for delivering valuable IP services to our customers – communications, content and applications. The companies that provide products and services to us must adopt the IPsphere framework requirements. To help us deliver these new IP services we need them to quickly get on-board with the Forum and its work.”

“The biggest contribution that IPsphere will make to SPs (service providers) is the ability to support all of the business relations among SPs that currently enable the legacy services like leased lines, voice, ATM, frame relay, etc., using converged IP infrastructure,” explained Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. “Everyone knows that to get IP to the next level you have to be able to move existing services onto IP, and that’s not going to happen unless the providers can replicate the mechanisms for provisioning, settlement, and assurance across provider boundaries that they can support today with non-IP technology.”

A close second, contribution-wise to Nolle, is the vertical integration that IPsphere will bring, a means for creating partnerships between “lower-layer providers and the content and application providers. Currently there is no way to deliver content or application services with end-to-end settlement and QoS, and most major content distributors and enterprises will demand that.”

Dillon, who also is a senior executive at Juniper, said the group’s service provider council will decide what a “minimum functional” IPsphere would be, and that will determine how far the spec has to progress.

Nolle said he thinks the current specification could support many services, “and thus I expect there will be a two-track process, with one track validating the current spec for some services through use cases, and the other track advancing the spec so that a broader range of services can be supported.”

Verizon believes the group has markedly advanced the case for service providers aiming to take service evolution and creation beyond SOA.

“The success of any model for multi-stakeholder or multi-geography services demands standards orientation and an acute responsiveness to change. SOA principles provide an obvious starting place; while the IPsphere framework adapts them perfectly for a telecommunications environment,” said Andrew Malis, an IPsphere Forum board member and director of packet network architecture for Verizon.

IPSphere Forum www.ipsphereforum.org

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