IMS and the Future of Network Convergence - pudn.comread.pudn.com/downloads66/doc/237211/HeavyReding report.pdf · Figure 3.5 Huawei's Overall IMS Architecture ... IP Multimedia Subsystem

© HEAVY READING | VOL. 3, NO. 12, JULY 2005 | IMS AND THE FUTURE OF NETWORK CONVERGENCE

Heavy Reading – Independent quantitative research and competitive analysis of next-generation hardware and software solutions for service providers and vendors

VOL. 3, NO. 12, JULY 2005

IMS and the Future of Network Convergence Many vendors and some service providers now see the IP Multi-media Subsystem (IMS) as the single most important telecom technology development of this decade – and almost all now see it as one of the most important. All major equipment vendors, many mainstream IT suppliers, and a host of smaller specialists have committed to the IMS architecture. Although IMS was origi-nally conceived as an application-enabling technology for wire-less network services, its appeal has crossed over to the wireline services side to the point that IMS is now widely viewed as a key technology for fixed/mobile network convergence. This report delivers a complete accounting of IMS technology and product developments. It provides in-depth analyses of the IMS strategies and product portfolios now in play at 70 different technology suppliers, including major incumbent equipment ven-dors, softswitch suppliers, major IT vendors, application-server vendors, and other specialists that are taking a leadership role in IMS development. AUTHOR: GRAHAM FINNIE, SENIOR ANALYST, HEAVY READING

KEY FINDINGS

IMS is positioned to be the primary IP network and service architecture for Tier 1 carriers worldwide

Most incumbent telecom vendors are now tailoring products to conform to IMS

IMS is likely to create market competition between companies with seemingly disparate products

Partner management will become more important for suppliers because of IMS

Ericsson & Siemens have the early lead among incumbents in the race for IMS market share

IT vendors will play a critical role in IMS deployment, possibly at the expense of incumbent vendors

Softswitch makers will compete directly with incumbents for carrier IMS contracts

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© HEAVY READING | VOL. 3, NO. 12, JULY 2005 | IMS AND THE FUTURE OF NETWORK CONVERGENCE 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................ 4

I. INTRODUCTION AND KEY FINDINGS ...............................................................5

1.1 Key Findings..........................................................................................................7 1.2 Report Scope and Structure..................................................................................9

II. IMS: A TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW ..................................................................10

2.1 IMS's Origins .......................................................................................................10 2.2 Core IMS Functions: Control Layer .....................................................................11 2.3 Core IMS Functions: Application Layer ...............................................................12 2.4 Standards Timeline .............................................................................................15 2.5 Beyond 3GPP: The Spread of IMS .....................................................................16 2.6 How IMS Fits With Other Standards ...................................................................19 2.7 The IMS Application Space .................................................................................20 2.8 Vendor Positioning ..............................................................................................22 2.9 IMS Deployment Projections ...............................................................................28

III. MAJOR TELECOM EQUIPMENT PROVIDERS ................................................31

3.1 Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA) ...............................................................31 3.2 Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)..................................................................34 3.3 Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERICY) ............................................................................36 3.4 Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. ............................................................................39 3.5 Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU).................................................................40 3.6 Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) ................................................................................44 3.7 NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY; Tokyo: 6701) ........................................................45 3.8 Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) ..................................................................................47 3.9 Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) ..........................................................48 3.10 Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) .............................................................51 3.11 ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) ............................................53

IV. IT SUPPLIERS....................................................................................................54

4.1 BEA Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS) ....................................................................54 4.2 Continuous Computing Corp. (CCPU) ................................................................56 4.3 Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) ....................................................................56 4.4 IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM).......................................................................................58 4.5 Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC)..................................................................................61 4.6 RadiSys Corp. (Nasdaq: RSYS)..........................................................................62 4.7 Solid Information Technology Ltd........................................................................62 4.8 Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) ...........................................................63

V. SOFTSWITCH VENDORS..................................................................................65

5.1 Cirpack ................................................................................................................65 5.2 Italtel SpA............................................................................................................66 5.3 Marconi Corp. plc (Nasdaq: MRCIY; London: MONI) .........................................67 5.4 NetCentrex SA ....................................................................................................68 5.5 Sonus Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SONS) ...............................................................70 5.6 Veraz Networks Inc. ............................................................................................71


VI. OTHER VENDORS.............................................................................................73

6.1 Acme Packet Inc. ................................................................................................73 6.2 AePona Ltd..........................................................................................................74 6.3 Apertio Ltd. ..........................................................................................................74 6.4 AudioCodes Ltd. (Nasdaq: AUDC)......................................................................75 6.5 Azaire Networks Inc. ...........................................................................................75 6.6 BayPackets Inc....................................................................................................76 6.7 Blueslice Networks Inc. .......................................................................................76 6.8 BridgePort Networks Inc......................................................................................77 6.9 Bridgewater Systems Corp..................................................................................77 6.10 BroadSoft Inc.......................................................................................................78 6.11 Brooktrout Inc. (Nasdaq: BRKT)..........................................................................78 6.12 Convedia Corp. ...................................................................................................79 6.13 Digitalk Ltd...........................................................................................................80 6.14 Ecrio Inc. .............................................................................................................80 6.15 Excel Switching Corp. .........................................................................................80 6.16 Gallery IP Telephony Inc. ....................................................................................81 6.17 Highdeal Inc. .......................................................................................................81 6.18 Hotsip AB ............................................................................................................82 6.19 Infitel International N.V. .......................................................................................83 6.20 IP Unity Inc. .........................................................................................................83 6.21 IPeria Inc. ............................................................................................................83 6.22 jNETx Inc.............................................................................................................84 6.23 Kodiak Networks Inc............................................................................................84 6.24 Leapstone Systems Inc. ......................................................................................85 6.25 Netrake Corp. ......................................................................................................85 6.26 Newport Networks Ltd. (London: NNG)...............................................................85 6.27 NewStep Networks Inc. .......................................................................................86 6.28 NexTone Communications Inc. ...........................................................................86 6.29 Open Cloud Ltd. ..................................................................................................87 6.30 Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: OPWV).........................................................87 6.31 Operax AB...........................................................................................................87 6.32 Outsmart Ltd........................................................................................................88 6.33 Persona Software Inc. .........................................................................................88 6.34 Personeta Inc. .....................................................................................................89 6.35 Qualphone Inc. ....................................................................................................89 6.36 Radvision Ltd. (Nasdaq: RVSN)..........................................................................89 6.37 SIPquest Inc. .......................................................................................................90 6.38 Sonim Technologies Inc. .....................................................................................90 6.39 Sylantro Systems Corp........................................................................................91 6.40 Tatara Systems Inc. ............................................................................................91 6.41 Tazz Networks Inc...............................................................................................92 6.42 Tekelec Inc. (Nasdaq: TKLC) ..............................................................................92 6.43 Ubiquity Software Corp. ......................................................................................93 6.44 Ulticom Inc. (Nasdaq: ULCM)..............................................................................94 6.45 VeriSign Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) ............................................................................94

APPENDIX A: ABOUT THE AUTHOR...........................................................................95

APPENDIX B: LEGAL DISCLAIMER ............................................................................96


LIST OF FIGURES*

SECTION I

Figure 1.1 What Is the Most Important Catalyst for IMS Deployment?....................... 7

SECTION II

Figure 2.1 A Basic IMS Model .................................................................................. 10 Figure 2.2 Application Server Relationships............................................................. 13 Figure 2.3 IMS in Practice ........................................................................................ 14 Figure 2.4 Tispan and IMS ....................................................................................... 17 Figure 2.5 IMS-Related Standards Initiatives ........................................................... 18 Figure 2.6 Applications Enabled by IMS................................................................... 20 Figure 2.7 Who's Playing in the IMS Space?............................................................ 23 Figure 2.8 Who Does What in IMS ........................................................................... 24 Figure 2.9 Projected Timeline for IMS Deployments ................................................ 28

SECTION III

Figure 3.1 Alcatel's Overall IMS Architecture ........................................................... 31 Figure 3.2 Alcatel's View of IMS Phases and Applications....................................... 33 Figure 3.3 Cisco's Call Session Control Platform ..................................................... 35 Figure 3.4 Ericsson's Mobile Client Stack for IMS.................................................... 38 Figure 3.5 Huawei's Overall IMS Architecture .......................................................... 39 Figure 3.6 Lucent's Overall IMS Architecture ........................................................... 41 Figure 3.7 Lucent Worldwide Services' IMS Proposition .......................................... 43 Figure 3.8 NEC’s Overall IMS Proposition................................................................ 46 Figure 3.9 Nortel's Overall IMS Architecture............................................................. 49

SECTION IV

Figure 4.1 BEA's WebLogic Communication Platform in the IMS Architecture ........ 55 Figure 4.2 IBM's Approach to IMS Service Creation ................................................ 59 Figure 4.3 Supporting Multiple Service Environments.............................................. 60

SECTION V

Figure 5.1 Cirpack's Equipment in a Tispan Architecture ......................................... 65 Figure 5.2 Marconi's Products in a Tispan Architecture ........................................... 68 Figure 5.3 NetCentrex's Products and Plans for IMS ............................................... 69 Figure 5.4 Sonus's IMS Products in a Wireless Network Upgrade Scenario............ 71 Figure 5.5 Veraz's Control Switch in a Tispan/IMS Architecture .............................. 72

SECTION VI

Figure 6.1 Acme Packet's SBCs in a Tispan-3GPP IMS Network............................ 73 Figure 6.2 Azaire's Network Proposition................................................................... 75

* All charts and figures in this report are original to Heavy Reading, unless otherwise specified.


I. Introduction and Key Findings Over the past 12 to 18 months, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) has enjoyed an extraordinary rise to prominence. As recently as the end of 2003, IMS was still widely seen as an interesting but limited mechanism for offering new multimedia services on 3G cellular mobile networks. Now it is variously seen as: the anchor for next-generation networks (NGNs); the underlying mechanism for delivering a host of new IP services at a fraction of the previous cost; the basis for a complete convergence between fixed and mobile networks; and the salvation of incumbent telcos as they prepare to battle Skype and other challenges presented by IP and the public Internet. It’s not too much to say that many vendors and some service providers now see IMS as the sin-gle most important telecom technology development of this decade, and almost all now see it as one of the most important. All major equipment vendors, many mainstream IT suppliers, and a host of smaller specialist companies have committed to the IMS architecture. Yet there are very few true IMS deployments to date, and many unanswered questions about where, why, and how IMS is best implemented. In reality, the role that IMS will ultimately play is unclear. Inevitably, that uncertainty is now lead-ing to a minor backlash that could see IMS advocates slide into disillusionment. A tongue-in-cheek presentation by Huawei earlier this year showed IMS just about to reach the peak of the "hype cycle" before plunging into that trough, just behind IPTV. IMS and the Future of Network Convergence delivers a complete accounting of IMS technol-ogy and product developments. This report covers 70 different suppliers, including incumbent equipment vendors, softswitch suppliers, major IT vendors, application-server vendors, and other specialists that are taking a leadership role in IMS development. The report provides a detailed competitive analysis of IMS vendors, including such vital company-specific information as:

• Which specific areas of IMS each vendor is targeting

• Technology partnerships among IMS vendors

• IMS contract wins to date

• Anticipated effect of IMS on vendor product strategies

• Anticipated effect of IMS on company revenues and profitability The report also delivers a comprehensive assessment of the entire IMS sector, including:

• A detailed description of IMS and its key objectives.

• An analysis of IMS's ever-more-central role in fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) and NGN.

• A complete accounting of IMS standards activity, including the roles played by the Inter-net Engineering Task Force (IETF), 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), European Telecommunications Standards In-stitute (ETSI), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs), and various other bodies working on aspects of IMS, as well as the relationships among them and their standards.

• An overview of early contract awards for IMS – what they're for, and who won them.

• A projected timeline for IMS development.

• A full explanation of the relationships among IMS and related convergence technologies and initiatives, including the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) and ser-vice delivery platforms (SDPs).

• A typology of the applications that will be deployed using IMS.


• An evaluation of IMS’s likely effect on wireless, wireline, and converged networks, as well as on the supply chains for those networks.

IMS is a powerful idea that has quickly developed a wide appeal as the route to NGN, as well as the means to expedite its implementation. This has come to pass because IMS boasts an unusu-ally wide range of potential benefits. Among these advantages:

• IMS is a layered architecture that separates transport, control, and application functions – allowing vendors to specialize and enter areas formerly closed off by vertically integrated traditional equipment vendors. This allows service providers to move from vertically inte-grated stacks, which that must be implemented for every new application, to a horizon-tally layered network in which many applications and application components are reused. It also clearly defines functions and the interfaces among the various functions within each layer; most vendors say that the standard has been relatively well specified, open-ing the way for service providers to buy "best-of-breed" components for different network functions.

• IMS is access-agnostic, allowing service providers to converge fixed and mobile networks and run the same applications across any access infrastructure – 3G, WiFi, and DSL, for example. This would allow service providers both to reduce costs and to enter markets that are currently unavailable. There is a widespread expectation that this will lead in par-ticular to the use of dualmode cellular/WLAN phones.

• IMS allows real-time IP applications to be deployed across the network but builds addi-tional functionality into SIP to handle wireless access, quality of service (QOS), security, charging, and other key needs of telcos as they deploy IP applications. ETSI's Tispan (Telecommunication and Internet Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking) ex-tensions to IMS further create strong call admission control features to protect network resources and QOS.

• IMS enables new kinds of applications to be created that blend features from different applications – for example, online gaming plus telephony. Many see rich voice as one of the most promising applications for IMS. Furthermore, the use of SIP makes it relatively easy to add and drop various service features, application components, and correspon-dents during a session. This, advocates hope, will create many new revenue-generating opportunities.

• IMS will allow service providers to deploy more applications, much more quickly, and at much lower cost, while still retaining control over QOS, tariffing, billing – and therefore revenues. Service providers will be able to tap into a far larger pool of software develop-ers using the abstraction layer built into IMS to hide network complexity from commercial software developers. This means they can create application lifecycles that are much like those in other consumer markets, earning new revenues from those that succeed and re-tiring those that fail without taking a massive hit in capex and opex.

• IMS is mostly focused on person-to-person (or multi-person) communications, as the fail-ure of many Web-based services in mobile networks has led mobile service providers to refocus on personal communications as the key to driving revenue.

• IMS includes a range of mechanisms that allow telcos to access resources, applications, and customers in legacy networks – meaning that IMS can be deployed gradually, and need not be simply an overlay or a costly replacement for that legacy infrastructure. These mechanisms include access to legacy terminals (so that there is no need for all IMS users to have IMS terminals) and to legacy services (e.g. intelligent network [IN] ser-vices need not be replaced; they can be reused in an IMS context).


As Figure 1.1 shows, it is the prospect of a better environment for creating applications that most captures of the imagination of the industry. "For the first time, service providers have stopped talking about a killer app, and instead are starting to see inexpensive service deployment as itself the killer app," says Chris King, senior director for worldwide telecom markets at BEA Systems. Figure 1.1: What Is the Most Important Catalyst for IMS Deployment?

Source: Light Reading* Indeed, IMS is now far more than just the means to mobile multimedia or even FMC; its transition from 3G to mainstream NGN has been rapid. Although IMS was initially defined in the cellular mobile industry for 3G networks, many vendors report that there is now greater interest in IMS among wireline carriers than among wireless carriers. The reason: Wireline carriers face a more urgent need to fill the revenue gap, and broadband DSL is a better medium for the wide range of applications that IMS can allow than 3G – primarily because it is inherently higher-bandwidth than 3G, and also because VOIP will be deployed much earlier in broadband than in 3G. The wireline momentum is in part driven by ETSI's development of Tispan, an NGN specification based on IMS but adapted to the needs of legacy wireline operators. Others with IMS in their sights include PacketCable, which is building IMS into standards for cable multiple system opera-tors (MSOs), and the U.S.-oriented Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), which has also adopted IMS as the basis for its ongoing work on NGNs. Meanwhile, industry as-sociations such as the Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) and the International Packet Com-munications Consortium are looking to bring IMS compliance into their work programs.

1.1 Key Findings Key findings of this report include the following: IMS stands a good chance of becoming the primary network and service architecture for delivering revenue-generating IP applications on Tier 1 networks. While mainstream com-mercial deployment will not get underway until 2006-2007, and while there remain many potential pitfalls, there is now massive momentum behind IMS and no obvious alternative to it. An unusu-ally wide range of standards bodies have thrown their weight behind the architecture, and IMS compliance is now a standard clause in RFPs for NGNs and related infrastructure projects. * Poll results from the Light Reading Webinar "Drilling Down on IMS."


IMS has won near-universal support among equipment vendors, and most are now tailor-ing their products to meet its specifications. The vendor space is becoming crowded and highly competitive: Heavy Reading has identified at least 70 companies with an IMS proposition, and no doubt others will be added to the ranks of IMS pursuers in the months ahead. Although vendors coming to the IMS market can be categorized by the types of products and services they offer, IMS is a highly fluid sector, with many overlaps that will create competition between seemingly disparate companies. The battles ahead are presaged by key technological overlaps between incumbent equipment vendors and application-server ven-dors; between wireless specialists and wireline specialists; between incumbents and softswitch vendors; and between incumbents and IT vendors or systems integrators. IMS will loosen conventional equipment vendors' grip on both control-layer and applica-tion-layer functions. In particular, the incumbents will lose ground as providers of telco applica-tions, while a range of application-server providers and application developers stand to benefit from IMS. Implementation of the key ISC (IMS Service Control) interface between control layer and application layer is becoming mandatory in RFPs, forcing open the formerly closed universe of telecom application development. However, many service providers still see the incumbents as their prime contractors, even if they mandate the use of best-of-breed components for particular IMS functions. Partnership management will grow increasingly important for all technology suppliers as a result of IMS. Although most major vendors already have significant partnership-management programs, IMS will facilitate and accelerate the trend, and those with a strong track record in this area stand to benefit. At the same time, IMS will require a strong systems integrator/prime con-tractor; this will grow in importance as a source of revenues and margins. The incumbents are escalating their emphasis on this area, in part to compensate for increased competition and po-tential commoditization elsewhere. Among the incumbents, Ericsson and Siemens are currently in the best positions regard-ing IMS. Ericsson has taken a clear lead by virtue of its early commitment to IMS. Its strong wire-less heritage is attractive to service providers, and it is the only vendor with a range of announced major IMS contract wins and customers. Siemens also bet early on IMS and has one important customer in KPN. Of the other incumbents, all are now strongly committed to IMS – with the no-table exception of Cisco. Second-tier vendors focused on softswitches are increasingly likely to compete head-to-head with the incumbents for major contracts. Companies such as Cirpack, Marconi, NetCen-trex, Sonus, and Veraz have fairly complete IMS offerings. The best-positioned softswitch vendor, however, is Italtel, which began developing IMS equipment earlier than most others and has commercial contracts with Albacom, Belgacom, and Telecom Italia. Softswitch vendors can point to their experience with VOIP in negotiation with customers, and many have made a strong bet on the Tispan specification, but most still have plenty of work to do to complete a convincing FMC proposition. Among the many other vendors in this emerging market, a few stand out by virtue of their early commitment to IMS and some customer successes. Early leaders in the application server (AS) space include BroadSoft and Ubiquity, both of which have a particularly wide platform of partners and real customer wins. However, we expect to see a continuing strong push by com-puting platform and IT specialists, especially BEA, HP, IBM, Intel, and Sun. All five companies have strong programs for IMS, albeit with different objectives, and all stand to make real gains as a result of the transition to IMS. For service providers, IMS's main appeal is its ability to provide more applications faster and at lower cost, but fixed/mobile convergence is an important secondary motivator. IMS (and its Tispan variant) is likely to make rapid progress in wireline networks. In fact, most vendors


believe IMS will be deployed more quickly by wireline providers than their wireless counterparts – often to address the need for converged fixed/mobile applications. There are significant differ-ences in approach to IMS, both between wireless and wireline and within these sectors. While some network operators will deploy IMS to meet an immediate need to provide one or two spe-cific services, others are taking a more strategic view of IMS as the fundamental basis for the transition to NGN. Although IMS is seen primarily as a mechanism for deploying revenue-generating applica-tions, there is little agreement about which applications should be deployed first, and this lack of consensus may delay carrier implementations. Most service providers need to justify IMS on the basis of specific revenue-generating services, but there is no clear "killer app." Among the many candidates are "push to X," video sharing, rich voice, rich messaging, rich gaming, presence, active phonebooks, community services, and others. IMS is a complex specification, and there are gaps in the standards, for example in the Pol-icy Decision Function (PDF) and the Service Capability Interaction Manager (SCIM). The involvement of so many different standards bodies, as well as many vested interests and a large volume of IMS change requests, all could stand in the way of interoperable systems and applica-tions. Interoperability testing is at an early stage, and with many standards still evolving, there is a danger that interoperability could be restricted to a few mass-market applications. There are strong parallels and linkages between IMS and two other emerging industry standardization movements: service delivery platforms and AdvancedTCA. The momentum behind IMS will boost the use of SDPs, especially in wireline networks, because the central aim of SDPs and IMS is the same: a lower-cost, more open environment for delivery of applications and services. Where SDPs bring much-needed technology for service creation, enablement, and or-chestration, IMS brings a more standardized environment. IMS also enjoys close synergies with ATCA, since the latter's standardized, blade-based architecture is well suited to IMS, allowing service providers and systems integrators to mix and match equipment and IMS functions from different vendors in the same ATCA chassis.

1.2 Report Scope and Structure IMS and the Future of Network Convergence is structured as follows: Section II presents a detailed overview of IMS’s development to date and its relationship to other NGN-enabling standards initiatives, including Tispan, ATCA, and SDPs. Section III details and analyzes the IMS strategies of major incumbent vendors, including current and planned implementations of IMS in specific product lines, vendor partnerships, and an-nounced wins in the IMS sector. Section IV covers the IMS strategies, product initiatives, partnerships, and customer wins of ma-jor IT vendors and systems integrators. Section V provides a complete accounting of the IMS initiatives now underway at leading softswitch suppliers worldwide. Section VI addresses market and product positioning of key specialist players in the IMS sector, including IMS-centric startups.


II. IMS: A Technology Overview

2.1 IMS's Origins IP Multimedia Subsystem was developed by the 3GPP specifications group to meet the needs of GSM network operators seeking to deploy IP applications in their new 3G networks. The 3GPP is an umbrella body that creates specs for all network operators that use GSM and are transitioning networks in line with 3G UMTS. The starting place for IMS designers was Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an IETF standard that allows many new applications, especially real-time applications, to be deployed on IP networks. The key concept in SIP is the session – roughly analogous to a connection or a call in a circuit-switched network, but much more flexible. SIP has strong appeal for IP application developers because it is a text-based programming language that allows for extensions to basic functionality to be added very simply – making it relatively easy to create complex applications. With SIP, us-ers can add functions and correspondents during a call – a key difference from conventional cir-cuit-switched calling. The 3GPP also adopted several related IETF protocols, including Diameter, which is used for authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), and COPS, a policy server standard. These are defined further below. Figure 2.1: A Basic IMS Model

Source: Light Reading


The designers of IMS had five main goals in mind:

• To create clear separation among the various functions that allow end-to-end delivery of an application or service, along with defined interfaces among the functions.

• To build additional features into SIP that allow it to be used in wireless networks.

• To add QOS and security features to the basic SIP profile.

• To create the means for operators to charge for services offered.

• To enable interworking with legacy networks. Figure 2.1 displays the resulting model. Note that this is view is highly simplified; some important functions are omitted for the sake of space. Also, vendors tend to have varying ideas about where exactly functions fit, from a layering perspective; the diagram above is a consensus view.

2.2 Core IMS Functions: Control Layer It's a striking feature of IMS that no two vendors' diagrams place the various functions of IMS in the same place, or even always in the same layer. Some place features such as gateways in the transport layer; some place features such as the HSS and MRF in the application layer. There are also synonyms for the layers themselves: Some call the application layer the service layer; the transport layer may be called the connectivity layer; and so on. However, the functions them-selves and the interfaces between them are clearly defined by 3GPP. The two core IMS functions it defines are the CSCF (Call Session Control Function) and the HSS (Home Subscriber Server). The CSCF acts as a centralized route engine, policy manager, and policy-enforcement point fa-cilitating the delivery of multiple real-time applications using IP transport. This function is applica-tion-aware and uses dynamic session information to manage network resources (feature servers, media gateways, and edge devices) and provide advance allocation of these resources per appli-cation and user context. As Figure 2.1 shows, it is further subdivided into three functions:

• The P-CSCF (Proxy-Call Session Control Function) is the subscriber's first contact point within IMS; it may be in a visited network, when s/he is roaming. It accepts requests and serves them internally or forwards them, e.g. to the I-CSCF in the user's home net-work. In Release 5 of 3GPP, the P-CSCF includes the PDF (defined separately below).

• The S-CSCF (Serving-CSCF) is responsible for identifying the user's service privileges, then selecting and providing access to the home-network AS. It would usually (but not always) be located in the subscriber's home network. It may also include the so-called Topology-Hiding Internetwork Gateway (THIG). There may be several S-CSCFs, includ-ing specialized servers, involved in control of any specific session.

• The I-CSCF (Interrogating-CSCF) may be used by the P-CSCF to gain access to the right S-CSCF in the user's home network. There may be multiple I-CSCFs in the network.

The HSS interfaces with mobile operator home-location register (HLR) databases to maintain the subscriber's profile. This element is integral to AAA. Its most important feature is that it acts as a single database and source of information on the user across both fixed and mobile networks. A key innovation here is to use the IETF Diameter protocol for communications between the HSS and the S-CSCF and ASs, replacing the legacy Radius protocol. Diameter adds support for charging and billing functions such as prepaid mobile, among other enhancements. The HSS is a vital IMS element because it gives users a stable identity and includes "presence" information – and thus allows internetwork roaming and obtaining application elements from a variety of sources without breaking off the session. It is therefore key to the many potential ser-vices based on presence and location, since the HSS would have primary responsibility for this.


In addition to the CSCF and HSS, IMS also defines a range of other features that are mostly con-nected with access to legacy network resources and with media resources:

• The BGCF (Breakout Gateway Control Function) picks the network where PSTN breakout is to occur, whenever this is required.

• The MGCF (Media Gateway Control Function) provides signaling interworking with the PSTN or the circuit-switched side of 3GPP, performing protocol conversion between SIP and ISUP. This functionality typically exists in softswitches, but it is separated out in IMS.

• The MGW (Media Gateway) provides bearer circuit interfaces to the PSTN and transcodes the media stream. It is effectively the same as current VOIP media gateways.

• The PDF (Policy Decision Function) manages policy for IP flows in network. Policy con-trol is required for session-by-session control of QOS in the network. In 3G Release 5 the PDF is included in the P-CSCF; in Release 6 the PDF can be separated out. The PDF is only defined in outline in 3GPP specs.

• COPS (Common Open Policy Services) is a preexisting protocol that has an important role in IMS in enforcing security and QOS policies.

• The MRF (Media Resource Function) is located by some vendors/models in the appli-cation layer, because it works closely with ASs to deliver actual applications. The MRF is effectively an IP media server, and manipulates media streams between ASs and end devices according to various application requirements and restrictions. For example, it can play announcements, or perform transcoding between different codecs, or handle certain conferencing requirements. It is divided into two parts:

o The MRFC (Media Resource Function Controller) controls resources in the MRFP using H.248 interface.

o The MRFP (Media Resource Function Controller) controls where the resources are actually located.

• The SCIM (Service Capability Interaction Manager) is a largely undefined 3GPP func-tion that provides a capability normally called service brokering, designed to orchestrate delivery of applications that need resources from a variety of different ASs.

The 3GPP specs also define a variety of interfaces (called "reference points" in 3GPP parlance) between functions. Many of these reference points are shown in Figure 2.2 below. The most im-portant is the ISC (IMS Service Control) interface between the CSCF and an AS. From the point of view of both service providers and vendors, the creation of an open interface at this point has potentially the most far-reaching consequences, allowing third-party ASs to access network func-tionality.

2.3 Core IMS Functions: Application Layer Meanwhile, at the application layer, 3GPP defined three types of AS that can be used with IMS. These are:

• SIP Application Server (SIP AS): The SIP AS is triggered by the S-CSCF, which will re-direct certain sessions to the SIP AS based on internal filters and criteria or by requesting filter data from the HSS. The SIP AS itself comprises filter rules to decide which of the possible many applications deployed on the server should be selected for handling the session. During execution of service logic, it is also possible for the SIP AS to communi-cate with the HSS to get additional information about a subscriber or to be notified about changes in the profile of the subscriber. SIP ASs are emerging as a key battleground be-tween traditional vendors and application specialists.


• OSA Parlay and Parlay X Gateway: Although not, strictly speaking, an AS, this is often characterized as such. Parlay X is based on Web-services technology, meaning it can be used by any programmer familiar with the conventional Web-services software develop-ment tools now widely used in enterprise software. There are significant differences of opinion about its ultimate role in IMS: Some see it as a distraction from the main event (SIP), while others see it as a vital (and well-established) bridge between the old and new worlds. One major service provider, Orange, believes that Parlay that will play "the cen-tral role," complemented by both SIP and IMS. Orange says Parlay will give it access to existing network resources, but offers a broader network service control environment than legacy IN.

• Camel or Legacy Application Server: The 3GPP spec also allows for use of Camel (Customized Application for Mobile network Enhanced Logic), the GSM variant on the IN concept, defined by 3GPP to separate control and switching functions, just as in IN. Camel servers are reached via the SSF (Service Switching Function) interface.

Figure 2.2 shows the relationships among these servers. ASs are reached using the ISC inter-face, the most important interface in the IMS model. All control-layer vendors, including all major equipment vendors, are building to the ISC interface, which means that, in principle, their control-layer equipment can be linked to any third-party ASs. Figure 2.2: Application Server Relationships

Source: Tekelec Another important feature of IMS ASs is that they can be reached separately by the S-CSCF to build combinational services or to reach resources on different kinds of services. It is here that the benefits of IMS become particularly strong. Currently, most public network software is created using arcane and often proprietary software languages that are understood only by a small community of equipment vendor software engi-neers. One vendor estimated that IMS would increase the number of potential public network ap-plication developers "by two or three orders of magnitude" – a view that is widely shared in the industry.


There are some obvious parallels in this respect between the IMS application layer and the sepa-rate development of SDPs, a phenomenon discussed in detail in the recent Light Reading Insider report Service Delivery Platforms: The Next Grand Design?, by Heavy Reading Analyst at Large Caroline Chappell. In fact, without the development of standardized development tools based on Java, including JAIN, Parlay, and others, and the APIs associated with them, much of the benefit promised by IMS could not be realized. "IMS and SDPs go hand-in-hand," says Jeff Liebl, VP of marketing at SIP AS specialist Ubiquity, who notes that this is where the real IMS revolution is playing out. Most industry sectors have already moved to SDP-type models, notes Liebl, and telecom is perhaps the only significant industry still wedded to a mainframe-like soft-ware-development environment. Most vendors think IMS will boost the deployment of SDPs, where an absence of clearly defined standards has held back deployment, especially in fixed networking. Figure 2.3 shows an IMS application in practice, in order to illustrate the way in which a specific session might call on sev-eral different ASs to fulfill a SIP request. Figure 2.3: IMS in Practice

Source: Light Reading


2.4 Standards Timeline 3GPP specs are contained within wide-ranging "Releases" which assume a migration over time from one Release to the next. From the point of view of IMS, however, the picture has become somewhat muddied, because elements of IMS are being deployed in networks that do not in fact conform to all the Release specs, or within networks for which IMS was not defined at all. Moreover, IMS is something of a moving target, since it is evolving in response to vendors' huge interest in IMS – an interest that has generated a large number of so-called "change requests" for IMS specs. This back-and-forth in turn increases the risk that IMS services – especially the more complex services – will not be interoperable across different vendor equipment or network boundaries. Most 3G networks are based on Release 99, so called because it was published in 1999. This is based on TDM and ATM, and does not include any IP elements. From 2000-2001, 3GPP defined Release 4, which formally split call control from transport to create a layered architecture, but did not specify use of SIP or IMS. A few networks are based on Release 4. IMS was initially specified in Release 5 in early 2003, which is not deployed in commercial mobile networks yet. Release 6, which is complete but not yet published, further fleshes out IMS. In brief:

• Release 5 defines basic IMS concepts, including the use of SIP and Diameter, the CSCF and HSS functions, and basic QOS concepts. It assumes that the network is a 3G UMTS network, and does not define mechanisms for access to other types of networks.

• Release 6 adds a good deal to this basic concept. It:

o Includes support for other types of networks, including WiFi.

o Separates the P-CSCF and the PDF.

o Allows for more complex, combinational services to be deployed. It's unlikely that mobile service providers will in practice move through all of these releases one by one, but it remains an open question as to which, if any, release will be left on the shelf. 3GPP is already working on Release 7, which is likely to include some important new principles in areas such as policy control and end-to-end QOS. Although Release 7 is unlikely to emerge until late 2006 or early 2007, that doesn't mean vendors won't include elements from it as they are agreed in the equipment they market as IMS. At the same time, some key mandatory requirements in 3GPP IMS specs are being modified or dropped. In particular, most early implementations of IMS will not use IPv6 – mandated by 3GPP – and many early implementations of "IMS" are not even deployed in 3GPP networks, but in wire-line networks, borrowing IMS concepts such as the CSCF and HSS to meet particular service provider objectives. Further muddying the water, many vendors are selling gear or announcing contracts described as "pre-IMS" – but this term has no agreed-upon meaning at all. It may include elements of IMS in-tegrated in existing equipment (for example softswitches), or it could mean a network that uses UMA access standards, but could migrate to IMS later. This confusing state of affairs has led to accusations that some contracts trumpeted as "IMS" do not really conform to IMS at all. For ex-ample, one vendor cut by half the number of IMS contracts it had signed after a discussion with Heavy Reading about whether these were "real" IMS contracts. At a minimum, a network must include three elements to qualify as "IMS" in any meaningful sense: the CSCF; the HSS; and the ISC interface to the application layer. Many argue, however, that most other elements are likely to be required in real-world networks, including media servers (MRF) and legacy servers (MGCF, BGCF).


To make matters worse, not all of the elements of IMS are clearly defined. Vendors point to sev-eral areas of controversy:

• The PDF is not defined in detail, and there is considerable disagreement among both vendors and service providers about the right way to handle policy control.

• The SCIM is mentioned but not at all defined in 3GPP specs. Again, there is a wide range of views about exactly what the SCIM is for, whether it should be separately defined, and what the requirement is for service brokering, orchestration, and related functions.

2.5 Beyond 3GPP: The Spread of IMS The new 3GPP spec quickly drew the attention of standards bodies outside the 3G community because it appeared to answer many of the questions being posed by other standards-setters. ETSI is the most important of these various bodies; its Tispan spec is now beginning to rival the 3GPP spec as a key requirement for vendors. Tispan was established in September 2003 by merging of two separate ETSI groups – one work-ing on network protocol issues (SPAN), and one working on VOIP and IP multimedia (TIPHON). Tispan's core objectives are to create specs for an all-IP network with multimedia capabilities, supporting multiple services and mobility (or "nomadicity") but retaining interoperability with leg-acy networks. These are, of course, very close to the objectives 3GPP set for IMS, and Tispan decided early to adopt IMS Release 6 as the basis for its work. Tispan of course needed to create some extensions to the original work to fit the needs of legacy wireline network operators, but an important feature of Tispan's work is that all extensions are submitted to 3GPP for approval, so that the latter remains the ultimate arbiter of what can and cannot be added to IMS. Tispan employs much of the IMS model, but it has extended it in several important ways. These extensions are highlighted in Figure 2.4, which also shows differences in terminology between the two specs. The key extensions in the Tispan variant on IMS are:

• Resource and Admission Control Subsystem (RACS): This is a QOS mechanism that handles session admission control and gate control, controlling transport resources at the boundary between the access and core networks. 3GPP IMS does not currently include admission control as part of the standard, although some believe it is implied in the PDF. RACS itself contains certain orthodox policy-control elements, e.g. to control access to resources at peak hours. In effect, Tispan has more closely defined the PDF function, which, as noted above, is poorly defined in 3GPP IMS. RACS is also designed to deal with the fact that in 3G networks, QOS features (e.g. resource reservation) are generally triggered by terminals, whereas in wireline networks it is anticipated that this function will be handled by the network.

• Network Attachment Subsystem (NAS): This handles IP address allocation, authenti-cation, and authorization, access network configuration, and location management, re-placing certain 3GPP procedures. This subsystem enables terminals to attach to wireline networks in nomadic situations, for example, and gives Tispan its mobile features.

• PSTN Emulation/Simulation: Clearly one of the key requirements in Tispan is to sup-port the legacy fixed network, and Tispan has defined two key means to do this. In PSTN emulation, the aim is to provide capabilities and interfaces that allow a service to be pro-vided that is more or less identical to PSTN service, and that works with conventional analog (“black”) phones; PSTN simulation, on the other hand, provides PSTN-like service capabilities using session control over IP, and is used with IP phones, softphones, and so on. Simulation is clearly easier to provide than emulation, but both are defined to meet the differing needs of various wireline network operators and service providers.


Figure 2.4: Tispan and IMS

A-BGF: Access Border Gateway Function T-MGF: Trunking Media Gateway Function I-BGF: Interconnect Border Gateway Function IBCF: Interconnect Border Control Function IWF: Inter Working Function Source: ETSI The first public release of Tispan, Release 1, is planned for September 2005 and includes the following elements:

• Service capabilities:

o Real-time conversational services (voice, video telephony)

o Messaging (instant messaging, MMS), presence

o Content delivery such as VOD, video streaming

o Legacy services – PSTN/ISDN emulation and simulation

• Network architecture:

o xDSL access as primary focus

o WLAN and fixed-LAN access

o 3G/UMTS IMS core subsystem reused as basis for SIP-based services control As with 3GPP IMS, a wide range of issues are not addressed; it is beyond the scope of this report to consider these issues in detail, but they include, for example, aligning AAA mechanisms in 3GPP IMS and Tispan. 3GPP assumes the presence of a terminal with a SIM card and USIM as a key aspect of AAA, but wireline networks contain no such features. Release 2 of the Tispan spec, addressing this and other issues, is anticipated in the second half of 2006.


Among other agenda items, the group will be looking at:

• The delivery of video on demand and streaming services

• Delivery over other access networks, e.g. WiMax, FTTH

• End-to end QOS mechanisms

• Location-based services

• Enterprise network services Apart from ETSI, the other body that is having a significant impact on IMS deployment is the OMA, whose primary goal is to ensure the interoperability of new services deployed on cellular mobile networks. The OMA's best-known activity to date is the creation of a push-to-talk-over-cellular (POC) spec, which most industry vendors are planning to implement. This spec is ex-pected to be deployed in vendor equipment towards the end of 2005. The OMA is working in a number of other areas that will be important for IMS. Its technical work-ing groups include groups covering Messaging, Presence & Availability, Location, Mobile Com-merce & Charging, and Mobile Web Services. The OMA Instant Messaging and Presence Ser-vice (IMPS) spec is more mature than the POC spec, and the OMA is also working specifically on an IMS enabler that specifies how other OMA enablers (e.g. POC) use IMS interfaces and achieve interoperability over IMS. The key standards bodies and their activities are summarized in Figure 2.5. Figure 2.5: IMS-Related Standards Initiatives

BODY NETWORK TYPE NAME STATUS

IETF Any IP network

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)

Diameter Common Open Pol-icy Service (COPS)

SIP approved in early 1999, now present in commercial

products and services; refinement ongoing. Has worked

closely with 3GPP on IMS.

3GPP

UMTS (W-CDMA) mobile networks; being extended to other access networks

in Release 6

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)

Initially defined in 3GPP Release 5; refined in Release 6; Release 7 definition with further

features now in preparation.

3GPP2 CDMA2000 mobile net-

works; being extended to other access networks

Multimedia Domain (MMD)

Mirroring developments in 3GPP; interoperable with 3GPP IMS.

CableLabs Cable IP networks PacketCable 2.0

IMS expected to form the core of SIP-based control layer for cable

services; SIP already integrated in PacketCable Multimedia (PCMM).

ETSI Next-gen wireline networks Tispan

Release 1 expected in September 2005 and is heavily based on IMS.

ATIS North American wireline networks NGN

Basing its work heavily on work and concepts already

completed by Tispan.


BODY NETWORK TYPE NAME STATUS

ITU Next-gen wireline networks ITU SG13 NGN Largely based on Tispan work.

OMA All mobile networks OMA POC

Focused on standard definition of services. Initial focus is push

to talk over cellular (POC); Release 1 due end of 2005.

GSM Associa-

tion GSM, UMTS N/A

IMS interoperability testing via Global Roaming Exchange (GRX); two sets of tests now

successfully completed. At first gloss, the convergence of so many organizations around a single standard is good news for the industry – suggesting that for the first time, most of the key bodies are pulling in the same direction. But it also raises the considerable risk that these various bodies will not coordinate ef-fectively, or even dissolve into in-fighting over control.

2.6 How IMS Fits With Other Standards Because of its wide-ranging nature, IMS has implications for an array of related technologies and bodies, a few of which are highlighted here.

IMS and SDPs

There are strong affinities between IMS and SDPs. SDPs first came to prominence in the mobile sector, where DoCoMo's success with i-mode, delivered via an SDP, has attracted particular at-tention. The basic objectives of SDPs are strikingly similar to those of IMS. These include reduc-ing the cost and time to deploy applications; making it easier to package separate services and applications together; and creating an environment in which many applications can be deployed by third-party providers. However, SDPs do not comprise a specific mix of technologies and products, and are not stan-dardized. Rather, they assemble and integrate, from standard IT components, all that is required to deliver a particular set of services, including integration with network functions and with OSS/BSS. There is no clear consensus on layers, interfaces, and components. From this point of view, IMS may help to bring some order in a fairly confusing market, and therefore give a boost to both IMS and SDPs. "IMS could be a unifying theme that helps get rid of some of the variations in the current SDP platforms," said Richard Cardone, director of marketing with Tazz Networks. The two architectures are also fairly complementary. Where IMS is network-centric, SDPs are application-centric and tend to include a lot of functionality – for example in service enablers, or-chestration, and creation – that are not well defined in IMS. Many key players in the SDP market are also players in the IMS market, and a lot of the function-ality in their SDPs reappears in their IMS propositions. These include Alcatel, BEA, Ericsson, HP, IBM, and Sun – all of which have IMS at the heart of their strategy. One notable exception: Micro-soft, which has emerged as an aggressive and feared competitor in SDP, but told Heavy Reading it had no proposition planned for IMS (though some vendors were skeptical about that denial). Although no industry group has formal responsibility for SDPs, there are several bodies that are standardizing elements of SDPs, and which are therefore peripherally important for IMS. These include the Parlay Group and the Open Communications Architecture Forum.


IMS and ATCA

AdvancedTCA is a standardized hardware architecture that is enjoying a momentum similar IMS's, and for related reasons. ATCA is a blade server architecture in which blades fulfilling dif-ferent functions from different vendors can be mixed and matched, and the whole managed as an integrated system. Intel has been running a particularly high-profile campaign to draw attention to the beneficial rela-tionship between IMS and ATCA. Specifically, since ATCA makes it easier to mix and match blades from different vendors in a single chassis, it has obvious benefits for IMS. At Supercomm, Intel sought to point up the benefits in a working demo that mixed equipment from three different vendors – HP (HSS), Leapstone (S-CSCF), and Ubiquity (SIP AS) – in an Intel ATCA chassis. Some vendors, including Alcatel, Motorola, Nortel, and Siemens, have committed to move to an ATCA platform. Others, notably Ericsson, see their hardware platform as a key aspect of their proposition. The platform has also drawn support from major computing vendors, including Sun. ATCA is not the only blade-based architecture attracting support as a basis for IMS. Most impor-tantly, the IBM BladeCenter is already successfully established, and many vendors are support-ing it by implementing IMS for the IBM BladeCenter. Lucent's Session Manager is likewise blade-based and can accommodate a mix of IMS functions, depending on clients' needs.

2.7 The IMS Application Space Ultimately the purpose of IMS is to create a more fruitful environment for the development of ap-plications, and a wide range of applications has been proposed and suggested, though given the early stage of actual deployment, few are in use. Figure 2.6 presents a few of those applications by basic category. Figure 2.6: Applications Enabled by IMS

CATEGORY SUB-CATEGORY

Push to X Talk, watch, text, stream

Instant Conferencing Voice, video, IM, chat…

Messaging Voice, video, IM, unified…

Gaming Multiparty, mobile, combined with chat, voice, IM…

IP Centrex Hosted PBX, virtual receptionist, personal assistant

Personal Information Management

Calendars, alerts, personalized announcements, active phonebooks, converged buddy lists…

Combinational Services Voice + video sharing; chat + gaming; message + calendar; collaborative working

Presence Find me/follow me, availability status

Location-Based Services Find nearest X


Some of these are basic functions that are effectively part of the base IMS standard. Most nota-bly, these application building blocks are:

• Presence management: the ability to know whether a person is available, and potential methods of communication (e.g. voice, video, messaging, IM, PTT, etc.) – defined either by terminal, location, or user preference.

• Location: the ability to find out where a user is before communication takes place. There are interesting differences of view about where the emphasis should be in deploying ser-vices, and no real consensus about which applications to deploy first. This partly reflects the dif-ference between wireless and wireline services; in wireless, the emphasis is clearly on "push to X" – driven by service provider interest in new forms of personal communications, and by the OMA's work in this area. In wireline, the emphasis is on VOIP and VOIP-related services; IBM, for example, is a strong advocate of "rich voice," in which telephony is combined with other IMS ser-vices, such as active phonebooks or online gaming to provide a much more convenient and at-tractive service for users. Others see it as a means to fend off growing competition from the Internet. HP advocates "rich messaging far beyond PTT, to compete with growing threat from portal-based IMS services." Many agree that presence is perhaps the most important individual application enabler in IMS, a basis for a wide range of other services. Others point to unified messaging as the key – an idea that has failed to make much progress in conventional networks, but is easier to deploy on IMS. Ad hoc community services also find support, based on the fact that IMS makes it very easy to create such communities using active phonebooks (or buddy lists) and the inherent ability in SIP to assemble, add, and delete correspondents during a session. Who will supply these applications? This is perhaps the most important strategic question raised by the emergence of IMS, since there is a general belief among vendors that value will migrate upwards in the application layer as control-layer functions are commoditized: For example, Net-Centrex estimated that "three-quarters of the value" in IMS would be in the application layer. Broadly speaking, there are three major potential sources of applications:

• Large traditional equipment vendors and emerging softswitch vendors

• Third-party AS vendors and application developers

• Service providers themselves Most of the apps running on large wireless and wireline telco networks today were developed by the first group, but most vendors believe IMS will lead to much more development from the sec-ond and third groups. Opinion differs as to whether service providers themselves will become a bigger source of application development. One vendor noted that many service providers are cut-ting back on the technical groups that currently develop apps, and argued that the biggest benefi-ciaries would be independent software vendors – a view that has fairly wide support. But will traditional vendors maintain their dominance, despite the opening of the application envi-ronment? Most certainly expect to at least supply most of the mainstream apps; there is a curious consensus among the big vendors that runs roughly as follows: "We will open up our IMS control layer to third-party application development, but we'll continue to develop and offer applications, and we expect to continue to dominate the supply of mass-market telecom applications. Third parties will play a role, but it will be mainly confined to innovative new services or niche services." Naturally, application specialists take a very different view. While several outcomes are possible, if IMS really does deliver technically, it's hard to imagine that service providers will continue to feel the need to turn to the big vendors for all the main elements of IMS, and it's in applications that the big vendors are most vulnerable.


2.8 Vendor Positioning One of the most interesting features of the IMS scene is that many vendors are scrambling to catch up with unexpectedly high service provider interest – a reversal of the usual situation, in which vendors push new technology at lukewarm customers. Vendors report that wireline RFPs for NGN-type networks are already including ETSI Tispan compliance as a mandatory requirement, for example – despite the fact that the Tispan Release 1 spec won't be completed before September of this year. "When I look at RFPs, nearly every [fixed] carrier is now interested in IMS, especially in Europe, and not just traditional telcos but ca-ble MSOs," says Andreas Mueller-Schubert, head of the fixed network solutions group at Sie-mens. "They are almost all requiring we build IMS in." Similarly, 3GPP IMS, which is specified only for IPv6 networks, is being picked up for use in IPv4 networks because service providers want it as soon as possible and aren't ready to wait for de-ployment of IPv6. In a nutshell, vendors are doing two things to meet the developing demand for IMS gear:

• Adapting existing product lines so that they fit the IMS spec, typically by renaming exist-ing equipment, separating out functionality that is currently integrated in one box, filling in gaps in product lines, and adding key interfaces, such as the ISC interface.

• Partnering with third-party companies to fill in gaps or to hitch a ride with major network equipment vendors and systems integrators on big IMS and NGN RFPs.

Some vendors bet early. Among the incumbents, Ericsson, NEC, and Siemens stand out as the vendors that invested first in IMS; Lucent is a fast follower among the incumbents. On the softswitch side, Italtel stands out as a vendor that decided to invest relatively early in IMS, and especially in compliance with Tispan. And among AS specialists, the pioneers include BroadSoft, Hotsip, and Ubiquity; Ubiquity, in particular, was one of the earliest to gamble on IMS. Typical of those running to catch up is leading softswitch vendor Sonus – written off a few months ago by some competitors as an IMS also-ran, but now a prominent advocate of the new architec-ture. Sonus, like many rivals, has tried to fit its existing products into the IMS spec, in order to meet the sudden rise in interest, but has also invested significantly in bringing its products in line and filling in gaps. Other softswitch companies, such as NetCentrex and Veraz, have also refo-cused on IMS in the past few months. NetCentrex, for instance, is developing some key functions internally – such as the S-CSCF – while seeking partners in areas where it lacks internal exper-tise – the HSS. A few vendors, notably Cisco, remain skeptical about the entire IMS enterprise. Elsewhere much of the action has centered on partnerships – one of the most important potential effects of IMS, and already having quite an impact. Though most service providers still want to contract with a single "prime" for major NGN upgrades, and still tend to favor the incumbent tele-com equipment vendors for that, they also want best-of-breed components in each functional area of IMS – and are ready to specify what those components should be. "Some service provid-ers are using IMS as an opportunity to take a fresh look at relationships," says Eddie Patterson, IMS program lead in IBM's business-consulting division. "They want one company to handle implementation, but they want those companies to source best-of-breed technology from other vendors," says Gani Nayak, senior VP of marketing at IP Unity. "They see it as a big systems integration project, but right now prefer the TEMs [incumbent telecom equipment manufacturers] to do it." Hence the strong emphasis on so-called "ecosystems," which are sprouting everywhere to meet the service provider's buying preferences. Among those building so-called IMS ecosystems or some variant thereof are IBM, Intel, Lucent, Nortel, and Sun, but most vendors now see partner-


ing as a vital requirement. Siemens, for instance, characterized partner management as one of the two key skills required for success in IMS (the other being integration management). Likewise, among the many IMS specialists, partnering is usually seen as one of the most impor-tant requirements. Most of these companies sell primarily through OEM deals and resale agree-ments, and they are finding fertile ground as vendors seek to fill holes and meet client require-ments to open up. Companies such as BroadSoft and Ubiquity, with a strong story and experi-ence in the sector, have particularly wide sets of partners. For the incumbents, this creates some dilemmas. Many naturally want to provide as much func-tionality as they can at every level of IMS, but things are changing fast. The emergence of archi-tectures such as ATCA that make it easy to mix and match blades from different vendors in-creases the risk that service providers will no longer be chained to big-box incumbents. One of the most impressive demonstrations at Supercomm was a live mobile IMS link running voice and gaming simultaneously using blades from HP (HSS), Ubiquity (SIP AS) and Leapstone (S-CSCF) collocated in an Intel ATCA chassis. Many vendors remain committed to proprietary chassis, but the links between ATCA and IMS, highlighted by Intel, look compelling and may lead to a faster migration to ATCA, if current concerns about costs can be overcome. Across the whole range of IMS, there are specialists that are seeking to break into the model at particular points with equipment that is cheaper, more flexible, or better specified than the incum-bents' own offerings. Figures 2.7 and 2.8 show just how many companies there are, many of them focused on one or two areas in the IMS model. Figure 2.7: Who's Playing in the IMS Space?

TYPE OF COMPANY IMS STRATEGY KEY VENDORS

Major Telecom Equipment

Manufacturers

Usually a "soup-to-nuts" proposition covering all aspects of IMS, but usually involving partners for some elements. Convergence of wireless/wireline is

usually a key theme.

Alcatel, Ericsson, Siemens, Lucent, Nortel,

Nokia, Huawei, ZTE, NEC, Motorola

Softswitch Vendors Leverage VOIP expertise to compete against the major vendors for end-to-end NGN IMS

contracts. Often have a strong Tispan angle.

Cirpack, Italtel, NetCentrex,

Sonus, Veraz

Computing and IT Platform Providers

Use IMS to break into proprietary incumbent strangleholds in a range of areas, but often also partner with incumbents.

BEA, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sun, IBM, Solid, RadiSys

Control-Layer Specialists

Often focused on an innovative approach to specific control-layer elements.

Apertio (HSS), Gallery IP Telephony (CSCF), Leapstone (S-CSCF),

VeriSign (HSS)

Applications-Server Specialists

Use IMS to build a stronger position in the telco applications space, usually via partnerships.

AePona, BridgePort, BroadSoft, NewStep, Per-sona, Personeta, Ubiquity

Media Resource and Gateway Vendors

Be best-of-breed suppliers for key IMS functions such as MRFC/MRFP or MGCF.

AudioCodes, Brooktrout, Convedia, IP Unity


TYPE OF COMPANY IMS STRATEGY KEY VENDORS

Session Border Control or Policy

Management Pro-viders

Migrate SBC to IMS; help define policy management in evolving standards.

Acme Packet, Bridgewater, NexTone,

Operax, Tazz

Client Software Providers

Fill an important gap in IMS specs for interoperable handset software. Ecrio, SIPquest, Sonim

Signaling Vendors Build on existing expertise to create better links between IMS and legacy nets. Tekelec, Ulticom

Note: Some companies on this list also fulfill other functions with IMS. Perhaps the biggest potential disruption lies in the creation and development of network applica-tions. This area is largely the preserve of the incumbents today, but one of the key objectives of IMS is to enable telcos to deploy third-party ASs and open development to a huge army of soft-ware writers that use conventional Java-based languages rather than arcane (and proprietary) telco network languages. In principle, this is probably the single biggest potential advantage of IMS, since it creates an Internet-like environment for software developers while allowing telcos to continue to control quality, billing, and pricing. But will it happen? Most of the incumbents have accepted the principle of a more open applica-tion environment by implementing the key ISC interface in IMS solutions, allowing third-party ac-cess to control-layer elements including the HSS and CSCF. But as noted earlier in the section on applications, that does not mean that they are going to stop supplying most of the major appli-cations themselves. A greater danger is that IMS's standardized nature will lead to rapid commoditization of control-layer functionality, making it even more imperative that the incumbent vendors create value else-where – as providers of applications, integration, service orchestration, or professional services. Figure 2.8: Who Does What in IMS

VENDOR IMS INITIATIVE*

Acme Packet

Largely focused on Tispan; reworked SBCs for roles such as P-CSCF and (in Tispan) ABGF, IBCF, IWF, and IBGF

AePona OSA Parlay Gateway; also Service Interaction Manager for service brokering

Alcatel End-to-end offer includes all main IMS components; mostly common components for wireless/wireline; ASs, service creation, and range of apps also offered

Apertio HSS

AudioCodes MGW and MRFP in IBM BladeCenter architecture, for a variety of access networks, including PSTN, PacketCable, 3GPP, and WiFi

BayPackets SIP AS and OSA Parlay Gateway; later this year, Mobility Management AS for use with multiple applications network; also offers some apps

* Products listed are already offered or are planned for launch over the next year.



BEA Converged J2EE/SIP AS and Network Gatekeeper for policy enforcement

Blueslice HSS; AS; Universal Presence Server

BridgePort Networks AS focused on mobile VOIP

Bridgewater Policy management; supplies Alcatel's Subscriber Service Controller; planning HSS and PDF for IMS

BroadSoft AS focused on VOIP, especially enterprise apps

Brooktrout MRF, also certain AS functions

Cirpack "IMS-like" architecture now transitioning to IMS; strong emphasis

on conformance with key Tispan functions, including AGCF and MGW; working with ECI on joint Tispan solution

Cisco "IMS-like" offer; some functions not formally decomposed; claims to deliver a "super-set" of IMS services; some apps offered

Continuous Computing

Protocol stacks for most control-layer elements, including CSCF, HSS, MGFC, and MRFC; will also create integrated solutions for these

that include management layer, API, and other elements

Convedia MRFP

Digitalk SIP AS oriented around voice

Ecrio IMS client software and SDKs; IMPS server; focused on meeting OMA specs

Ericsson End-to-end offer includes all elements, many integrated in one box: ASs, service creation, wide range of apps, client software, systems integration all offered

Excel Switching

IMS roadmap includes CSCF, MGCF, MRF, and MGW supporting a variety of apps

Gallery IP Telephony All CSCF functions, beginning with P-CSCF

HP Strong focus on service "federation," service creation, and service enablement; also offers HSS and MRF

Highdeal Pricing and rating engine for IMS

Hotsip SIP/J2EE AS; combined SIP/J2EE service-creation environment; range of apps

Huawei End-to-end offer includes some apps and application enablers (e.g. presence)

IBM Strong focus on service creation and orchestration; also device client and management solutions and service management; also computing

platforms based on BladeCenter and Carrier Grade Linux



Infitel AS supporting SIP, OSA/Parlay, and SS7 environments; also a range of apps

Intel ATCA-based computing platform for IMS

IP Unity MRF; JAIN SLEE IMS AS including SDK

IPeria AS oriented around VOIP, including a range of apps

Italtel End-to-end solution includes all control-layer functions; offers AS where no best-of-breed solution exists; Tispan-oriented; 3GPP functionality coming gradually

jNETx SCIM; service-creation environment; charging and rating system; programmable IMS SSF

Kodiak AS focused on POC; also conferencing, voice messaging, presence, and other services

Leapstone S-CSCF and SCIM functions via CCE Service Broker

Lucent End-to-end offer includes all main elements; same proposal for wireline/wireless; "service-enhancement" layer also offered; wide range of apps; emphasis on HSS

Marconi Largely focused on Tispan; offers CSCF and some other elements in own right, but creating end-to-end offer with many third-party elements

Motorola End-to-end offer includes all main elements; decomposed blade-based architec-ture blades; third-party HSS; range of ASs and apps; emphasis on client software

NEC End-to-end offering including all main elements; range of ASs and apps; also offers client software

NetCentrex Creating end-to-end offer with all main elements before the

end of 2005; some elements already available; some elements (e.g. HSS) from third parties; includes ASs and some apps

Netrake IMS Security Gateway (SEG) planned

Newport Networks Tispan policy and session management

NewStep AS with SIP and SS7 signaling; focused on FMC, especially call control across different access-network types

NexTone Policy and session-based management

Nokia End-to-end offer including all main elements; range of ASs and apps; also offers client software

Nortel End-to-end offer including all main elements; strategic partnership with IBM for service-creation elements

Open Cloud JAIN SLEE application-development environment for use in SIP-IMS, OSA-Parlay, and SS7 networks



Openwave Client applications software and SDKs, including POC and other push-to-X services

Operax "Extended" PDF for bandwidth management, focused on Tispan

Persona SIP AS for mobile and FMC; also offers some apps, and service creation tools

Personeta ASs; also service brokering and SCIM functionality

Qualphone IMS client software and SDK

RadiSys ATCA-based computing platform for IMS

Radvision Video services and apps for IMS networks

Siemens End-to-end offer including all main elements; ASs and apps offered; client device software also offered

SIPquest IMS client for all major handset OSs; also makes server software (not yet IMS-compliant)

Solid ATCA-based computing platforms with strong emphasis on distributed real-time database

Sonim Specialized ASs, initially for POC, that will transition to OMA standard; also makes client software for same apps

Sonus Creating end-to-end offer before end of 2005; includes ASs and apps; some elements (e.g. media functions) integrated in one box

Sun Hardware platforms, operating software and middleware, including software for directories, identity management, and ASs; systems

management and client software also emphasized

Sylantro AS focused on hosted enterprise services, more recently some consumer; includes service-creation environment

Tatara Systems Convergence Platform enables IMS to be extended to non-3G networks

Tazz Networks Policy control

Tekelec Fairly complete solution, including most control-layer elements, a wide range of gateways including specialized signaling gateways, ASs, and a range of apps

Ubiquity SIP AS

Ulticom Signaling software for IMS

Veraz Largely focused on Tispan; offers all main elements, including equivalents of CSCF and HSS and media elements

VeriSign HSS with support for SIP, SS7, and ENUM


Many vendors are pushing systems integration and professional services, in part to ensure a con-tinuing high-margin, high-value business in this changing environment. Among those that placed particular emphasis on this in interviews were Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent, and Siemens. Some in the vendor community believe that the emergence of IMS will give a strong boost to conventional systems integrators, which can use the migration to IMS to bring skills learned in other vertical sectors into the formerly closed telecom sector. "You could see the emergence of hosted IMS which doesn't involve Tier 1 equipment vendors at all," said one specialist IMS supplier. "You could have an IMS applications site hosted by a big systems integrator and Carrier 1 takes five services, Carrier 2 takes four services, and so on. We finally may have the plug-and-play application environment we've been dreaming about."

2.9 IMS Deployment Projections Despite all the current activity, the hope and the hype, most initial IMS contracts are small-scale trial networks, and few vendors expect to see big, mainstream contract awards in any quantity before 2006. A rough view of the expected rollout of IMS is shown in Figure 2.9. Figure 2.9: Projected Timeline for IMS Deployments

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Wireline

Widespread trials of IMS

as NGN platform

A few commer-cial contracts are awarded by wire-line providers for

NGN/FMC

Converged ser-vices based on

IMS begin to pro-liferate, encourag-

ing application development

Widespread use of third-

party applica-tion develop-ers for IMS

Wireless

Early de-ployment by pioneers for one or two services

More commercial contracts with

wireless provid-ers for new ser-vice deployment

Wireless providers begin significant

migration to VOIP and VOIP-related

services using IMS

IMS becomes mainstream mechanism

for delivery of new wireless

services

IMS becomes the mainstream mechanism for convergence

and application deployment, and

the distinction between wire-less and wired

service providers is breaking down

There is reason for caution in this outlook, because there are many gaps, uncertainties, and is-sues that remain to be resolved. Among them:

• IMS client software: Although this is being belatedly addressed, many see it as an area that was neglected by standards bodies, leaving a gap in the chain. "It's critical that there is further work on the client side," says Steven Dietch, who works in HP's Network Ser-vice Provider division. "This was the crucial factor in the success – or lack of it – of WAP and MMS." Others believe there is a danger that a range of clients that do not interoper-ate will emerge as vendors and service providers rush into the market; the OMA clearly has a key role to play in preventing this from happening, but the very breadth of applica-tions being considered will make this a tough task.

• Interoperability: This major wish-list item is now being addressed by a variety of bodies: for example vendors have pushed an interoperable standard now emerging from OMA for POC; and the GSM Association has conducted successful trials between key vendors' IMS equipment. But there's widespread recognition that a lot more is needed.

• Service brokerage: IMS defines the SCIM function to handle this, but it is only barely mentioned in the 3GPP spec. "Service brokerage is currently totally undefined and means something different to everyone," says Mark McIlvane, president and CEO of Per-


soneta. That has left the field open for vendors to push their own solutions. "The standard CSCF just gives you the initial set of filters, e.g. trigger conditions for AS, etc. It doesn't, for example, put together composite services, or time-of-day routing instructions," says another vendor. "The question is, do you put more functionality into the CSCF or the SCIM? This isn't specified at all at present."

• Policy control and bandwidth management: There is no clear agreement about how to do this: One vendor talked of a "religious war" between those who believe a dedicated inline device is needed and those who believe existing devices and functions can handle things. One possibility is that a single approach will be rejected in favor of a dual stan-dard. Meanwhile, Tispan is defining a range of different tools for policy management, and the DSL Forum is also seen as a potential source of specifications. Pulling all of this to-gether may take time.

• IMS benchmarking: There are no clear recognized benchmarks for good or bad per-formance in core IMS functions such as the CSCF or the HSS. These benchmarks will most likely include raw-speed measures, such as number of session set-ups per second, but remain undefined today. This is now being addressed by a variety of institutions, most importantly the Fraunhofer Institut für Offene Kommunikationssysteme (FOKUS) in Ger-many, but it's likely to be a while before clear comparable data exists for major IMS com-ponents. In the absence of benchmarks, service providers must rely on qualitative as-sessments and vendors' own subjective data on performance – an unsatisfactory com-promise for many engineering departments.

Most of all, perhaps, despite the very strong interest in IMS among major service providers of all kinds, there's still no guarantee that this will translate into big commercial deployments in the near term. For that to happen, service providers need to convince themselves and their boards that the business case is there. There is general agreement that IMS can't and won't be justified on a "build it and they will come" basis: Initial implementations will include at least one "anchor" application that creates revenue from day one – meaning the customary search for killer apps continues. But an IMS network built and justified by one or two apps is likely to be more expensive than deploying those same apps in the usual "silo" fashion – meaning that, in the end, IMS must be justified by some larger goal. In light of that, the dilemma for service providers, simply stated, is this: can they really transform themselves into service supermarkets, offering a wider and wider range of revenue-generating services? Skeptics point to two huge barriers: internal inertia and organizational rivalries; and the increasingly rapid deployment of SIP or SIP-like services by third parties, often for no charge. To say the least, it's a big challenge for major service providers, most of which look more like utilities than supermarkets. "IMS implies a huge cultural shift inside the carriers," says Scott Wharton, BroadSoft's VP of mar-keting. "Many are focused on mobile, fixed, and other access, but IMS implies a total reorganiza-tion around transport (access) control and applications. If they don't reorganize, IMS will break the company. But [if they do] the question is: Who then owns the application layer?" For those with long memories, IMS recalls another ambitious project with very similar objectives: the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN). AIN was conceived in the mid 1980s. Its purpose was to take fuller advantage of the advent of digital computing, which was transforming telecom net-works. Among other things, AIN aimed to:

• Make application deployment both easier and cheaper, by separating service control from switching.

• Increase third-party involvement in application creation and reduce service providers' de-pendence on major vendors.


The result, creators argued, would be a revolution in the application environment. To a limited degree – but only to a limited degree – it succeeded. IN certainly created new revenues from new applications, especially in areas such as freephone and premium-rate services. But it achieved far less than its designers had originally intended, and it did not break the control of the incum-bents in application development. Is IMS destined for a similar fate? "IMS offers a good balance between intelligence in the network and intelligence outside it – it isn't just another IN." says Mueller-Schubert of Siemens. "You do need some intelligence in the network because it makes for good user interfaces, it improves ease of use and scaleability." But at the same time, IMS is inherently a more distributed architec-ture than the IN – albeit not as distributed as peer-to-peer applications such as Skype. And can a peer-to-peer application mix and match service functions inside a session across a variety of ter-minals and networks, both wired and wireless? In summary, prospects for IMS look strong, but there is plenty that could still go wrong. In the next 12 to 18 months, we are likely to get a clearer view of things. We can already guess, though, that like most big, new ideas, IMS is unlikely to achieve all of the ambitious goals set by its creators. IMS is decidedly not a "one-size-fits-all" technology, and it's likely to be implemented in different ways in different networks, and for a variety of reasons. Yet the central fact remains that if major service providers don't adopt IMS, they will need something very like it to avoid plunging into a long, slow revenue decline. That, above all, is the best reason to expect it to be one of the more important developments in telecom over the next decade.


III. Major Telecom Equipment Providers

3.1 Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA) Alcatel sees convergence as the key to IMS; FMC, it believes, is "largely an IMS phenomenon." Although SIP was designed and has been initially implemented mostly by 3G mobile operators, Alcatel argues that it has made more rapid headway in wireline networks, and that wireline opera-tors are moving quickly to incorporate IMS. Alcatel's basic marketing message is "user-centric broadband," a tag that has a strong conver-gence flavor and is linked to a claim that it can help service providers build "value in the network" – rather than, it implies, seeing it leak away into the edge. The company has been slower than some other vendors to announce and promote an IMS solu-tion, but it does not believe that this will put it at a disadvantage. Alcatel says a complete end-to-end IMS solution is available today for large-scale trials and will be rolled out towards the end of the year for commercial deployment. It argues that "true" IMS is several years away in mobile networks because of limitations in termi-nal devices and in the ability of radio access networks to carry VOIP. It sees an environment in the next one to three years in which SIP-based data services are increasingly combined with cir-cuit-based conversational services, but without true IMS functionality. In any event, in order in part to improve its positioning in the mobile softswitch area, it acquired Spatial Wireless in Sep-tember 2004 – an important step towards greater credibility in the IMS space. Figure 3.1: Alcatel's Overall IMS Architecture

Source: Alcatel


On the fixed side, Alcatel has been a very active contributor to Tispan and sees potentially more rapid adoption of IMS as early as late 2005 and 2006. Because fixed networks have much more access capacity, Alcatel believes there is greater scope for service innovation, and this will en-courage wireline operators to deploy IMS more quickly, it argues. Keener competition is also a factor, it believes. Alcatel sees its key strengths as its common HSS database for fixed and mobile use, as well as its approach to QOS. The company sees Tispan specs as the basis for application-specific QOS that fits with its "user-centric" vision for broadband. It says it is working to influence the direction of these standards and will launch an enhanced version of its IMS proposition in mid 2006 that conforms to the specs. The company also believes that integration with consistent QOS across the fixed/mobile boundary using 3GPP/3GPP2 and Tispan will be a major task, and sees itself as well positioned to do this.

Control-Layer Products

In some cases, Alcatel is offering separate products for wireline and wireless environments, in line with its existing products. However, it emphasizes that the basic architecture is shared, and that it is in a strong position to integrate across the 3GPP/Tispan boundary. Its HSS product is also a single common database. Alcatel's 5020 Softswitch is used in the control layer. In both wireline and wireless environments, Alcatel will offer the 5020 CSC, conforming to Tispan and 3GPP specs. Alcatel's softswitch is the central component of the IMS core, supporting a variety of IMS services (e.g. voice services for fixed and mobile, multimedia, etc.). It also provides for quick development and deployment of new services. As such, it is available in a number of variants:

• The 5020 CSC (call and session controller), which is used for IMS S-CSCF, I-CSCF, and P-CSCF and for PSTN simulation. The CSC also handles service brokerage to interwork with external ASs.

• The 5020 MGC (media gateway controller) as the control element in the fixed TDM voice domain enabling a migration of the installed legacy voice infrastructure and endpoints.

• The 5020 WCS (wireless call server, from the acquisition of Spatial Wireless) as the con-trol element in the mobile core + 3G domain enabling migration of the GSM core infra-structure to a packet core network.

• The 7720 ABC, which includes P- and I-CSCF functionality, and also handles the PDF function as a BGCF for mobile networks.

• The 1430 HSS for fixed and mobile networks, which Alcatel regards as a key aspect of its proposition. It says it has worked to ensure simple evolution from existing subscriber da-tabases, to retain existing value and ensure no break in service or "look and feel" from the customer's point of view.

• The 8788 MRP (media resource platform), which handles MRF functionality and is sourced from Convedia.

• The BGCF for fixed access network, which is sourced from a third party, e.g. Acme Packet.

• The 5340 SRB (session resource broker) designed for RACF and PDF in Tispan envi-ronments.

SCIM functionality is handled by the S-CSCF and HSS; Alcatel sees no advantages to a separate interface that would add overhead, but says it would do so if customers insisted on having it.


Application-Layer Products

In the application layer, Alcatel proposes its Open Services Delivery Environment. The core of the Alcatel OSDE is the IMS SDP, which encompasses the 8690 OSP and the 5350 IAS. Alcatel's 8690 Open Services Platform (OSP) hosts the service environment and is comple-mented by OSS functions for service and content management, as well as common capabilities for payment, presence, location, user profile, etc. in a Tispan environment. The OSP is also used in the mobile IMS environment for payment, location, and Parlay gateway functionality if required. Alcatel says this product has been installed in over 200 service provider networks worldwide. Among the set of pre-integrated solutions that have been commercially deployed:

• 8626 MM Phone R (Multimedia Phone Residential)

• 8628 MMIC (MultiMedia Instant Conferencing)

• 8640 CMM (Corporate Mobility Manager)

• 8642 FRC (Flexible Routing and Charging) Alcatel's 5350 IAS (application server) is the service enabler specifically dedicated to an IMS en-vironment. It offers a standard interface to internal and external value-added services. The follow-ing common service enablers are provided: authentication and access control, presence server, group management (GLMS) in order to provide a unified mechanism for contact-list management, and charging proxy for collecting data for online and offline charging. The set of services that are pre-integrated and ready to be used include, among others, presence-enabled contact list, call back, push to voice mail, push to talk, instant messaging. In addition to these pre-integrated solutions, Alcatel says it has developed a strong ecosystem of third-party application developers who can use standard Java environments via IDEs to build ap-plications on Alcatel platforms, or provide their own ASs hosting off-the-shelf applications. Alcatel exposes interfaces towards Web services for service orchestration and integration with enterprise and OSS/BSS. Figure 3.2: Alcatel's View of IMS Phases and Applications

Source: Alcatel


Partnerships

Like other major vendors, Alcatel has a wide range of partnerships running across the IMS area. These include BEA, Hotsip, Sylantro, and Ubiquity, as well as Acme Packet and Convedia, which supply elements of its IMS solution.

Customers

Alcatel has no customers yet for a "true" IMS solution, though it points out that contracts with Cin-gular, T-Mobile, and CNC (China) for NGN-related networking products all lead towards IMS. The company expects to undertake "large-scale" trials of its equipment with a number of custom-ers in mid 2005, with general commercial availability of its solution slated for the end of the year. It expects to launch an "enhanced" version of its IMS solution with end-to-end QOS in mid 2006. It says it currently has 15 active trials for IMS.

3.2 Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) Cisco is the leading provider of global IP infrastructure, but it has taken a while to reveal its hand in the IMS space – perhaps because of fears that it might increase competition in areas where it is currently dominant. The company's attitude to IMS appears equivocal. In a briefing with Heavy Reading in late 2004, Cisco was highly skeptical about IMS; the recent momentum behind the spec has led it to fall more into line with the IMS approach. However, an article published by John Waclawsky, a mem-ber of the Mobile Wireless group at Cisco, in the June 2005 edition of Business Communications Review was largely hostile to IMS, criticizing IMS as too complex, too costly, and with little benefit for end users. Cisco says its vision is of "convergence at device, network, service, and application levels, through the IP Next Generation Network (NGN), in which each of these layers includes functions and products that map onto the IMS functionally decomposed architecture." The company sees IMS as initially aimed at wireless, but says it sees increasing opportunity on the wireline side for "IMS-like architectures," specifically in broadband wireline and enterprise en-vironments. Either way, it believes IMS should initially be a basis for new applications, rather than a basis for migration of legacy applications. In addition to POC, services it is discussing with providers in-clude integration of IP-based videotelephony with POTS and integration of POTS with other ap-plications, including instant messaging. Cisco believes voice will continue to be provided over the GSM infrastructure, with IMS focused on new data services, which may or may not be integrated with the old voice network applications. Cisco naturally sees as one of its key strengths the ability to handle all the necessary infrastruc-ture that goes around IMS, such as an MPLS core network, an intelligent edge network, legacy gateways, and so on.


Cisco has a range of preexisting products that are being reworked for IMS. This product and oth-ers described here are not strictly IMS products. Cisco describes it as a "family of SIP proxies (including the CSCP) that are aligned architecturally with the IMS CSCF functions and support specific CSCF interfaces and protocols." Cisco says this family already supports most important IMS interfaces, and it will add additional IMS interfaces to these platforms over time, as customer requirements evolve.


Cisco says its architecture delivers a "super-set" of IMS services, for example by providing dy-namic resource allocation and awareness of network sessions and applications to both network-controlled sessions (the IMS model) and end-user-controlled sessions (the peer-to-peer model). As Cisco sees it, this generates additional opportunities for service providers to create value on top of "unprofitable" traffic such as peer-to-peer data applications and other "non-network-cooperative" apps. The core "IMS-like" product here is the Cisco Call Session Control Platform (CSCP), used for call and session control, but also acting as a presence server, SIP route server, end-user session border controller, PSTN gateway, and AS. The CSCP consists of the Cisco Service Engine, Cisco Edge Proxy, and the Cisco Name Resolution Server, all SIP-based. There is also a Presence Engine that collects and manages real-time user and device status in-formation. Cisco describes the Service Engine as providing the "essential functions" of the S-CSCF, while the Edge Proxy is said to be "much like the P-CSCF." The Name Resolution Server is said to provide the "essential functions" of the I-CSCF and the BGCF. Figure 3.3: Cisco's Call Session Control Platform

Source: Cisco


As noted above, the CSCP includes AS functionality. The Cisco Application Engine uses Web tools such as Java, HTTP, and SIP servlets to streamline the creation of new services that com-bine voice, messaging, presence, and other real-time capabilities. Cisco has built several services on this infrastructure, including POC. It says applications can also be provided by different vendors and run on different networks.

http://www.dynamicsoft.com/prod_sol/AppEngine/appenginev4.php


Partnerships

Cisco has a number of important partnerships in the IMS space, largely to fill out its product line. These are:

• Italtel, which has developed a so-called PSTN transformation (i.e. Tispan) solution that Cisco says "maps onto" the IMS functional architecture. This product includes the Busi-ness Voice Services module, which Cisco says "maps onto IMS functional blocks in terms of call-control and application-server functions." Cisco distinguishes this product from its own solution by describing it as a "hosted and managed IP Communications (IPC) to enterprise and commercial customers"

• Siemens, with which Cisco has a strategic alliance covering the long-term evolution to-wards an all-IP mobile network. The two companies are engaged on joint developments around the IMS space and have already made a number of joint announcements, the most recent being a policy-control server.

• Ericsson, for which the primary focus is on PSTN migration to "voice over packet."

Customers

Sprint is a customer for Cisco's CSCP-based POC application. Cisco is also in market trials with broadband wireline operators using the Cisco CSCP to provide voice and multimedia IP commu-nications solutions.

3.3 Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERICY) Ericsson was one of the earliest of the major vendors to enter the IMS space, beginning work on its proposition in 2002 at the time that it merged its fixed and mobile divisions. It had already cre-ated softswitches for fixed/mobile environments, now in service with around 50 customers. Erics-son's IMS control-layer products are built on top of this preexisting Telecom Server Platform, which is the basic Ericsson platform for IP-related developments. Ericsson's IMS proposition does not focus strongly on any of IMS's benefits, but rather empha-sizes the wide range of possible benefits. In particular these include lower-cost payback on appli-cations, a wider portfolio of integrated or combinational services, end-user ease of use, and FMC. Ericsson argues that IMS is part of a wider evolution. This includes, for example, the introduction of softswitches and the move towards a layered architecture. IMS, it says, will evolve gradually, and other elements, such as the MSC in wireless environments and the telephony softswitch in wireline, will be around "for a long, long time." However, from a strategic perspective, Ericsson does see IMS as an evolution beyond softswitching, which was primarily a mechanism for reduc-ing opex, to an architecture primarily designed to increase ARPU and promote convergence. Ericsson has been at pains to emphasize its end-to-end capabilities, which include not just the classical elements of IMS in the control layer, but also service creation and delivery, mass-market IMS applications, device-client software, and systems integration. In the latter role, Ericsson clearly has no intention of working with third-party IT vendors and has made it plain that it will compete head-on for the leading role in IMS deployment, integration, and (if necessary) network operation. The company is also continuing to stick by its proprietary hardware architecture, with no current plans to move to ATCA or a similar third-party hardware vendor architecture. Ericsson's position as the leading provider of actual IMS implementations appears to lend cre-dence to this approach, at least in the short term. Over time, it is likely to come under pressure to decompose its proposition, as RFPs increasingly demand it. However, the company has un-doubtedly built a strong early lead that will help it to win further orders over the next year or two.



Ericsson's core IMS product is Engine Multi Media (EMM), currently in Release 2.1. Unlike its peers, Ericsson presents this "product" as a single whole, though it actually contains a wide range of separate IMS elements, including the CSCF, HSS, MRFC, MRFP, BGCF, and MGCF. Ericsson's product set in the control layer is usually packaged as a single proposition. This has led to accusations that the company has not properly decomposed the various IMS elements and has retained proprietary links and features, making it difficult to buy elements within the control layer from third parties. The company rejects this charge, but does acknowledge that its initial implementations of IMS will in practice integrate most elements of the control layer in a single box, with all of the elements supplied by Ericsson. "Strategy cannot be based on mapping the [IMS] architecture to boxes," it declares in a paper published in the Ericsson Review. Instead, Ericsson argues, low-end (i.e. relatively smaller-scale) implementations are best served by using "collapsed IMS configurations in which many of the logical nodes coexist on a single platform." When capacity is higher, this can split out into sepa-rate nodes – though it's not clear whether the separate functions could in this instance be sup-plied by third parties. For now, Ericsson says it would "not normally" sell the CSCF and HSS separately, for example, though this "could technically be done if customers demanded it." Ericsson also advocates the use in certain circumstances of common hardware for MSC servers and IMS servers. However, Ericsson, like other major vendors, is committed to an open ISC inter-face for third-party application providers. Ericsson says it has a "common system" for the control layer for wireless and wireline customers. It sees this as one of its key strengths.


Ericsson offers self-developed applications and its own service-creation environment as part of its proposition. It claims that there is "a large community" of developers creating SIP-based services using the Ericsson service-creation environment. As its recent contract wins suggest, Ericsson has already developed a range of applications that it is selling with its IMS proposition. These include presence, IM, POC, IP Centrex, VOIP, video-telephony, and its "We Share" combinational services. The company says it intends to continue to be the provider of mainstream "telecom-grade" appli-cations, including telephony; like many other major vendors, it is happy to cede control over niche applications to third parties, but does not want to see third parties controlling mainstream applica-tion functionality. Like Nokia, Ericsson places strong emphasis on its device-client software and its understanding of device requirements – something that vendors such as Lucent and Nortel lack. Its Ericsson Mobile Platforms subsidiary provides an IMS client stack (shown in Figure 3.4) in which all the elements below the API are developed by Ericsson. The company sees this as an important competitive differentiator, including elements such as the Media Streaming Real Time Protocol (MSRP) that competitors generally do not have. Ericsson says it has 250,000 developers worldwide that are working on applications using its cli-ent software development kit (SDK), and it also created Service Development Studios, where developers can try out applications in a working IMS environment. In addition to offering this de-velopment platform, Ericsson has conducted terminal interoperability tests with several other vendors, including Siemens, and has participated in international GSM Association interoperabil-ity tests with Nokia and Siemens.


Ericsson is also ramping up its professional services activities and increasingly highlighting its systems-integration skills, where again it believes it is ahead of the pack. Figure 3.4: Ericsson's Mobile Client Stack for IMS

Source: Ericsson

Partnerships

Ericsson has named a relatively limited group of companies as partners. These include BroadSoft and Hotsip in the VOIP area and Sonim on the client side. However, on the client side, through Ericsson Mobility World, it also notes there are 250,000 developers using its SDK.

Customers

Ericsson has a wider and more impressive portfolio of published IMS wins than any other major equipment vendor. The company claims 27 contracts for IMS systems, though it is a reasonable assumption that most of these contracts are for small-scale trials. Major announced deals include:

• Wireline IMS services for Telefonica, including IP Centrex, video telephony, collaboration services, presence management, and several other services.

• Wireless IMS services for Telecom Italia Mobile, including TIM "We Share" video sharing and whiteboard collaboration services. This contract includes IMS system elements, cli-ent software, and systems integration.

• Wireline IMS services for TDC Denmark, including IP telephony, IP Centrex, and various converged services including videotelephony, conference calling, collaborative working, presence management, and instant messaging.

• Converged (wireless/wireline) IMS services for Sprint; as systems integrator, Ericsson will lead this project as well as supply some component parts, but it has not revealed which elements it will supply.

• A trial of converged (wireless/wireline) multimedia service in TeliaSonera's Nordic region, including POC, telephony, and a variety of combinational services. Ericsson seems likely to win a mainstream IMS contract from TeliaSonera if it moves to full deployment.

Ericsson also won an important contract for the BT 21CN project, where it will supply the so-called I-Node for 21CN. The I-Node will handle telephony emulation in a 3GPP architecture, and although IMS is not explicitly called for, "it is a vital part of the overall architectural transition," ac-cording to Ericsson. The I-Node will use two Tispan protocols, the H.248 AGW protocol and the H.248 MGW protocol, to interface with other elements in the 21CN.


3.4 Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Huawei declined to participate in this research project. However, the company is developing an IMS product portfolio that builds on a range of existing products and is based on its existing NGN hardware platform. Huawei has well-regarded products and significant market share for its SoftX3000 Softswitch, and also sells the SHLR9200 HLR, the MRS6000 media resource server, the UMG8900 MGW, and a range of ASs, IP phones, and IP videophones. Figure 3.5 shows that Huawei has products that fulfill all of the core functionality of IMS. Note that Huawei has inserted a "service-enabler" layer that includes basic application functionality such as presence, instant messaging, and push to talk. Note also the division of the MGCF into three parts in the diagram below; no other vendor, as far as we know, has taken this approach. Figure 3.5: Huawei's Overall IMS Architecture

Source: Huawei Huawei cites the following products in its IMS literature:

• The CSCF3300, which can act as the P-, S-, and I-CSCF, and as the BGCF.

• The HSS9820, which acts as the HSS.

• The MSOFTX3000, which according to Huawei provides the T-MGCF function, i.e. rout-ing to and from legacy networks using ISUP.


• The SOFTX3000, which provides A-MGCF (bridging via H.248) and I-MGCF (bridging to other IP networks).

• The UMG8900, a media gateway that can terminate bearer channels from circuit-switched networks and media streams from packet networks (e.g. RTP streams).

• The MRS6000, a media resource server. Huawei says its IMS solution supports Release 5 and Release 6 3GPP architectures, and that Huawei R4 networks can be transitioned to IMS with a software upgrade. We were unable to identify specific IMS applications that Huawei is working on or offering, but given the company's strong emphasis on providing an end-to-end solution, we can assume that it is offering or planning to offer all basic IMS application functionality. As the architectural diagram suggests, these will likely include gaming and conferencing. Note also that Huawei has included an OSA/Parlay gateway as a part of its IMS proposition.

3.5 Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) Lucent did not respond to requests for an interview in connection with this research. However, the company has staged several analyst events on IMS and has published extensively on the sub-ject. This profile is based on those resources. Lucent's IMS product set is positioned within its Accelerate Next Generation Communications Solutions, which is effectively its overall proposition for NGN. Like most other major vendors that have a proposition on both sides of the wireline/wireless divide, Lucent's central theme for IMS is convergence. The company places strong emphasis on the "network-agnostic" nature of its proposition, and claims that it is one of only a few vendors that offer the same solution for both wireline and wireless. This was a key motivation for the acquisition in September 2004 of Telica, a vendor of softswitches and media gateways which had already built an access-agnostic gateway product. Telica scored well in the analysis of softswitches undertaken by Heavy Reading in September 2004. The merger of its fixed and mobile divisions, announced in April, lends further credibility to its convergence claims. Lucent also places a strong emphasis on its ability to deliver new applications, hence the key message of its IMS program – "value over IP" – a tag it has trademarked. Lucent argues that that the carrier IP market has moved beyond the initial focus on capex and opex cost control – "price-based convergence" – to a search for compelling new services. For a better application environ-ment, Lucent believes the key is SIP, and with it, IMS. Lucent's IMS proposition heavily empha-sizes its so-called "service-enhancement" layer, which handles service brokering and orchestra-tion, and it has also announced a relatively wide portfolio of services. While it emphasizes that it has developed all of the key elements of IMS, Lucent believes many of the initial deployments will be piecemeal and gradual, with customers selecting elements to up-grade from existing solutions. In one scenario, it envisages customers beginning with its compact switch (incorporating MGCF and MGW functionality), adding a telephony AS, and then imple-menting other elements as requirements for a wider portfolio of applications grow. Lucent has been relatively successful in repositioning itself as an IMS player, at least in the U.S., putting it in a position to win further orders there. However, Sprint's decision to appoint Ericsson as its systems integrator is a blow to its ambitions, and it needs another major win to establish its credibility in the area. Moreover, it has made relatively little headway outside the U.S., where it remains a second-tier supplier – especially in Europe, where it has almost no wireless infrastruc-ture business.


Lucent's Worldwide Services program could (in principle) help it position itself as a more vendor-neutral player. At the CeBIT show in Germany in February 2005, LWS placed a very strong em-phasis on IMS as a key part of its portfolio. LWS takes an avowedly neutral approach to equip-ment selection. Lucent has achieved early recognition as an IMS "brand," although this has not yet translated into wider commercial success of the kind already achieved by Ericsson and Siemens. From this point of view, Lucent can be considered a "fast follower" with a good chance of translating its strong overall proposition for IMS into major contract wins. Figure 3.6: Lucent's Overall IMS Architecture

Source: Lucent


Lucent provides a complete suite of solutions at the control layer. However, these are not all separated out into the component parts of the IMS model. The key elements are:

• Lucent Session Manager, which includes the CSCF, the MRFC, the BGCF, the PDF, and the SCIM functionality. Lucent describes this as "all new," and the most important part of its IMS development program. The company emphasizes the access-agnostic na-ture of this device.

• Lucent Network Controller, which handles the MGCF function. Like other elements of Lucent's proposition, this claims high scaleability, up to 8 million BHCA.

• Unified Subscriber Data Server, which handles the HSS and SDHLR functionality (the latter – "Super Distributed Home Location Register" – is effectively the legacy GSM sub-scriber database). Lucent claims as a key advantage that it can plug into "myriad different legacy subscriber databases."

• MiLife Enhanced Media Resource Server, which handles the MRFP function.


• Lucent Feature Server, which includes the IM-SSF, which provides links to INAP, TCAP, and Camel messages.

• Lucent Network Gateway, a media gateway offering links to SS7-based networks and the PSTN. Lucent says it can interface to any standards-based media gateway. Com-bined with Lucent's own media gateway (the Network Controller), it forms the so-called Compact Switch, capable of handling up to 500,000 subscribers.


The core element here is the MiLife Applications Server, which supports OSA-based application development using Parlay 4.1. Lucent sees this as a very important part of its proposition, effec-tively a self-developed SDP. MiLife supports presence and location as core functions. Lucent initially developed five basic applications on this platform: presence; unified messaging, including IM and POC; telephony on a variety of access platforms; video telephony and messag-ing; and integrated billing, including prepaid, post-paid, and micro-billing. At Supercomm, Lucent announced several new applications:

• Active PhoneBook, which provides unified database management and a consistent look and feel across email contact lists, IM buddy lists, and mobile handset phonebooks; and allows users to conduct multi-party, multimedia communications sessions.

• Peer-to-Peer Video service, which enables subscribers to conduct two-way streaming-video conference sessions.

• iLocator, a personalized location/presence-based application that alerts users when friends, family, or points of interest are nearby and facilitates location-based services.

• Multiparty Video Gaming, which allows operators to deploy multiplayer games that can be supported across mobile and wireline devices, such as phones and desktop PCs.

However, Lucent places most store by an interpolated layer that it has dubbed the service-enhancement layer, which handles "end-user experience management." This is in effect Lucent's service-broker and service-orchestration layer, sitting between the control layer and the applica-tions. The main purpose of this software is to enable delivery of blended applications and applica-tions that have a common look and feel across different devices and different access-network types, and that build in support for legacy applications and functionality. Lucent has drawn heavily on work at Bell Labs to create this layer. It believes this constitutes one of its key differentiators in the IMS area. Lucent also includes support for legacy applications through its Telephony Applications Server and in its so-called "Incorporated Service Enhancement Layer." A third product, the Lucent Communications Manager, can be used to deliver blended or combi-national services through any access interface.

Partnerships

Lucent believes its well-established Worldwide Services division lends credibility to its claim that it will not push its own products at customers in all circumstances. LWS has its own marketing pro-gram for IMS, shown in Figure 3.7 below. Lucent has also developed a so-called ecosystem with "a lot of third-party involvement." In ser-vices, it has public partnerships with BroadSoft, Clarity, and Ecrio. BroadSoft provides IP Centrex and collaborative conferencing, among other services. On the client side, it has announced part-


nerships with OpenEra and Xten Networks for downloadable IMS clients that include VOIP, POC, video sharing, and active phonebooks. And for access, Lucent has announced plans to integrate equipment from Alvarion to enable IMS support for WiMax. Lucent is also using Kagoor's session border controllers (SBCs) for VOIP issues such as security. Finally, Lucent is using IBM WebSphere middleware, BladeCenter servers, and service-delivery environment. Figure 3.7: Lucent Worldwide Services' IMS Proposition

Source: Lucent

Customers

Lucent believed it had scored a major coup in December 2004, when it won a $1.5 billion contract with Sprint that included, among other things, "key elements" of its IMS solution. Sprint said it would use Lucent equipment for both wireless and wireline network services. However, it's not clear how much of Sprint's IMS solution will come from Lucent, given that Sprint added the lead-ing player in the IMS field, Ericsson, to the contract award in early 2005. Nor is the value of the IMS part clear. The major part of the contract is for an upgrade to Sprint's existing Lucent base stations. Neither company has explained in detail who is supplying what. Lucent says that it will be the supplier of the HSS (its SDHLR), the media gateway, and the MGCF (Network Controller). Ericsson will be responsible for the overall systems integration and supply several IMS piece parts itself. Doubt-less this relatively unusual award is among the reasons why Lucent expects to supply IMS piecemeal, rather than as an overall solution. A second interesting order, with Shandong Unicom, a provincial subsidiary of China Unicom, is specifically for wireline applications for business and residential customers, including VOIP and IP Centrex. This contract covers the provincial capital, Jinan City. Other announced contracts include a small deal covering the U.K.'s Isle of Man, and a trial sys-tem in Japan.


3.6 Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) Motorola introduced its IMS solution in February 2004. Motorola resembles Nokia in its overall strengths and positioning. Like Nokia, it will look to use its strength in the handset market to build a proposition that focuses on its device and device soft-ware expertise, while at the same time focusing on convergence as a means to build a stronger position across the wireless/wireline boundary. At present, its wireline business (called Broad-band Communications) is skewed towards cable MSOs in the U.S., though its unexpected win in April 2005 of a major Verizon FTTH contract may help it to change its image on the wireline side. Motorola's wireless infrastructure business is concentrated in China and the U.S., though it also has business in Japan and other Asian countries, and in some European territories. At the end of 2004, Motorola merged its wireless and broadband infrastructure businesses into a single Network business group, partly to facilitate the development of a convincing converged proposition. Motorola hopes to use IMS to build a position outside its core customer group by providing what it regards as a more innovative approach to the market. It argues that the industry needs to adopt the service-oriented architecture already used in enterprise environments, and it has taken a rela-tively radical approach to IMS – for example by creating one of the most decomposed CSCF functions available from the major vendors. Motorola has also given strong support to the use of open ATCA computing architectures: It unveiled new communications servers based on the archi-tecture at Supercomm. It is also already offering IMS products that it says will operate with non-cellular networks includ-ing 802.11, cable, and DSL, as well as a converged POC product that also works with WLANs and wireline networks; it regards this access-agnosticism as a key strength of its proposition. Notwithstanding the relatively open nature of its IMS solution, Motorola emphasizes that it wants and intends to provide most of the IMS solution set itself, including the client-device software. Motorola has one of the most complete ranges of IMS-related applications, and it sees applica-tions as the key deliverable in IMS. It believes the central aim should be to massively reduce the cost of delivering applications, from around $5 million per application in legacy networks to around $100,000 per application in IMS networks, allowing a tenfold increase in the number of applications deployed (the assumption being that many of these will be retired quickly or become niche applications).


Motorola offers all of the key control-layer elements, sourcing some elements from third parties. Motorola is making a virtue with customers of what it regards as one of the most decomposed IMS propositions on the market. For example, Motorola's use of a blade-based hardware platform allows it to provide separately the three CSCF functions (C-, I- and S-). However, like several other vendors, such as Ericsson and Lucent, it has integrated the MRFC and PDF functions with the CSCF. It also says that it is capable of providing the control-layer elements on a highly distributed basis, if customers want it – "right down as far as the RAN [radio access network]." Motorola supplies the CSCF itself as a result of its acquisition in 2003 of softswitch vendor Win-phoria, which in addition to providing the basis for the CSCF evolution also provided a media gateway. It sources the HSS from an unnamed third party.


Motorola regards the HSS product it has sourced as "best-of-breed." It believes there will be strong opportunities in selling centralized HSS products that allow new features to be delivered across a range of national networks with just one software upload.


Motorola links its control-layer products to a suite of application-layer products with the usual in-terfaces to SIP, Camel, and Parlay OSA X ASs. There is also support for software environments that are not part of the standardized IMS set, including J2EE and .NET. In terms of basic application functionality, Motorola offers presence, location, GMLS, directory services, and DRM. Motorola has a separate but related project to develop an SDP, which has already been deployed with a handful of unnamed customers. Motorola claims a customer base of over one million end users using its pre-IMS SIP-based POC software, for which it has 27 operator customers to date. The company expects to launch further push-to-X products, including push to video ("in the context of a POC call"); push to ask at the end of 2005 and in early 2006; and a more-generic push-to-X product later in 2006. As noted ear-lier, it has also launched converged POC products that operate in WLAN and cellular environ-ments and include converged presence and directory services. Key services that are already offered in an IMS-like context now include: presence server; unified messaging; interactive voice response; enhanced voicemail; IM; Web/audio/video conferencing; full-duplex videotelephony; video streaming; and push to view, push to video, and push to text. At a more conceptual level, Motorola sees many opportunities in so-called "community" services built around presence, active phonebooks, and other related products.

Partnerships

Among major vendors, Motorola has had long-term partnerships with Ericsson and Siemens in various areas. It also has a so-called Preferred Partner program and IMS Application Partner Program for third-party application development. The company also launched an IMS Interopera-bility Program in 2004, where its current partners include Brooktrout, IPeria, and Ubiquity.

3.7 NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY; Tokyo: 6701) NEC did not respond to requests for interviews for this research program. However, the company does have an IMS proposition, and announced a commercial product line for IMS (3GPP) as early as February 2004, ahead of many other vendors. NEC says it has an IMS product line that is compliant with Release 5 of the 3GPP spec. It con-ducted what it describes as successful interoperability field trials of its solution with Nokia in Sep-tember 2004. Like some other Japanese vendors, NEC appears to be emphasizing its ability to move service providers quickly to IPv6 networks, a requirement in Japan, where we understand it has some trial IMS customers. The company has a broad range of products that deliver all aspects of IMS functionality:

• The MX5840-CS, which handles all three CSCF functions and also includes the PDF and the BGCF, plus basic IMS interfaces such as the ISC and the Cx (Diameter) interfaces.

• The MX5640-HS, which is NEC's HSS.


• The MX7840-MR, which handles MRF functionality.

• The MX5240-MG, NEC's IMS media gateway.

• The MX5140-SG, a signaling gateway for interconnecting IMS to the PSTN via SS7 or ISUP.

• The MX5440-VG, a videophone gateway for interconnecting IMS terminals with circuit-switched videophones.

• The MX7840-PR, a presence application server.

• The MX7840-CT, a chat application server.

• The MX-7840-PT, a POC application server.

• The MX7840-IG-H, a SIP-HTTP gateway, which is described as translating between SIP and HTTP in order to provide instant messaging and presence services to non-SIP termi-nals. This gateway is not specifically defined in the standard, but NEC sees it as neces-sary, given that most terminals will not be SIP-compliant for the foreseeable future.

• The MX5840-SI, a SIP interworking function device that includes a SIP signaling control-layer unit and an RTP address translation unit. Its purpose is to allow for interconnection to other types of networks, such as corporate intranets.

As a major provider of handsets, NEC has also developed IMS client software; it demonstrated it at 3GSM in Cannes in February 2005. As this listing suggests, NEC has a fairly complete IMS proposition, at least for 3GPP networks, which includes a strong set of ASs (NEC notes that these are all equipped with an ISC interface). The company's overall proposition is shown in Figure 3.8. Figure 3.8: NEC’s Overall IMS Proposition

Source: NEC


3.8 Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) Nokia's primary business is mobile phones, but it also has a significant infrastructure business largely (but not entirely) focused on GSM and UMTS network operators. It also has a small wire-line infrastructure business. For Nokia, IMS is an opportunity to extend its market by focusing on convergence as the key ad-vantage of the technology. It is also highlighting its end-to-end strengths, extending in particular to wireless applications and client-side device software and services. Nokia's argues that as convergence proceeds, the wireline world will adopt wireless end-user de-vices and clients, because these are what customers want. "The whole mobile service experience is going to be extended to the fixed network using IMS," it asserted in a recent call on the topic. An important reference customer in this regard is Telecom Italia, one of the most innovative of wireline residential incumbents. TI has placed innovation in residential wireline at the heart of its strategy, and Nokia is supplying it with the video-sharing service deployed over IMS. The basis for Nokia's proposition is the Nokia Unified Core. Its IMS proposition has been avail-able since September 2004. Like its Nordic neighbor Ericsson, Nokia is emphasizing its service capabilities. Nokia also says it is "increasing its focus on the growing services market in response to operator demand. In gen-eral, most new and existing deals include a broad selection of services such as planning, imple-mentation, systems integration, operation solutions, consulting, and care services." In terms of "value-add," Nokia cites subscription management, auto-provisioning, IP authentica-tion, OSS, and systems integration as areas in which it believes it has a unique approach. It also emphasizes its very active interoperability programs, including a leading role in recent GSM As-sociation international interoperability trials of IMS and a strong role in interoperability testing for OMA POC specs. While Nokia isn't in the same league as the network equipment giants, by playing to its strengths it could make significant progress as a supplier of converged IMS application platforms.


Nokia has two key products for the control layer: the Nokia IP Multimedia Register, which acts as the HSS; and the Nokia Connection Processing Server, which acts as the CSCF and also in-cludes BGCF functionality. Both are implemented on Nokia's FlexiServer hardware platform. Nokia also supplies the MGW, MRF, and MGCF. It plans to add PDF functionality in the second IMS release later this year.


Nokia has a range of legacy ASs for presence, POC, and other services. These include the Nokia Telecommunications Application Server (TAS), an IMS AS for VOIP services. Among other things, this allows interworking between IP, circuit-switched, and PSTN domains, as well as roaming between SIP and circuit-switched domains. However, it also now offers access to third-party ASs via an open ISC interface, and does not itself supply SIP ASs, for example. A key partner here is Ubiquity. Regarding services, Nokia has placed strong emphasis on POC, where it has many existing cus-tomers, largely implemented in "pre-IMS" form, and presence, where it has 11 commercial con-tracts. It is shortly rolling out POC combined with presence, and it has also developed a video-


sharing application that is used in its Telecom Italia contract win. However, "We do not expect to be the source of all significant applications," the company says. To encourage IMS application development in the software community, Nokia has set up two in-teroperability labs for software developers to test ideas against the IMS spec. Not surprisingly, Nokia makes much of its ability to provide device-level client software for hand-sets. It offers a SIP SDK and SIP APIs for Series 60 developers to help developers create appli-cations and services on its own IMS handsets. Nokia says this has already resulted in develop-ment of several third-party applications. Thus, for example, its video-sharing product has been implemented on its own phone, the Nokia 6680, using its own device software – but it can also be implemented with PC clients. In general terms, Nokia believes that IMS will help deliver better person-to-person communica-tions and therefore revive flagging wireless-application portfolios.

Customers

Nokia claims eight commercial contracts for IMS that are said to be in line with 3GPP standards, as well as 20 pilots and trials. It has one important public reference customer in Telecom Italia, which is commercially launching its video-sharing service in the second quarter of 2005 using Nokia equipment. In June 2005, it announced its first contract for a “converged” IMS solution with a Finnish MVNO, Saunalahti. Nokia notes that it took less than five months from start to finish to launch this video-sharing ser-vice – an example, in its view, of the faster development and implementation possible through IMS. This contract also highlights the likelihood that Nokia will pick up contracts in the IMS area primarily by virtue of its expertise in application development and IMS client software.

3.9 Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) Nortel derives half of its revenues from wireless infrastructure, where it has an unusually wide-ranging customer base across both UMTS/GSM and CDMA/2000 platforms, but at the same time it has an established position in wireline networking that includes a strong legacy softswitch solu-tion, the CS2000, and an existing AS product the MCS5200. These products are the foundation for its IMS solution. Its wireline operations include a small customer base in the cable MSO sec-tor, though this is largely confined to Canada for now. Like other providers with established positions in both wireless and wireline areas, Nortel is em-phasizing convergence as the core theme in its IMS proposition. Hence its core IMS proposition is called the Converged Multimedia Services (CMS) solution. Nortel has been slower than most other major vendors to reveal its IMS hand, not launching its solution until the GSM World Congress in February 2005. Most of the announced products will not be available until later this year. However, it argues that a comprehensive, broad-ranging solution is required from the start, rather than point solutions that only suit single environments. "We want to take the high road on IMS, not do piecemeal standalone stuff," says Mike Doerk, senior manager of wireline marketing at Nortel. The company says its CMS solution is access-agnostic, designed for any wireline or wire-less network environment, and it argues that since there will not be large-scale deployment of IMS until 2006, it is ready in time to respond to major RFPs as they begin to emerge. Moreover, Nortel argues that it has wider actual real-world experience of service control and bro-kerage, particularly of interworking different applications from different servers in the same ses-sion using mid-call triggers, which it already does with its existing SIP-based products.


Nortel also believes that, at least in the short term, service providers will tend to turn to one major provider for IMS solutions. It therefore sees the need for an end-to-end approach, and has signed a strategic relationship with IBM that makes IBM its partner of choice for service creation and re-lated technologies. It also has a well-developed "ecosystem" with many established partners that can contribute to an overall IMS solution. Nortel has arrived late at the IMS party, but its strong pedigree, relatively open architecture, and developing relationship with IBM may help it to make progress among service providers suspi-cious of the proprietary intentions of other vendors and keen to bring conventional integrators into IMS schemes. Figure 3.9: Nortel's Overall IMS Architecture

Source: Nortel (Red indicates Nortel products)


Nortel's CSCF is a new development currently in trials and will be launched commercially later in 2005. The CSCF will include BGCF functionality. Nortel says it will be an enhancement of and derived from its existing SIP-oriented products, the CS2000 softswitch and the MCS5200 AS. The HSS is also in development, but should launch earlier. Nortel says it will go beyond standard requirements by providing support for multiple authorization schemes – for instance, if a user moves from a CDMA to a wireless LAN environment. It will also support multiple authentication mechanisms (e.g. Radius and Diameter). Nortel is also developing a policy controller to fulfill the PDF function.


The existing CS2000 will be proposed for the MGCF, where it can support the full CS2000 feature set. The CS2000 can also be used for PSTN emulation or service simulation. Nortel emphasizes that the same CS2000 can support three different aspects of IMS: as an AS, as an extended MGC server, and as a PSTN emulation server. More generally, Nortel notes that it is moving to an ATCA approach based on Carrier Grade Linux in order to build more scaleable and modular solutions.


Nortel is reusing its MCS5200 as an AS, a product that was launched four years ago and has been installed with about 50 customers. The CS2000 can also act as an AS. Nortel is offering two different approaches for using the CS2000 and MCS5200. In one, the MCS5200 is a vertically integrated SIP AS that includes CSCF and HSS functionality. In other, the AS is separated from the CSCF and HSS, and communicates via standard IMS ISC and Di-ameter interfaces. In the case of the CS2000, Nortel envisages a similar evolution from a VOIP softswitch to a network in which the CS2000 can be used separately as an AS and as an emula-tion server, thereby preserving investment in existing softswitches by converting them to an emu-lation role. By implication, at least, Nortel believes these two different approaches will appeal to different cus-tomer segments. However, this strong emphasis on migration may also reflect Nortel's view that it's too early for full-scale IMS deployment. Its timeline for the CS2000 as an AS sees it migrating initially to IETF SIP compliance in 2005, and then migrating to 3G SIP in 2006. Nortel emphasizes that it can also provide support to its "ecosystem" partner ASs, and says that an important differentiator in its IMS proposition is the ability to autonomously recognize (through auto-discovery) when a new AS has been placed in the network. At the same time, it can dis-criminate between and recognize the requirements of any new applications that are recognized. In terms of actual services, Nortel is taking a strong interest in video and multimedia services where it can leverage its existing position with cable MSOs. Services it is looking at include mul-timedia gaming, video communications, POC, and combinations of these.

Partnerships

Nortel believes its well-developed ecosystem is a key strength of its IMS solution. Its anchor part-ner is IBM, whose wares it using for application development and client software. Nortel sees IBM as a valuable partner for its SDP and for its systems integration expertise and for its wide range of existing applications partners. However, it has a range of other partners across a variety of areas:

• Clients: IBM, Openwave, Sonim, Qualphone

• Devices: Motorola, Nokia, Samsung

• Billing/Mediation: MetaSolv

• Application Server: Ubiquity

• Presence Server: Openwave

• GLMS: Sonim

• POC: Sonim


3.10 Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) Siemens was one of the first major vendors to create an IMS product line, and along with Erics-son is the clear pioneer in the area. Siemens's overall marketing proposition for communications is "Vision Lifeworks," the basic idea of which is to provide services to end users independent of network topology. IMS is a core tech-nology to achieve this and "very strategic" for Siemens. With it, Siemens intends to build and launch "concrete FMC solutions." Siemens was among the first major incumbents to combine its mobile and fixed communications activities into a single division, in September 2004. However, the two groups continue to work separately to address opportunities in IMS. Siemens Mobile Networks was the first of the big vendors to announce an IMS product line, and scored one of the earliest successes in a contract with KPN. That has put it among the leaders in terms of mindshare, and gives it a solid base on which to build. The Mobile Networks division, developed an amended version of IMS, including the CSCF and HSS, to work with 2.5G/IPv4; some IMS functional specs (e.g. on authentication mechanisms) were omitted because these assume a 3G environment. Although some vendors that chose not to pursue this "pre-IMS" approach have subsequently criticized it, Siemens argues that it was responding to a clear market demand for a POC solution for 2.5G GPRS networks based as far as possible on IMS and allowing for a degree of interop-erability across vendor barriers. That, in turn, led to the OMA POC spec, for which Siemens has been one of the lead developers. Siemens Fixed Networks is building on the initial work from Mobile Networks into its NGN Tispan proposition, where Siemens says there is increasing demand for an open (IMS) architecture that enables fixed-network providers to keep their options open on future services (including, for ex-ample, provision of mobile services). Siemens has two softswitches on which to build this ap-proach: the hiE 9200 and hiQ 8000. The company says all its different public networking solutions are "IMS-ready" and are currently being tested across the wireless/wireline boundary for integration within IMS. Siemens's core product line for IMS is called IMS@Vantage, which is designed for any mobile access technology including WLAN, and fixed IP networks including DSL. Siemens places a strong emphasis on two skill sets that it believes will be crucial to success in IMS: partner management and integration management. Because IMS is a much more open envi-ronment than hitherto, it expects to spend much more time developing these areas, but believes that it already has strong credentials in these areas.


Key Siemens control-layer products include:

• The CFX-5000, which handles CSCF and BGCF functionality.

• The CFX-5200, used for the MGCF; Siemens also has a range of media gateways for dif-ferent circumstances.

• The CMS-8200, which handles HSS functionality. Siemens says it can be combined with its own and third-party HLRs that are already installed.

• The CMG-3000, Siemens media gateway for IMS applications.

• The CCS-1000, a Siemens media server that handles MRF functionality.

• The PCS-5000, designed for policy control (PDF).


On the NGN wireline Tispan side, Siemens also offers the hiQ 4200 as a voice AS for residential VOIP as well as for "hosted office" applications like IP-CTX. Siemens says this can be fully re-used in both fixed and mobile environments. The company says the CFX-5000, the CMS-8200, and the PCS-5000 can all be reused in a Tispan environment, making it suitable for converged fixed/mobile networks. Siemens says it has added two other features that it believes give it an edge in IMS:

• Single Sign-On, a token-based service authentication scheme that means users only need sign on once for multiple services. Siemens says this feature will be compliant with 3GPP specs.

• Converged Billing, which allows mobile operators to bill by service, content, volume, or mixtures of these.


Siemens offers its own IMS (SIP) AS. Like others, Siemens believes IM and presence will be key enablers in IMS, but does not believe there are clear killer apps. Siemens has placed strong emphasis on the wireless side on working through the OMA and expects to have OMA POC deployed this year. It is also looking to deploy OMA presence and sees group list management as a third important area for interoperability. Like other vendors, Siemens will develop (or has developed) all basic IMS applications, including POC, chat, and instant messaging, but "leaves the door wide open" for third-party development, especially with its partner Ubiquity. Among differentiators, Siemens has developed products for home entertainment that plug into an IMS platform. It offers STBs with a wide range of functionality, and believes these STBs, basis for its "Smart Home" initiative, will include a widening range of IMS services and applications that are supplied via a unified IMS subscriber database with single sign-on, authentication, and so on. Siemens believes that customer-premises equipment will become increasingly important, espe-cially pre-tested device software that can be rapidly certified and deployed, and believes it is in a strong position here because of both its status as a mobile device manufacturer and because it has a strong existing certification and interoperability program for other types of software.

Partnerships

As discussed earlier, Siemens believes partnership management is central to IMS. It has put considerable effort into this already, especially in the softswitch area, where its "We Surpass" partner program has been running for almost four years. Partners include application feature server specialist Sylantro, Ubiquity, and IP Unity. Siemens also sees Cisco as a strategic partner on contracts that involve GGSN and QOS functionality. Siemens plans to integrate the "We Surpass" program, with its separate IMS Developer Program into a single program that handles interface testing, joint application development, and so on. Siemens sees systems integration as a key skill, which it is prioritizing in its IMS offers.

Customers

Siemens's key customer is Dutch incumbent telco KPN, with which it signed a five-year deal for an all-IP, converged fixed/mobile network to be deployed in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Ger-many. Few specifics have been revealed, but among applications that KPN says will run on the converged infrastructure are VOIP, videoconferencing, and instant messaging.


In addition to a flagship IMS deal with KPN, Siemens is running trials with several operators, in-cluding France Telecom and TeliaSonera, and has a frame contract with Vodafone. The company expects "a lot more activity on the fixed side" in 2006, with bigger contracts on the mobile side following in 2007 as mobile VOIP issues are resolved. It believes that there are two basic types of customers. For some, IMS is an evolution in which the initial objective is to link into legacy applications, and then add SIP-based services. Hence the first step, it says, is often addition of MGCF functionality, for services (hosted on ASs) such as IP Centrex and residential VOIP. Siemens says this is the approach being taken by KPN. Others, especially in the mobile area, may opt for a greenfield build focused on deployment of the CSCF.

3.11 ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763) Chinese vendor ZTE did not respond to a request for an interview for this research program. We understand from third parties that it does have an IMS program and product line, but we were unable to uncover any information on this in time for the publication of this report.


IV. IT Suppliers

4.1 BEA Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS) BEA's core traditional strength in telecom is in OSS/BSS applications, where it is among the lead-ing suppliers; BEA's initial product was Tuxedo, a transaction processing monitor engine acquired from Bell Labs, which was augmented with a J2EE AS, BEA WebLogic Server, and by its own account all of the top 50 telcos globally use BEA in some fashion to run core OSS/BSS applica-tions, such as billing, provisioning, customer care, QOS, and others. Like mainstream telecom vendors, BEA believes that the market is transitioning from one focused on reducing costs to one focused on increasing revenue. For that, BEA needed to extend beyond the OSS/BSS area, and into the next-gen converged IP multimedia network services layer. Like other IT suppliers, it believes that the separation of the application/session-control layer from the lower-level network layers and the creation of open interfaces and APIs for service creation and delivery give it a big opportunity to break into areas traditionally the domain of proprietary telecom protocol-specific application providers. As a result it launched BEA WebLogic SIP Server, a converged J2EE-SIP AS for communication services providers, which can be used to create and deploy applications in IMS networks, and BEA sees IMS as one of its most strategi-cally important new opportunities in the telecom industry. The company's SIP and IMS AS, BEA WebLogic SIP Server, will support IMS in Release 2.1, scheduled for August. It will support the ISC interface and interoperate with several third-party equipment vendors and independent software vendor IMS control-pane products. BEA argues that it is a safe choice for service providers because of its lengthy involvement in providing ASs (about six years) and its use of a platform (Tuxedo) that has been in use for two decades. In an environment in which most AS specialists are small, BEA stands out as a much larger company. The company also believes that BEA WebLogic SIP Server is "best in class" in terms of process-ing power, and notes that its platform includes a fully specified J2EE container that simplifies the creation of applications for third-party developers. The company says its strategy is to be "the applications server of choice" in an IMS environment. Where service providers are seeking a stable third party to complement traditional vendors in the control layer, BEA may appear to be an attractive option.

Products

BEA's core product family for use in an IMS environment is called the BEA WebLogic Communi-cations Platform, consisting of a SIP-IMS AS called BEA WebLogic SIP Server, and a policy en-forcement and telecom Web-services platform called BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, which adds a service creation and execution infrastructure product line to its widely deployed BEA Web-Logic Service Delivery telecom solution framework. Like other SDPs, its aim is to create a soft-ware abstraction layer between the network elements and services so that developers can use familiar Java and Web-services-based application models (e.g. SIP servlets, Parlay X) rather than specialized network-specific protocols. These two products integrate into an IMS architecture using industry-standard interfaces, as shown in Figure 4.1. These products are seen by BEA as forming two parts of a larger integrated platform. BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper is in effect located between the application layer and the session-control layer of an IMS architecture, and BEA WebLogic SIP Server is an AS for creating and executing converged J2EE-SIP IMS applications.


Figure 4.1: BEA's WebLogic Communication Platform in the IMS Architecture

Source: BEA BEA delivers these WebLogic Communications Platform products as standalone products:

• BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper is designed for network operators to control net-work access using a policy enforcement engine. It exposes an operator's core network-service capabilities, such as messaging, calling, presence, and location, using telecom Web services based on the Parlay X standard. BEA will add SIP and IMS support in the first half of 2006.

• BEA WebLogic SIP Server has been available since late 2004 and is currently being upgraded for use in IMS. BEA describes this as the industry's only carrier-grade con-verged J2EE-SIP container. It argues that few other vendors have created the means to integrate a J2EE environment with a SIP environment (via a J2EE-SIP servlet container) without compromising reliability, availability, or other requirements. BEA says its SIP AS is "best in class" in terms of raw throughput; it can deliver over 3,000 SIP messages per second on a single instance of its SIP servlet container.

BEA sees BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper as an important bridging product in an environ-ment in which legacy network elements will still be used for many years and SIP still has some way to go as the dominant carrier-grade session-control protocol; it sees telecom Web services based on Parlay X as complementary to IMS architectures, since IMS specifies Parlay/OSA as one of the three IMS AS providers into a IMS core network.

Partnerships and Customers

BEA sees itself as part of an overall IMS solution, and it is working towards a partnership program to help it achieve this. Currently one of the company's most important systems integration partner is Accenture; about 30 percent of BEA's telecom business comes via Accenture. The company


also works with a number of Tier 1 systems integrators and regional systems integrators to meet particular customers' contract requirements. A third group of partners include those with domain-specific expertise, such as top-tier network equipment providers. On the telecom-equipment side, the company has worked with Ericsson and Nokia, among oth-ers, and it is also looking to build partnerships on the application side over the next six months. BEA WebLogic SIP Server is already deployed commercially with one Tier 1 network operator, and two more major customers have bought licenses. BEA is also in proof-of-concept trials with about a dozen other customers. BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper is in production with two major network operators delivering policy-based network access control to subscribers.

4.2 Continuous Computing Corp. (CCPU) Continuous Computing was created in 1998 to provide high-availability computer platform solu-tions to incumbent telecom equipment vendors. It acquired Trillium from Intel in 2000, enabling it to enter the protocol-stack business. In June 2005 it acquired UPTech, a Chinese provider of en-terprise media gateways and IP PBXs. These three business units are run separately. CCPU has two basic propositions for incumbent vendors:

• Protocol Stacks: In the IMS area, CCPU has begun selling protocol stacks for CSCF as its central IMS product. It says it can also provide all of the other elements of the control layer, including HSS, MGCF, and MRFC stacks, as well as SIP proxies and servers, but does not yet sell these separately. Among its limitations: It does not have Diameter func-tionality at present, and is using IPv4 rather than IPv6. It expects to upgrade the UPTech media gateway it acquired, an enterprise product, for carrier use this year.

• Integrated Solutions: CCPU is also steadily creating "integrated solutions" that add a management layer, a simple API, and other elements, such as fault management, to the basic protocol stack. In the IMS area – specifically the CSCF area – Continuous does not yet have a commercial integrated solution; the company says this is currently part of the "long-term roadmap," likely to be available in the next 12 months, but that this timescale could be accelerated if a major customer emerges.

In the meantime, it is pushing its CSCF protocol stack as its major entrée into the IMS arena. CCPU customers include Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Nortel, Samsung, and Siemens, among many others. The company works primarily through incumbent vendors; it does not sell directly to service providers. The company is primarily focused on wireless solutions, but says it will look to add wireline func-tionality as demand emerges. It is already providing VOIP products. CCPU sees its main strengths as its long-term expertise in protocols and its competitive prices: "Because we already have the protocols, we can undercut competitors by 30 percent to 40 per-cent [on integrated solutions]," the company claims. It also has a professional services unit that builds hybrid solutions. From a hardware point of view, the company has recently announced its first products built around the ATCA standards.

4.3 Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) HP's Network Service Provider Business Unit is the company's largest vertical industry unit, and HP has a long history in telecom. Its most important telecom offering is its OpenCall SS7 soft-ware; HP believes 70 percent of all SMS messages are carried via its signaling platforms.


It is now investing heavily in what it regards as a "key transition" from SS7 to a broader-ranging portfolio that will sit "at the point where IT and telecom intersect." Its new IMS product line, a key aspect of that transition, is all under the OpenCall umbrella. HP's proposition is focused on the application and service infrastructure, where it sees a complex set of tasks associated with authentication and integration, which in HP's view is "beyond the competence" of conventional incumbent vendors. HP believes service providers will increasingly demand cooperation between telecom and IT vendors to accomplish IMS goals. HP sells to OEMs, incumbents, and directly to service providers. It believes the proportion of its business sold directly to service providers will increase as a result of the current transition.

Products

HP's core product and umbrella for IMS is its SDP. This has four aspects:

• The SDP application layer, which supports Java, .NET, and Web service creation toolsets using HTTP, SIP, Parlay, Parlay X, and other development environments.

• The SDP common-framework layer, described as the primary network operator control point for service delivery.

• The SDP service-enabler layer, which spans the real-time SIP/Diameter core IMS net-work and HTTP-based data and content.

• The SDP network-asset layer, which is the link to the control-layer functions. HP sees its unique strength in what it calls the application-federation environment – that is, APIs that support applications horizontally and federate the applications (a function that is usually called orchestration by IBM and other vendors). HP says it has APIs that aren't limited to the envi-ronment of IMS, SIP, and Diameter, but provide additional SDP elements that are not part of a standard IMS proposition. Examples it cited included: links to an SS7 stack; links to a subscriber-profiling engine; access to media resources; and bridging applications to HTTP or Web services. HP says it does not provide control-layer products, though it has products that are formally part of the control layer in its SDP network-asset layer. In particular, HP offers the OpenCall HSS prod-uct, which it says is "more applications-oriented," than conventional HSS products; for example, says HP, it "federates" application data with other subscriber databases via HP APIs. HP argues that standard approaches based on SIP and Diameter are not sufficient here. HP also handles MRF functionality within its SDP, but sees this as an application-layer service. This is not limited to 3GPP functionality, but provides a voice XMP programming environment with a set of APIs to control calls.


Through the HP Bazaar (see below), HP has helped develop a variety of applications with third parties, including push-to-video and VOIP. HP believes that instant messaging is the core appli-cation on the mobile side, but argues that service providers must go "far beyond" POC to a rich messaging environment, or face cannibalization of SMS revenues. HP also believes that commu-nity-based services built around messaging are a strong candidate for early IMS deployment. HP places strong store by its wide range of existing partnerships, and argues that IT vendors have greater partnering experience than telecom equipment vendors. Its key agency for this is the HP Bazaar, which has yielded more than 100 third-party applications and services using HP's reference architecture. HP's contributions to these partnerships range from hardware only to much closer cooperation with independent software vendors.


Among its telecom partners, HP cites Hotsip, Movia, and Ubiquity. At Supercomm in June 2005, HP was part of an IMS demonstration mounted by Intel, which also included Ubiquity and Leap-stone. HP supplied the HSS for this demonstration. HP also opened two IMS "experience cen-ters" in France and the U.S. in February 2005 to enable application developers to test products. Like many other vendors, HP sees 2005 as a period of small-scale trials (for example, of VOIP with Telenor), with major commercial deployment following in 2006.

4.4 IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) IBM has made a strong push into the IMS space, seeing it as a major opportunity to extend its business in telecom. Its aims are to move up the value chain by becoming more involved in ser-vice creation and ultimately by becoming the systems integrator of choice for IMS contracts. The company argues that more and more service providers want to see stronger partnerships be-tween incumbent vendors and IT suppliers in order to deliver on convergence – of IT and telecom and of voice and data. IMS is a major opportunity to do that. IBM's current telecom business is built around its Service Provider Delivery Environment (SPDE) platform and business and operating support systems (BSS/OSS), as well as its successful BladeCenter hardware platform; WebSphere, Rational, and Tivoli middleware; and Carrier Grade Linux, all of which are already widely used by equipment vendors. Towards the end of 2004, IBM began to focus on helping service providers build an IMS business case based on both lowering costs and increasing revenues. The company argues that some early IMS business cases were based purely on technological criteria, and that this is being re-placed by business-case thinking based on both revenues and costs. Specifically, IBM argues that increasing data-service revenues demand development of combina-tional voice/data services, and that to do this requires industrial-type processes and an applica-tions factory. In this factory approach, composite services will be based on simple (sometimes existing) services and service enablers. This "componentized" approach will lead to more efficient service-lifecycle management, IBM be-lieves. IBM's solution is intended to support all this via a five-module proposition:

• Service creation: using IBM Rational tooling to enable network operators create and manage their own service portfolio.

• Service layer: an independent service layer facilitating delivery of converged voice and data services, which will work in conjunction with a 3GPP-compliant control layer.

• Device: the supply of device-client and management solutions required to consume IMS services.

• Data management: a single data management repository alleviating the requirement for multiple repositories within the network.

• Service management: a network- and system-management solution that can be applied to all network layers.

IBM sees "rich voice" apps as one of the keys to unlocking the potential of data services. It ar-gues strongly for combinational services that build more value into existing legacy applications (especially telephony) by making them more useful. This implies better service orchestration, al-lowing different applications or functionality to be used simultaneously – a key IBM objective. IBM's IMS proposition emphasizes service creation and middleware that enables complex appli-cations to be constructed. It argues for a structured approach in which "foundation" services such


as voice and conferencing are built into composite services, especially around "rich voice," using service orchestration to chain multiple service enablers, such as GMPLS and presence. Its pro-posals include more intuitive conferencing, IM/voice, and email/voice combinations that link cir-cuit-switched voice and IP data. Figure 4.2: IBM's Approach to IMS Service Creation

Source: IBM

Service Creation Products

IBM is promoting its Rational Application Developer and corresponding toolkits for service com-position. Its Unified Service Creation Environment includes tools to define requirements, analyze and design services, implement and test them, and then manage and optimize them after de-ployment. As the Rational suite is based on an open-source Eclipse foundation, the tool set is able to incor-porate a wide range of products from third parties through plug-ins. For example, IBM is currently adding support for Ubiquity (SIP), jNETx (JAIN SLEE), and Nortel (HSS), as well as the Qualphone device client.


IBM views service orchestration as a key component in allowing multiple services to be combined into more complex combinational services. The SCIM is poorly defined by 3GPP, so IBM has chosen to extend service-control functionality in various ways, including the use of Web services and BPEL.


Key IBM products in the application layer include:

• WebSphere Application Server

• WebSphere Everyplace Server for Telecom (a Parlay application and Web-services server that can work in conjunction with various Parlay gateways)

• WebSphere MQ middleware

• Tivoli Access Manager and Federated Identity Manager

• WebSphere Everyplace Device Manager IBM sees its key differentiator as its ability to hook into other stacks (e.g. not just the IMS or SIP stacks – see Figure 4.3 below). It sees it as essential to tap into multiple application-development communities. It believes that IN platforms will be around for some time and that it's possible to coexist with and leverage IN services in the meantime. IBM's solution will also support multiple execution environments, including SIP JSR-116, JAIN SLEE, J2EE, and OSA. IBM argues that there is currently no clear indication which Java variant, if any, will prevail in the long term, and all are likely to be used to meet different needs. For ex-ample, J2EE will continue to be used for typical Web applications where response time is not criti-cal, but JAIN SLEE comes into its own where low latencies are required. IBM also sees some regionalization, with JAIN SLEE more popular among European operators than U.S. operators. IBM is integrating a SIP stack for J2EE via Ubiquity and a JAIN SLEE environment from jNETx into its IMS architecture. Figure 4.3: Supporting Multiple Service Environments

Source: IBM


IBM also supports OSS/BSS to allow "value-based charging" based on user context or other non-traditional criteria.


IBM does not supply control-layer products in its own right, but instead works with partners, such as Nortel. The company regards its solution as "control-layer agnostic" – meaning that, depend-ing on the needs of the client, different partners may be considered. However, IBM does regard subscriber and service data management as core to its proposition. It is working with Apertio's high-performance database to decouple customer data from applications. IBM is linking this data-base to IBM Tivoli's Federated Identity Manager and with Nortel's HSS to provide an integrated approach to authorization and authentication. Federated identity management enables single log-in, so that logging on to one account automatically allows access to certain third-party sites and applications.

Device-Layer Products

IBM believes device clients are being underestimated by some IMS suppliers, and in particular that open device clients with open OSs (e.g. Symbian) are an important part of the overall solu-tion; it believes its client capability is "an integral part of an overall IMS solution." IBM works with third parties such as Qualphone to provide IMS device clients. The general prin-ciple at work here is that application clients sit on top of the device OS in such a way that service providers can make use of "network-centric device clients" that are independent of the device. This allows the service provider more control over the ways services are provided to its custom-ers; for example, it may allow a service provider to offer free access to additional features in a service for a limited period, using over-the-air provisioning and sign-on.

Computing Platforms

The company believes adoption of a common computing platform and operating system will en-able service providers to reduce costs and complexity, increase scaleability, flexibility, and avail-ability, and develop an on-demand environment. The company sees BladeCenter coupled with Carrier Grade Linux as the mechanism to increase flexibility in service provisioning, allowing car-riers to scale up and down and "flex" equipment in response to demand.

Partnerships

One of IBM's early, key IMS partnerships is with Nortel, with which IBM has developed an end-to-end solution. The company also works regularly with Lucent and other major equipment provid-ers. As part of IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks program, IBM has also created the Tele-communications Industry Network, which has over 900 members, including IMS partners Apertio, jNETx, Ubiquity, Qualphone, Brooktrout, AudioCodes, Leapstone, and Micromuse.

4.5 Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) Intel is one of a group of companies that sees IMS as a way to advance its strong commitment to ATCA-based computing platforms. Its sees ATCA and IMS as mutually beneficial, since ATCA's modular design can be used to realize many of the central goals of IMS – goals such as best-of-breed purchasing or specification of IMS functions, use of third-party ASs, and so on. Intel has therefore put a strong effort into building proof-of-concept test systems that demonstrate that an ATCA server running blades from a variety of parties can handle working IMS applica-tions. At Supercomm, for example, Intel showed an ATCA blade system that included an HSS


from HP, an S-CSCF from Leapstone, and a SIP AS from Ubiquity, together providing a combina-tional IMS application that mixed telephony and gaming. As this suggests, Intel is strongly committed to developer programs and partnership initiatives. Intel creates segment teams that identify new markets, pick a slice, decide what is required, and create an ecosystem of partners that can create a proof-of-concept platform – in this case, for IMS. It sees this as "one step beyond" a technology and solutions focus. These include a developer program to get more IMS applications developed and joint develop-ment work on IMS client software, where Intel sees a particular gap today. They also include a "Solutions Lab" that can be used by application developers to create or adapt applications for a working IMS environment. Finally, there is the Intel Communications Alliance, which is the basis for the IMS ecosystem program, and which currently has almost 200 members. In terms of IMS-related products, Intel's propositions include a variety of recently-announced ATCA blades and related technologies that are specifically designed to make IMS more flexible and scaleable and to improve IP network performance. These blades include the NetStructure MPCBL0010 Single Board Computer, the NetStructure IXB28504xGbEFS Secure Packet Proc-essing Blade, and the NetStructure MPCMM0002 Chassis Management Module. In many cases, its solutions for specific IMS vendors may include a mix of products – e.g. a secu-rity blade based on IXP, a media-processing blade, an Ethernet switch, and so on. Intel sells exclusively to equipment vendors and has no plans to work directly with service provid-ers except in demonstration labs and other similar projects. In addition to the companies men-tioned above, customers for Intel's ATCA boards include NEC, Nortel, and Siemens.

4.6 RadiSys Corp. (Nasdaq: RSYS) RadiSys is a provider of embedded systems for intensive computing, data processing, and net-work applications. Its customers include Cisco, IBM, Lucent, Nortel, and Siemens. RadiSys' core product for IMS is the RadiSys Promentum ATCA-7010, an ATCA platform for con-trol, management, and data-layer applications. At Supercomm, RadiSys demonstrated this plat-form in use as an IMS SIP AS. The most important feature of the platform is its throughput; the platform can filter or monitor incoming traffic at 10 Gbit/s in a single ATCA slot.

4.7 Solid Information Technology Ltd. Solid Information Technology was founded in 1992 in Finland and is privately held. It makes SQL databases that allow real-time access to data across any type of network. About 30 percent of the company's customers are in telecom, including Alcatel, Cisco, Fujitsu, HP, NEC, Nokia, Nortel, and Siemens. Some of these relationships have a long history; for ex-ample, it has supplied the platform for HP OpenView for seven years. Solid's focus in telecom is on enabling delivery of IP applications. It works almost entirely through the incumbents and other hardware and software vendors, and rarely sells direct to service pro-viders or carriers. Solid sees IMS as a major opportunity because it requires many of the skills that Solid already provides in other contexts. These include very high (carrier-grade) data availability, distribution of databases and applications, rich media and data handling, and handling unpredictable usage pat-terns. Solid argues that traditional application architectures require an enormous and inefficient focus on data management, rather than business logic.


Solid sees particular advantages in emerging ATCA environments that mix and match services and databases in a single server. Its basic proposition is a set of "application-ready" platforms that meet the basic requirements for highly distributed, scaleable, and reliable real-time databases. Customers such as POC server specialist Sonim can use these characteristics, for example, to keep two copies of subscriber data in a server, replicating between blades, to improve reliability and availability. The company says that its sweet spot is in handling "rich data" of the kind that is likely to be typi-cal in combinational IMS services. It believes a particular strength is its use of in-memory and disk-based management; in-memory management is used to handle anything that needs to be accessed very quickly – again, an important requirement in many IMS applications. Most impor-tantly, the architecture allows for highly distributed databases, and therefore allows highly avail-able and easily scaleable applications to be deployed.

4.8 Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) Sun is one of a group of computer-platform companies that see IMS as an opportunity to extend their reach in telecom. It defines its goal in IMS as "being a business partner for IMS application providers" and "ena-bling IMS infrastructure through its network equipment providers' partners and their ecosystems of independent software vendors and systems integrators." Sun has no plans to build any of the specific elements of IMS, such as the CSCF or HSS. The company describes its IMS strategy as having three main objectives:

• Supply network equipment providers, where its core IMS proposition is the carrier-grade Netra hardware platform, Solaris 10 operating system, and a range of middleware prod-ucts based on Java, such as its Directory and Identity Management systems.

• Enable the service layer, where the objective is to build an SDP that helps service pro-viders differentiate themselves.

• Supply developers, where it plans to foster the creation of IMS applications by leveraging its Java development community and by providing an IMS partner ecosystem to its tele-com customers.

Sun's primary offering to enable equipment vendors is the Netra server line. In September 2004, it announced plans to build to the ATCA standard; and at CTIA in March, it announced alliances with jNETx and Open Cloud, leading Java middleware providers to accelerate development and deployment of new IMS services. At Java One last month, Sun demonstrated NTT Comware's next-gen SIP AS technology for triple-play services (voice, video, and data) on Sun's Netra ATCA blade running the carrier-grade Solaris OS. Sun believes a big reduction in hardware costs and footprints will be possible with these new technologies. However, it notes that these technologies can also be used to enable a highly dis-tributed application environment and higher reliability through easier distributed replication of da-tabases and software – both of which are key aims of IMS network builders. Among its strengths, Sun cites a technology in its next-gen chip architecture, called chip multi-threading (CMT), which it believes will benefit IMS applications. It announced new servers based on CMT in January 2005. In brief, the technology allows greater throughput in a smaller space. On the software side, Sun says new capabilities being built into the Solaris 10 OS will be useful in an IMS environment.


These include three specific features:

• Solaris Containers, which enable separate instances of Solaris to run on the same server – thus allowing, for example, several IMS functions to run on the same blade server.

• DTrace, a real-time debugging tool that lets system administrators pinpoint causes of per-formance bottlenecks. It includes more than 30,000 probes (or sensors) to help dynami-cally observe performance at the kernel level without taking down a telecom service.

• Predictive Self-Healing, which consists of agents that can dynamically take processors, regions of physical memory, and I/O devices offline with no interruption in service.

Sun also provides middleware that handles systems management in IMS racks. This allows for management of different blades in an IMS server (including non-Sun blades) to be more easily managed. Sun has created an abstraction layer based on Service Availability Forum specs to handle this and plans to include this software in its ATCA systems. Sun is also a major supplier of Java-based middleware for enterprise systems, which it is repur-posing for IMS. This includes software for directories, identity management, and ASs – all core requirements in IMS. Sun supports a variety of Java-based derivatives, including Java Platform Standard Edition (for servers) and Java Platform Micro Edition (for handsets). One of its key objectives is to standardize the mobile SIP client, and Sun has been among those leading the definition of the new Mobile Services Architecture through the Java Community Proc-ess. JSR 248 incorporates over a dozen mobile-platform API specs, including JSR 180 (SIP for Java Platform, Micro Edition), as a stepping stone toward a full IMS client. Sun hopes to see broad rollout of JSR 248-based software in 2006. Sun places particular emphasis on the service layer and is working with a number of middleware partners, including jNETx, Open Cloud, and Appium, that can provide the abstraction layer for application developers creating software for use in IMS-based networks. Appium provides a Par-lay and Web services AS for a service-creation environment. jNETx and Open Cloud are building IMS implementations on Sun platforms using JAIN SLEE, a Java middleware solution specifically designed to simplify access to information in telecom networks, such as location and presence. Sun sees partnering as one of its key strengths. Its Open Services Delivery Platform Solutions Program aims to create an ecosystem of vendors for delivering and building IMS applications. Its initial program partners include Appium, Drutt, and Terraplay, with which it is developing a joint solution for a combined mobile-gaming/voice-conferencing application; and jNETx and Open Cloud, with which it is working to simplify IMS service delivery and provide SCIM functionality. Other key partners in this program are major systems integrators, such as EDS, which provides integration services required to implement an IMS architecture. In addition, Sun hopes to foster IMS application innovation through the use of standardized platforms, such as Java, by leverag-ing the 4.5 million developers in the Java development community. Among equipment vendors, Sun has a strong position where the vendors are not building their own proprietary hardware platforms. Thus it is a major supplier for Lucent and Siemens's IMS propositions, among others. However, Sun says that it is a significant supplier to all of the top ten incumbent vendors, and it is in discussions with several to be a partner for their IMS solutions.


V. Softswitch Vendors

5.1 Cirpack Based in France, Cirpack is a leading supplier of softswitches, with 50 customers in 15 countries. It was acquired by French electronics company Thomson SA (NYSE: TMS; Euronext Paris: 18453) in April 2005. Its main product is a range of Class 4 and Class 5 replacement switches, including the flagship Multinode-B, a Class 5 IBM BladeCenter-based softswitch that supports TDM, ATM, and IP net-works. Cirpack has also created a carrier-class SIP gateway that is designed to be sold with the switch. These and other products are built on top of its Next-Generation Universal [hardware] Platform; Cirpack sees the key strengths of its approach as modularity and scaleability. Cirpack describes its current platform as "IMS-like"; it includes SIP interfaces to ASs and increas-ingly will be based on the Tispan IMS architecture, "especially from the second half of 2005," the company says. From a Tispan point of view, Cirpack provides the AGCF and the MGW/SGW functionality in the Tispan model (see Figure 5.1). Figure 5.1: Cirpack's Equipment in a Tispan Architecture

Source: Cirpack Cirpack has been focused on wireline carriers needing to deploy VOIP, but it is now beginning to focus on some mobile service provider opportunities, for example business FMC services, such as mobile IP Centrex. Cirpack sees this as a "pre-IMS opportunity," since it can be done via the HLR (predecessor to the HSS). It also sees an increasing opportunity to sell to global operators that have both fixed and mobile operations and want to merge the application layer to supply ser-vices such as converged voice mail. However, it says the wireline opportunity with IMS will con-tinue to be its main focus. In May 2005, Cirpack announced the creation with ECI of a joint solution for Tispan migration. The solution comprises ECI's Hi-Focus Multi-Service Access Gateway and Cirpack's Multinode-B platform.


5.2 Italtel SpA Italtel is the smallest of the old-school European equipment vendors, but it has compensated for this shortcoming with an innovative and sharply focused product-development program that saw it enter the market for softswitching (and invest heavily in it) earlier than most of its European rivals. It began developing its media gateway and media gateway controller in 2000, and has since de-veloped an established position in Europe, where Telecom Italia is its key customer. Cisco owns 18.4 percent of Italtel and is likely to use Italtel equipment as part of its own IMS proposition. Ital-tel has almost no customers and no reputation in the U.S., despite the Cisco connection; Cisco only uses the Italtel relationship in Europe. Its softswitch provided a useful springboard for entry into the IMS marketplace, where Italtel was also a relatively early entrant. The company has a commercial product line and several live com-mercial customers for IMS (Albacom, Belgacom, and Telecom Italia). It hopes to further penetrate its existing softswitch customer base, because many have Italtel equipment that can be upgraded to IMS; further contract awards are expected in 2005. As the foregoing suggests, its IMS strategy is initially (and unusually) aimed mainly at wireline customers. In fact, some elements of the wireless proposition are not yet ready, notably a 3GPP P-CSCF and a 3GPP HSS/HLR. Instead, Italtel has focused its efforts on being early to market with a Tispan-compliant IMS proposition. In this market, however, its offer is as complete as those of the incumbent vendors, placing it squarely in competition with those companies.

Products

Italtel's IMS product line now includes:

• In the control layer, the three CSCF functions, an HSS, the MGCF and BGCF, and the two MRF functions, which are currently implemented in one box (i.e., without the H.248 interface). Italtel will add an HSS/HLR for 3GPP applications in the first quarter of 2006 and a P-CSCF for 3GPP in the first half of 2007. Italtel has also not yet implemented a Diameter link between the CSCF and the HSS. This will be added early in 2006.

• Italtel has built an IM-SSF to link into legacy IN application functionality. Italtel sees this as a way of reusing valuable applications, such as number portability, that are already implemented in IN, rather than rewriting them for IMS.

• In the application layer, an AS that Italtel says will primarily be included in its bids where no best-of-breed solution has been established.

Italtel argues that the Tispan spec opens up a broader market than the parallel 3GPP spec, be-cause it can address the primary requirements of traditional Tier 1 and traditional Tier 2 providers. Whereas traditional Tier 1 wireline operators are already widely issuing comprehensive RFPs for IMS implementations that include both telephony and other applications, Italtel argues that Tier 2s usually require little more than telephony over IP. For this, Italtel believes, IMS is over-specified, and a conventional IP solution based on MGCP that can be upgraded later to IMS makes more sense. Equally, a simple business PBX IP solution can use H.323 initially and upgrade to SIP later, as application requirements become more sophisticated. At the same time, Italtel has developed a solution for FMC that makes best use of its focus on Tispan. Italtel argues that telephony will primarily be provided in wireless networks using GSM TDM equipment – perhaps for as long as ten years. However, since the primary IMS requirement of mobile vendors is for combinational services, rather than VOIP, Italtel believes the major re-quirement is for links back into the legacy network from the IMS core. "In this way, you can create combinational services across the fixed/mobile boundary without waiting for the GSM TDM net-work to be replaced – for instance, voice and video sharing between a GSM mobile device and a broadband-connected PC."



Italtel has a longstanding partnership with Cisco that predates its IMS solution. It uses Cisco's media gateway and other elements in its enterprise solutions, such as Cisco's Call Manager. Ital-tel also has a partnership with Acme Packets for the IPP Border Element. At the application layer, Italtel took a strategic decision recently to work with partners wherever an existing best-of-breed solution was available, rather than attempting to address all requirements itself. Its first partnership of this kind is with BroadSoft, which it is using as an IP Centrex AS. A second partner is LogicaCMG, used for unified messaging applications. Italtel also has relationships at the terminal layer, including with Telsey (for residential gateways). Italtel's most important IMS customer is Telecom Italia, which was one of the first European in-cumbent telcos to implement a true IMS wireline solution. Its other incumbent customer is Belgacom, which is currently in a pre-IMS phase but which plans to move to a true IMS solution in the third or fourth quarter of this year. In this case, BroadSoft is providing an IP Centrex AS, but this unit is reached (using a single-sign-on process) via Italtel's CSCF.

5.3 Marconi Corp. plc (Nasdaq: MRCIY; London: MONI) Marconi's IMS strategy is initially focused around ETSI Tispan's core IMS architecture. Marconi says it played an important role in proposing these requirements within Tispan NGN work in 2003 and has been closely involved in standardization since then. Marconi has a softswitch, the XCD 5000, that is part of its Impact SoftSwitch platform. This has been widely deployed and will form the basis for its migration to IMS. The company argues that its highly modular design makes it very suitable for being decomposed to provide IMS functional-ity, and it claims that it will be possible to bring existing Call Servers to full 3GPP IMS through a simple software upgrade. Marconi has its IMS product with customers for trials and plans to fully align its existing products with Tispan-IMS over the next six months. In 2006 it will make further enhancements to its CSCF products to bring them fully into alignment with 3GPP's IMS – and this, combined with partner-ships for other mobile functions, will allow the company to deliver platforms for FMC. Marconi says the modular nature of IMS has enabled it to focus on its core competencies: ses-sion control and CSCF. For many other functions, it says it will partner with best-of-breed part-ners. It is also planning to put more effort into systems integration to support this approach. Part-nerships already announced include Newport Networks for session border control and Operax for bandwidth management. Marconi sees the application layer as the area in which much value will reside in the future, at least from the service provider's point of view. Although the company does not intend developing ASs itself, it has incorporated two third-party vendors' open application platforms into the Marconi IMS solution and will be developing applications to run on these platforms. One partnership has been announced with Appium, where Marconi wants to use Appium's "capability-exposure" func-tionality. The other partner is a major player in ATCA-based application platforms, which Marconi says will also contribute an "ecosystem" of third-party developers. Specifically, Marconi is looking at incorporating the following capabilities into its FMC IMS solu-tion, utilizing either in-house developments or third-party products. Figure 5.2 illustrates these plans, and the specified capabilities follow.


Figure 5.2: Marconi's Products in a Tispan Architecture

Source: Marconi Elements include:

• Marconi MSAN Access Hub to fulfill role as Tispan IP-CAN feeder device

• Marconi SIP server for I-CSCF, S-CSCF, P-CSCF

• Marconi Call Server as a "PSTN" feature server for IMS PSTN emulation subsystem

• Marconi Presence Server

• Third-party ENUM+ (incorporating Marconi IPR)

• Third-party HSS, not yet determined

• Sonus and Marconi TDM trunk and access gateway

• Operax Bandwidth Managers for Tispan RACS

• Newport Networks SBC for the policy-enforcement function (BGF)

• Third-party media resource controllers, not yet determined

• Appium and other SIP AS

• Third-party Web AS, not yet determined

5.4 NetCentrex SA NetCentrex, based in France, has built up a solid position as a supplier of solutions for residential VOIP, IP Centrex, and (more recently) IP video and triple-play markets, using the French market as its springboard. The company's core product platforms are the CCS Softswitch and the MCS Media Control Server platform.


NetCentrex has developed a comprehensive strategy for migrating to IMS. Its core product objec-tives include:

• Evolve VOIP platforms (MyCall and Business Services) into full IMS ASs; NetCentrex notes that these have been entirely based on a distributed SIP architecture since 2000 and are available now for use in an IMS solution.

• Offer its MCS Media Server to fulfill MRF functionality; this is also available now and will be ported to an Intel ATCA platform this summer.

• Offer its SMC-SS7 for MGCF and its Class 4 switch for BGCF – these two components are also available today.

• Develop S-CSCF and I-CSCF internally; NetCentrex says it is taking a fresh approach in developing the S-CSCF, specifically by enabling connection to pre-integrated ASs for supplementary services to non-intelligent terminals. NetCentrex believes this will help service providers who have a large installed based of stimulus devices, such as MGCP IP phones, or who wish to support network-hosted applications, such as IP Centrex, which are not currently specified in IMS.

• Acquire complementary technology for other elements, specifically the P-CSCF; NetCen-trex says its switch can already provide much of the SBC-type functionality for the P-CSCF, including NAT traversal and protocol translation, but it is planning an acquisition to fill out this functionality.

• Provide interworking and transition strategy from non-IMS components.

• Partner in other areas, particularly for the HSS and for specialized application providers. These plans and products are illustrated in Figure 5.3 below. NetCentrex says it hopes to have a complete IMS solution by the end of 2005. Assuming it completes this program, NetCentrex will have a suite of products comparable to that being offered by the incumbents, and it is likely to push its IMS solution aggressively through 2006. Figure 5.3: NetCentrex's Products and Plans for IMS

Source: NetCentrex


NetCentrex says it also plans tight integration with SDPs for components such as rating, charg-ing, and billing, and it will provide SOAP-based APIs to its major product lines. NetCentrex sees its core strength as its experience in providing a wide range of services, includ-ing not only telephony, but also video and media services; unlike many conventional softswitch vendors, NetCentrex also has experience in mobile markets. It has also based its solutions on SIP since it began five years ago, and is a strong advocate of a highly distributed architecture with a centralized directory, core concepts in IMS.

5.5 Sonus Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SONS) Sonus is a leading supplier of softswitches, media gateways, and other VOIP-related products. It was founded 1997. Sonus was relatively late among its peers to unveil an IMS strategy, leading to its June 2005 an-nouncement that it was reworking of its product line to make it IMS-compliant. This has created a relatively complete set of IMS products that bring Sonus squarely into competition with main-stream equipment vendors in bidding on major IMS RFPs. Its IMS products include:

• The IMX Application Platform, which supports the IMS ISC interface, can store subscriber data, and can act as a SCIM. This can be deployed alongside the ASX feature server, which handles legacy applications such as call forwarding and E911. The IMX is avail-able in the third quarter of 2005.

• The HSX HSS, formerly offered in the same box as the BGCF, available in the second half of 2005.

• The PSX BGCF – see previous point – available in the third quarter.

• The SRX S-CSCF, which has been stripped out of the ASX and given additional multi-media functionality; this will be available in the fourth quarter of 2005 (the ASX will con-tinue to be deployed as a PSTN feature server).

• The NBS, which includes both the I-CSCF and the P-CSCF, as well as the Topology-Hiding Internetwork Gateway (THIG). Unlike other vendors, Sonus sees this as a stand-alone product that belongs in the border-control layer. Sonus says it will support PDF functionality here, but it does not do so yet.

• An integrated media server that includes MRFC, MRFP, and media (SIP) gateway. Sonus argues the MGCF function can be handled by a SIP gateway and is unnecessary as a separate function.

Like several other mainstream softswitch vendors, Sonus has not been among the IMS pioneers, but it argues that its product line has been more comprehensively reworked for IMS than most competitors' portfolios – hence its slogan that IMS has been "built in, not bolted on." IMS, it says, must be regarded as a "fresh start." Sonus also argues that most of the principles of IMS, including FMC, centralization of subscriber data, use of Diameter, distributed intelligence, and SIP signaling have been used from the start in its products. Most importantly, Sonus sees distributed intelligence as the most important feature of IMS, and it argues that this is not a feature of all its competitors' softswitches. Sonus has created an Open Services Partner Alliance that enables it to offer a wide range of SIP-IMS services, including business VOIP, IP Centrex, unified messaging, and conferencing. Its part-ners in this area include IP Unity, Sylantro, IPeria, BayPackets, and Genesys. Sonus says it has 100 application partners, and that it has no plans to develop applications itself.


Figure 5.4: Sonus's IMS Products in a Wireless Network Upgrade Scenario

Source: Sonus (Company’s products show in green)

5.6 Veraz Networks Inc. Veraz is a leading vendor of softswitches with a strong market presence in many developing re-gions, especially Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Its customers are mostly fixed-line network operators and competitive telcos, but it also has a few wireless customers. Veraz's softswitch is highly programmable and highly scaleable with "no practical limits," the company says. It is deployed in some very large networks as a straight replacement for conven-tional Class 4 COs. The company is now using this background to move into the IMS area. Veraz has a strong asso-ciation with the MSF, which advocates an architecture that some have seen as a rival to IMS-based Tispan. However, Veraz is now fully committed to the transition to Tispan, and it has mapped its architecture to the Tispan architecture (see Figure 5.5). For example, Veraz's "Ser-vice Execution Environment" (SEE) equates in IMS to the I/S-CSCF and the BGCF, while its "Call Control Elements" (CCE) handles MRFC and MGCF IMS functions. The P-CSCF function is han-dled by the "Access Signaling Elements" (ASE); the "Subscriber Data Access Points" (SDAP) is the HSS, and the "Policy Elements" (PE) is the PDF. For Veraz, the CSCF and HSS are both effectively new products, launched in May with a few trial customers.


Figure 5.5: Veraz's Control Switch in a Tispan/IMS Architecture

Source: Veraz The company argues that since its softswitch is built around a modular architecture, it lends itself to an IMS approach. However Veraz says it is "not at the point" where it would sell standalone components to customers; it regards its offering as a package deal but says it will be led by mar-ket demand and might change this approach if customers require it, since the product consists of separate software modules that could reside on separate servers. That said, Veraz is fully implementing the ISC interface and says that that third-party application services and a third-party HSS could be incorporated in its architecture. Veraz itself uses its SEE as a transaction engine, capable of creating service logic, for example for 800-number translation or call forwarding, or as a service broker to coordinate between appli-cations located on different ASs. Like the major incumbents, Veraz wants to provide core func-tionality for mass-market services itself as part of its Tispan offer. The company has also made a virtue of its commitment to a multiprotocol design in which service logic is protocol-agnostic, and in which links into legacy networks are a standard offering. The company argues that especially in the wireline network, links to IN and other elements will be re-quired for "many years," so that service providers do not have to recreate services such as freephone and prepaid for IMS. As a softswitch vendor, Veraz has committed initially to the Tispan variant of IMS. However, it sees convergence as a key advantage of the IMS approach and says it has created a roadmap that includes addition of much of the 3GPP IMS functionality. As a first step, it has built limited mobility in its ASE through a dynamic registration procedure, and it plans to create interfaces to the HSS to enable updating on user location and eventually seamless handoff. Veraz says this evolution will take place "over a six- to 12-month time frame."


VI. Other Vendors

6.1 Acme Packet Inc. Acme Packet is a major provider of SBCs, founded in 2000, that now claims 16 of the top 25 wire-line service providers as customers. The company's core product is the Net-Net Session Director, which supports security, service assurance, and other functions at network boundaries for SIP, MGCP, and H.323 networks. The Net-Net Session Router is a SIP router that performs a variety of policy functions, including admission control. In June 2005, Acme Packet unveiled its thinking on the use of SBCs in an IMS 3GPP and Tispan context. In the extended IMS architecture defined by Tispan, Acme sees the SBC performing five functions: security; service-reach maximization; SLA assurance; revenue and profit protection; and regulatory and law enforcement. Acme identifies two different roles for its SBCs in IMS:

• As an access SBC acting as the P-CSCF and ABGF (Tispan).

• As an interconnect SBC, where it can fulfill three roles in the Tispan architecture: the IBCF, the IWF, and the IBGF.

Acme says that both SBCs support external interfaces to 3GPP PDFs and Tispan RACS. Acme also defines a somewhat different distributed architecture, in which its SBCs act as BGFs, but under the supervision of a separate P-CSCF or IBCF. Figure 6.1: Acme Packet's SBCs in a Tispan-3GPP IMS Network

Source: Acme Packet


6.2 AePona Ltd. AePona is a good example of a company that sees IMS as an opportunity to extend its leading position in a relatively specialized field. AePona is the leading independent provider of OSA/Parlay gateways; its customers include the France Telecom group. OSA/Parlay gateways are now standardized at the application layer of IMS, and AePona believes that they will play an increasingly important role. The company argues that OSA/Parlay servers are a good compromise between legacy AS on the one hand (e.g. providing IN or Camel func-tionality) and SIP/IMS AS on the other – providing an open services platform that can be utilized by conventional software developers to build SIP applications, but which retains or builds links into the legacy world for service providers. AePona argues that service providers face an increasing threat from Web portals and similar companies that are increasingly building network services and functionality into their products using conventional software environments and programmers. With an OSA/Parlay IMS gateway, established network operators can make it easier for the same third-party developers to build to legacy network environments, enabling operators to compete more effectively with the new, Web-based competition. AePona is currently upgrading its OSA-Parlay gateway for use in IMS networks. A SIP version was announced in March 2005, and a first customer deployment began in April. It is also involved in a number of IMS trials with both service providers and equipment vendors. The company says it has relationships and has partnered with incumbent vendors that don't al-ready have an OSA-Parlay gateway, such as NEC and Nortel. Unusually among small vendors AePona says that it has mostly been selling directly to service providers to date; however, it be-lieves IMS will lead to more collaboration and partnering in future. AePona is also building partnerships with SDP vendors that need a Parlay gateway to address legacy network resources. Partners here include HP and Microsoft, both of which have embed-ded AePona's product in their SDPs. AePona also makes a Service Interaction Manager that handles service brokering, for example between different IN platforms during a call. AePona will add SIP/IMS functionality to this product towards the end of 2005. AePona's current customers include Eircom, Orange, Telecom Italia, KPN, and Sprint.

6.3 Apertio Ltd. Apertio describes itself as a provider of "open mobile infrastructure solutions." Its core product is its Common Subscriber Directory, which distributes clusters of databases across multiple sites to improve security and allows for real-time updating and replication of subscriber data. In these respects, the Apertio model closely resembles the HSS model adopted in IMS, and Aper-tio is already offering an IMS-standard HSS, used by, among others, Motorola. It also has part-nered with IBM in the IMS area. Other partners include Leapstone and Telcordia. Apertio launched its HSS at the 3GSM Congress in Cannes in February 2005. Apertio argues that its approach, a plug-and-play extension to its user-mobility suite, which uses a common sub-scriber directory and single user profile, is particularly well suited to HSS deployments.


6.4 AudioCodes Ltd. (Nasdaq: AUDC) AudioCodes is a vendor of packet voice products, in particular media gateways. In June, AudioCodes announced a partnership with IBM in the IMS space. It said that its Trunk-Pack Media Gateway boards and its IPmedia media server boards were now compatible with IBM eServer BladeCenters, and it demonstrated a working IMS system with IBM at Supercomm. As a result, AudioCodes can now supply the MGW and MRFP functions within the IMS model: The TrunkPack acts as the MGW, while the IPmedia media server acts as the MRFP. AudioCodes says it can support a variety of underlying access networks, including PSTN, Pack-etCable, 3G, and WiFi. It sees its key strengths as its voice coding and compression technology.

6.5 Azaire Networks Inc. Azaire was formed in 2003 with a mission to "enable broadband mobility for IP access." Its main aim is to reduce the cost of deploying high-bandwidth applications in 3G environments by making it easier to provide services in a hybrid 3G/WiFi environment. It sees a gap in the market for low-mobility solutions that reduce the cost of offering a wider range of broadband services. Its two core products are a Service Control Node that sits in the control layer and acts as an AAA server; and a Wireless Services Gateway, compliant with 3GPP Release 6, that routes traffic se-curely to different service nodes in the transport layer. The AAA server allows, among other things, secure roaming on foreign networks, integrated billing, and multiple authentication. Together these form what Azaire calls its IP Converged Network Platform. In Azaire's model, this will be able to connect not only into the core IMS network, but also into other types of hybrid net-works, such as a UMA network (see Figure 6.2). As of May 2005, however, Azaire had only built in connectivity to packet services. Figure 6.2: Azaire's Network Proposition

Source: Azaire


Azaire believes its solution is especially well suited to hybrid networks that use both 3G and WiFi in the access network – a necessity, in Azaire's view, if mobile VOIP is to be successful. Azaire's partners include Nortel.

6.6 BayPackets Inc. BayPackets supplies a range of communications software, focused in particular around VOIP. BayPackets' IMS proposition is confined to the service layer. Its core product is the Agility SIP AS, which is already being deployed. Its SIP AS supports JAIN and JSR-116 SIP servlets. In May, it added the Agility Parlay OSA Gateway to meet what it sees as a growing demand for a fully secured gateway that allows for development of third-party applications, with hooks into the legacy telephony infrastructure and into existing enterprise applications. Bay believes this pro-vides a strong basis for mainstream IT companies to develop telco network applications. At the end of the third quarter, it will add a Mobility Management Application Server that will en-able delivery of servers over multiple access networks, including mobile, cable, DSL, and WiFi. Finally, in the fourth quarter, the company will add the ability to roam seamlessly between cellular and other IMS-connected networks using a dualmode handset. Bay is porting a number of applications to IMS itself, including a personal communications man-ager, unified communications service, and a global voice VPN service. On the Parlay gateway, it is also offering a call-center routing and prioritization application. Bay is also working on a three-stage program to bring the application-creation process as close as possible to non-technical staff. Initially, it is supporting a core orthodox Java development envi-ronment, but it also plans to create a set of service building blocks that can be used by enterprise IT managers to build applications without the need for any conventional (Java) programming. In a third stage, Bay will make a GUI-based business-process editor available that will allow non-technical staff to make real-time changes to service logic in a run-time environment. The company has a wide set of partners, including strategic investors Intel and Lucent. Lucent signed a resale agreement with BayPackets in May under which Lucent will resell BayPackets SDPs and business VOIP applications as part of its own IMS solution. Other partners include IBM, Siemens, and Tekelec. BayPackets' Parlay/OSA gateway can be deployed in IBM Blade-Centers and Sun Netra servers, among other platforms. Bay sees its strengths as its ability to handle multiple protocols (SIP, Camel, IN, etc.), its highly scaleable servers, and its integration into a back-office environment.

6.7 Blueslice Networks Inc. Blueslice is a specialized provider of subscriber-management solutions based in Canada. For IMS, Blueslice's flagship product is the Mobile SIP Exchange, which from an IMS point of view provides HSS functionality in addition to acting as an AS. The exchange is a carrier-grade database that is scaleable to several million subscriber profiles and includes an Integrated Au-thentication Center for GSM and WLAN identification/authentication. It also includes an HLR for GSM subscriber control and an AS, which Blueslice says helps to speed up the deployment of new services.


Blueslice also offers a standalone HLR/HSS, which supports VOIP/WiFi, GSM/GPRS, and 3G mobile subscribers. Blueslice sees its main strength as its low-cost, non-proprietary approach: it claims that its HLR/HSS costs only one-tenth as much as some competitive products. It also believes that the use of SIGTRAN signaling to handle IP-to-SS7 links reduces signaling costs for carriers. A third product, the Universal Presence Server, extracts presence and location information from both GSM/GPRS networks and IMS networks. Blueslice argues that by profiling customers for different presence-based applications in a single server, service providers can avoid problems with replication and reduce costs. The product also allows presence to be implemented in existing GSM/GPRS networks and then migrated to IMS as it is deployed.

6.8 BridgePort Networks Inc. BridgePort was founded in 2001 to build a mobile VOIP proposition that allowed WLAN infrastruc-ture to be incorporated into existing mobile network services. Its core product is the NomadicONE Network Convergence Gateway, which allows a single phone number to be used across a variety of access networks including mobile, cable, DSL, and WiFi. It is delivered in the form of an IBM BladeCenter blade. From an IMS perspective, BridgePort will offer an AS focused on VOIP. As things stand, how-ever, the Convergence Gateway actually includes MGC, HSS, BGCF, and CSCF functionality, and it is described by BridgePort as a "Phase 0" IMS deployment that is designed for Release 99 GSM networks. However, BridgePort says that it can remove all the control-layer functions as IMS is fully deployed, allowing it to focus purely on the application layer. In fact, it says that in pure IMS deployments, it will not be a supplier of any control-layer functions, including HSS and CSCF functions. The NomadicONE Gateway is not currently deployed in IMS environments, but BridgePort is pitching it as a means to begin a cheap IMS migration program that avoids a costly, "big-iron" IMS network; instead, it is focused on the opportunity to create mobile VOIP services from the start. BridgePort argues that the need for service providers to incorporate VOIP is too urgent to wait for full IMS availability. "The challenge is not standards, but business case and interoperabil-ity," it says. Hence the IMS emphasis is to extend basic VOIP access networks. The company has created a supporting ecosystem through its MobileIgnite partner program. Par-ticipants include IBM, Sylantro, and Tekelec.

6.9 Bridgewater Systems Corp. Bridgewater was formed in 1997 and is focused on development of subscriber-centric policy management. Its proposition is effectively a "pre-IMS" solution to policy management. It argues that there is a compelling requirement for policy-management solutions in key emerging service areas, such as triple play, that require products to be developed ahead of standards finalization. The company announced a strategic relationship with Alcatel at Supercomm, through which Al-catel will use Bridgewater's software as the basis for its Subscriber Service Controller; the two companies are committed to continuing co-development in this area. Bridgewater also has resel-ler relationships with Nortel, Starent, UTStarcom, and several other unnamed vendors. It also has a direct sales force.


Bridgewater has a strong play in the 3G CDMA space, where customers include Sprint and Veri-zon. However, the relationship with Alcatel will likely boost its presence in wireline networks, es-pecially in residential triple-play architectures, and it also has cable MSO customers; Bridgewater says its wireless business is larger, but the wireline business is growing more quickly. The company plans to create both PDF and HSS products in the IMS area, but it does not plan launches in the immediate future. Bridgewater notes that the IMS PDF standard is still evolving, and that there are some significant controversies about the way forward. It is developing on the basis of an expected outcome, but under the circumstances, it does not expect to go into lab trials with its PDF until early 2006. In the meantime, Bridgewater says the SSC developed with Alcatel provides most of what is re-quired for the PDF in a pre-IMS form, especially for the most important application, triple play. Likewise, Bridgewater expects an evolving situation for the HSS as it transitions to full IMS com-pliance. The Bridgewater HSS will be in lab trials in the third quarter, with general availability in early 2006. For some time, the company anticipates a need to support both legacy Radius and IMS Diameter AAA interfaces, and its just-launched Applications Authorization Server is de-scribed as having interfaces similar to those needed for HSS.

6.10 BroadSoft Inc. BroadSoft is a VOIP application software specialist. Although it has concentrated on voice appli-cations, it has expanded into other areas, partially to serve wireless customers' needs. It is mainly focused on enterprise applications. It is now able to handle a mix of voice, video, instant messag-ing, presence, and ringtones, among other things. BroadSoft says it is embracing IMS "both as an architecture and as a channel strategy." The company announced its IMS-compliant VOIP AS in March 2005. It sees its key strengths as a mixture of long experience in building SIP products (six years), combined with the background of its founders in GSM. BroadSoft created its own SIP stack and notes that some other vendors OEM this from third parties. It believes rich telephony will be key to success for IMS-oriented service providers, especially enterprise telephony services such as PBX-PBX functionality over mobile endpoints that allows for existing PBX functions, such as hunt groups and "park and pick up." It sees a particular oppor-tunity emerging in contact centers. Because of this focus, it also sees ties into legacy environ-ments and equipment as a key requirement, to obviate the need for end-to-end IMS right down to client-equipped handsets. Its customers include Telefónica España, and it has a wide range of partners, including Ericsson and Lucent, both of which use its products to build telephony functionality into IMS solutions. BroadSoft claims to have other, unannounced partners among the major incumbents. Smaller partners include Hotsip. BroadSoft has been a part of many early IMS deployments and trials, including several of Erics-son's IMS wins. Most recently, it supplied the IP Centrex component in Ericsson's IMS contract with TDC in Denmark.

6.11 Brooktrout Inc. (Nasdaq: BRKT) Brooktrout is a media-server specialist with products that operate in both packet- and circuit-switched environments. Its core IMS product is the Snowshore IP Media Server, which provides MRF functionality and can support key IMS applications. Among the applications it can support are messaging, multiparty conferencing, prepaid services, gaming, and video services.


Like competitor Convedia (though with a different emphasis), Brooktrout has been running a campaign to replace the H.248/Megaco (MEdia GAteway COntrol) interface between the MRFC and MRFP with a SIP interface. Brooktrout argues that the H.248 interface cannot fulfill all the likely requirements of IMS, for example the ability to handle voiceXML (an area of expertise for Brooktrout), and that in practice it is not being implemented. However, at the time of this writing, there is little sign of the interface being replaced by standards bodies. Brooktrout claims a SIP interface is required because a variety of architectures are likely to be used for the MRF that differ somewhat from that proposed by 3GPP. In a white paper on the sub-ject, it says:

"The original purpose of the MRFC was conference control (now recognized as an AS function), roaming control (now recognized as a CSCF function), and media control (now recognized as integrated into the MRFP). Many of the 3GPP documents reflect this fact by leaving the role of the MRFC unspecified, except to say that the functionality occurs in the AS. Under this architecture, the MRFC is redundant as a discrete entity, with its func-tionality removed to the AS."

Other architectures, also valid in Brooktrout's view, integrate the MRFC into the CSCF or into the MRFP. With a SIP interface, Brooktrout argues, service providers need not be locked in by these different architectures, but can evolve as their needs grow – perhaps, in time, to a separate MRFC function. Despite this controversy, Brooktrout makes clear that it can provide a media-server function that includes the MRF functions and certain AS functions. At Supercomm in June 2005, Brooktrout demonstrated its media server acting as an MRF in a gaming-application demo organized by IBM. In addition to IBM, the company's other IMS partners include BayPackets, IPeria, Persona, and Radvision.

6.12 Convedia Corp. Based in Canada, Convedia is a major provider of IP media servers. Its flagship CMS-6000 me-dia server supports a wide range of value-added voice functions, such as announcements, call centers, and IP Centrex, as well as some non-voice applications, such as ringback tones and video services. Published customers include Covad, China Mobile, China Unicom, DeltaThree, SingTel, and Telefonica. As this list suggests, the company has developed a strong presence in Asia. Convedia specializes in providing just the MRFP functionality in IMS, and it is making a particular push with wireless service providers to do this. Convedia says multiple call agents, such as S-CSCFs or ASs, can control a single Convedia Media Server simultaneously using different proto-cols, such as SIP/VoiceXML, MGCP, and Megaco. The media server can be deployed at the edge of the network, in the core of the network, or in a combination of the two, depending on factors such as traffic volume and the cost of carrying traf-fic across the network. As a single-function specialist, Convedia is spending time evangelizing for an open, decomposed architecture, and counseling service providers not to buy "closed" IMS architectures. The com-pany has a wide range of partners, among them AePona, Alcatel, BayPackets, IBM, Leapstone, Samsung, and Siemens. The company sees its strengths, among other things, as its wide experience in the media server field and the wide range of protocols supported by its servers, including SIP, MGCP, PacketCable NCS, and H.248.


6.13 Digitalk Ltd. Digitalk was founded in 1996 in the U.K. The company's core product is an enhanced voice ser-vices platform called the Intelligent Multiservice Platform, elements of which have been installed in 350 service provider networks in 40 countries. Among many applications, it has supported residential VOIP, Centrex, interactive voice recognition, transcoding, and text-to-speech and re-lated messaging services, all supported by a unified billing and a rating engine. In May 2005, the company launched a SIP AS that can be used in IMS networks. The server can operate alongside many existing softswitches and media gateways. It supports voice NAT and firewall traversal, among other things. Digitalk also separately supports SIP trunking, SIP proxy servers, and offers a service-creation environment called Studio. Digitalk has mostly supplied small wireline voice service providers, but it says it's starting to see more opportunities on the wireless side, for example with MVNOs. In terms of applications, it is looking at deploying video-oriented applications such as videotelephony on its existing platform. Digitalk's key strategic partner is Intel; Digitalk is a member of the Intel Communications Alliance and utilizes Intel's NetStructure Host Media Processing software in its SIP AS. Digitalk has mostly sold directly to its service provider customer base, but it is beginning to work more through chan-nel partners, and it sees softswitch vendors as potential partners in the future.

6.14 Ecrio Inc. Ecrio is a startup focused primarily on mobile-oriented software for instant communications, in-cluding instant messaging, POC, and instant voice conferencing. It is strongly focused on client software, although it also provides server-side software. Ecrio's core Instant Messaging and Presence Services (IMPS) Server supports the OMA IMPS standard, which includes support for shared content and groups. However, from an IMS point of view, Ecrio is focused primarily on client software that includes a SDK and a variety of prebuilt applications, notably an OMA POC client. It is portable across a variety of client-software envi-ronments, including Symbian OS, PocketPC, Smartphone, Brew, PalmOS, and native OS. Ecrio is working on a variety of other IMS-based applications, such as "see what I see." In March 2005, Ecrio announced an agreement with Lucent by which it will supply client software for Lucent's IMS solution, including an SDK and a suite of applications. Ecrio's partners also in-clude BEA, Ericsson, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Siemens, and Sun. Customers include an unannounced mobile service provider in Asia.

6.15 Excel Switching Corp. Excel is a well-established provider of media gateways, media servers, signaling gateways, and enhanced services platforms in both circuit and packet networks, both wireless and wireline. The company's core product is its Converged Services Platform, which bridges between IP and legacy networks and enables converged services such as prepaid calling, voicemail, voice re-sponse, unified messaging, IP Centrex, and a variety of other voice-oriented services. From an IMS point of view, the company has a relatively wide range of products that can be reas-signed to IMS functions. Its roadmap for IMS envisages the company providing many control-layer elements, including the CSCF, MGF, MRF and MGW. Excel expects to support both SIP and legacy SCP/IN functionality in an IMS environment.


Excel believes there will be a need for a variety of approaches to IMS, including all-in-one boxes with IMS functions collapsed together, especially for smaller service providers, as well as imple-mentations in which it provides only one or two of the functions, while others handle other func-tions and systems integration. The company is taking a neutral view and says it will not be pro-moting any particular approach: "We are in a position to go in either [an integrated or disinte-grated] direction," it says, pointing to the flexibility of its system architecture. As this implies, Excel sees a gradual migration to IMS from existing architectures, in which func-tions that are currently integrated are gradually separated; initially it envisages deployment of an "IMS lite" in which there is little separation: "It makes no sense to blow it apart just for the sake of it," Excel argues. In addition to a wide range of voice-related services, Excel also expects to provide video-oriented services in the future. The company's partners include most importantly LogicaCMG, which uses Excel products in the solution it provided to Vodafone. Excel also works with a range of small application-development companies.

6.16 Gallery IP Telephony Inc. Gallery IP Telephony is a softswitch developer that began with an MGCP product, added SIP to it, and then added PacketCable compliance. It deployed both its first softswitch and its first Pack-etCable-compliant softswitch in 2002. Gallery sees itself as well positioned for IMS because it had made a previous decision to struc-ture its software for use in pluggable blades. It has also taken what it sees as an innovative ap-proach, in which it deploys "stateful" SIP rather than SIP proxies, uniting the MGCP and SIP so that, for example, each can access the same call data record for billing. Gallery also sees the ability to distribute software through the net as an important benefit, making it easier to build re-dundancy into applications and databases. However, the company's strongest selling point, it believes, is that its products are software-only and it is "not trying to sell hardware with the software" – hence, it implied, it is much cheaper, es-pecially from a capex point of view, as well as more flexible in making it easy for customers to mix, match, and switch, if they want to. Although the company argues that it has built "as if" for IMS from the beginning, it does not ex-pect to have a complete suite of products available until the beginning of 2006, when it plans to begin trials with several customers. The company believes that this will chime with actual de-ployment of IMS. It hopes to leverage its position with cable MSOs to offer a converged ca-ble/mobile solution, and then follow this with a DSL product set. Gallery says that it already has a working product for the P-CSCF, and it intends to first add I-CSCF functionality, and then S-SCCF. The products are sold under the Cassiopeia brand name.

6.17 Highdeal Inc. Highdeal is a developer of pricing and rating engines, with more than 100 systems deployed in both wireless and wireline networks, typically for enhanced and bundled services, such as triple play, as well as VOIP, IP Centrex, and a variety of other applications. The company offers products for both prepaid and postpaid environments. Its products are effec-tively part of the call-control function, calculating in real time whether users are entitled to use a service based on existing funds or rules.


In IMS, Highdeal sits within the online charging function (OCF) now being defined for NGNs by standards bodies including the ITU. It sees its key strength in the flexibility of its solution, which it believes can be used to provide complex, blended IMS services as well as basic services. In fact, the company believes its solution is especially well suited to IMS's session-based architecture, because Highdeal designed it be "service agnostic," rather than tied to vertical service stacks. The company says it was very easy to adapt its products for IMS. Its products were also designed in such a way that non-technical staff can create relatively sophisticated charging algorithms based on anything that can be measured at the network level; they are not restricted to preexist-ing algorithms based on time, volume, or event-based charges. This appears to chime well with the basic IMS objective of rapid, simple, cheap application deployment; Highdeal boasts that ser-vice provider staff can change pricing algorithms after a day and a half of training, with the result of reducing the time to change prices tenfold, and the cost of doing so sevenfold. Highdeal also provides hooks into legacy application environments, which it sees as a continuing requirement. Highdeal believes there are significant gaps in the IMS standards as they relate to the interface between applications, billing, and rating, and it expects deployment – especially mul-tivendor deployment – to take time as these issues are worked through. Highdeal works primarily through partnerships with major equipment vendors, such as Ericsson and Nokia (for wireless deployments); its key solutions partner is another French vendor, softswitch company NetCentrex, with which it is working specifically on IMS solutions, but it also works with a second leading French softswitch vendor, Cirpack. In the systems-integration and IT area, partners include Accenture, Atos Origin, Bull, CapGemini, IBM, and HP.

6.18 Hotsip AB Hotsip was founded in 1999 in Stockholm and is focused on supplying an application environment suitable for fixed, mobile, and converged networks. For 3G IMS, Hotsip provides a SIP/J2EE AS called the Hotsip Multimedia Communications En-gine, as well as certain key applications. These off-the-shelf applications include presence, mes-saging, conferencing, and telephony. Hotsip is working to ensure compliance with emerging OMA specs in this area. Hotsip has also launched a combined SIP and J2EE service-creation environment, allowing reuse of existing applications as well as construction of new applications based on familiar Java-based application-development environments. From an IMS point of view, the Hotsip equipment was already compliant with IMS as a SIP AS, and it required no enhancements to fit into the IMS spec, the company says. Hotsip says it is seeing strong interest among clients in FMC applications, for example to allow presence to be extended across a variety of fixed and mobile access networks. Hotsip has created a strong partnership program, including Cisco, Ericsson, HP, and Nokia; product partners include Radvision and Solid. With Ericsson, Hotsip is supplying one of the first commercial IMS implementations, to Telefónica España. Hotsip sees its key strength as its exclusive focus on SIP AS development, and its relatively long history as a supplier of SIP AS with a range of existing customer implementations – making it more experienced as a SIP AS provider than most competitors. In particular, it notes that its ap-plications have proven interoperability across a number of leading vendor environments. Hotsip also believes that its combination of SIP and J2EE in the same platform is unique, giving it the ability to draw on both media-rich SIP environments and J2EE-derived Web services.


6.19 Infitel International N.V. Infitel, based in the Netherlands, announced a network-agnostic AS platform appropriate for IMS networks at the 3GSM Congress in February 2005. Its AS supports SS7, OSA/Parlay and SIP signaling, allowing it to support applications running across a variety of wired and wireline IMS and legacy networks simultaneously. Infitel also provides an Application Suite that includes a wide range of voice-related products, in-cluding prepaid solutions based on IN and OSA/Parlay, intelligent call manager for freephone and similar applications, and flexible number portability. The company's partners include HP and Siemens, with which it participates as an AS provider in Siemens's "We Surpass" partner program.

6.20 IP Unity Inc. IP Unity was formed in 1999 to create a media-server platform for VOIP networks. This subse-quently evolved into an enhanced services platform that handles telephony, conferencing, pre-paid services, messaging, and video, among other things. The company's initial focus was the cable industry; the media server was adapted to meet the PacketCable spec, and IP Unity's equipment has been installed in several MSO networks. How-ever, Release 2 of the product was built around SIP rather than PacketCable, to meet the needs of ILECs. Customers include BellSouth, Qwest, and SBC. IP Unity is now working to bring its products into line with IMS. It foresees a three-step evolution:

1. Adaptation of the media server as the MRFC and MRFP; like most vendors, IP Unity is building this as a single product. The product was announced at Supercomm and is in lab trials. IP Unity says the product will be used by Siemens, Motorola, Cisco, and an un-named Japanese vendor as part of their IMS product sets.

2. A JAIN SLEE IMS AS, based on the existing services platform and offering similar ser-vices. This will have an ISC interface and will support third-party application development via an SDK that IP Unity will also offer. The AS will be available in the third or fourth quar-ter of 2005.

3. In early 2006, IP Unity plans to add support for IPv6, some security enhancements, and additional services, including video mail. IP Unity says the IPv6 enhancement is driven mainly by the needs of Japanese clients.

Beyond that, IP Unity plans to move to use of an ATCA chassis, probably in 2007, but believes this is not cost-effective in 2005. The company has been focused primarily on wireline clients, but it is now seeing more business in the wireless space.

6.21 IPeria Inc. IPeria is a startup that specializes in VOIP applications, primarily around messaging. Its Ac-tivEdge Web Application Server can host applications including voicemail, visual voicemail, auto-attendant, unified messaging, fax, personal address book, and conferencing. The product is based on open APIs and voiceXML. In February 2005, IPeria announced availability of an IMS-ready version of its software. It says the product will run on any standard server.


IPeria's most important public partner for IMS is Motorola; IPeria is a part of Motorola's IMS Inter-operability Program, and has demonstrated interworking with Motorola's IMS solution. Its wide range of other announced partners include Alcatel, Brooktrout, Cisco, Convedia, IBM, Siemens, Sun, and Sylantro.

6.22 jNETx Inc. Founded in 2001, jNETx is a supplier of network middleware with a wide range of partners and customers in the area of SDPs. jNETx's core product for IMS is the jNETx N(x), an SDP designed to deliver any kind of applica-tion over both wired and wireline networks. In an IMS context, the jNETx N(x) delivers the follow-ing functions:

• Service Capability Interaction Manager (SCIM): Manages complex service orchestra-tion across service enablers based on policy and subscriber profiles. Also, the SCIM manages the associated charging correlation between service sessions and enablers.

• Online Charging: A fully featured online charging and rating system is integrated.

• Programmable IMS SSF: Manages interaction with a multitude of legacy IN network service-protocol variants.

• Service Creation for OSA, Servlet, and Native SIP Application Servers: Manages the level of desired abstraction of signaling exposed to the service developer.

As a platform for service orchestration, this platform allows for service and charging orchestration of both 3G IMS and 2G/2.5G systems. In March 2005, jNETx announced a deal with Sun, which is using jNETx JAIN SLEE middleware in its Netra ATCA blade platform as a basis for development of IMS services.

6.23 Kodiak Networks Inc. Kodiak, established in 2001, provides a suite of so-called "instant voice" services for wireless ser-vice providers that include, most notably, POC. Its core product is the Kodiak Real-Time Ex-change (RTX), which, in addition to POC, offers instant group conferencing, instant voice mes-saging, and presence functions. Kodiak has also developed client software for both its own applications and OMA-POC services. Its products work in both 2G and 3G wireless networks. From a standards perspective, Kodiak says it is ready to comply with the OMA POC standard as soon as it is released. From an IMS point of view, its product is a specialized AS. Kodiak argues that it is in a strong po-sition to make the transition to IMS. Its platform is built on a packet core that can interface to IMS and is access-agnostic; Kodiak has demonstrated its applications running successfully across a variety of wireless and wireline access networks, although it works primarily with cellular network operators today. Its products include blended application environments with a strong IMS flavor. For example, it offers the ability to initiate an instant conferencing call, and then it upgrade it to a full-duplex con-ventional conference call without breaking the session. It also foresees a wide variety of pres-ence-based services being provided via IMS. Like many small companies pushing an innovative solution, Kodiak argues that service providers should deploy its products in a pre-IMS environment, offering much of the functionality promised by IMS, with the possibility of upgrading as IMS interfaces and functions are deployed in the net-


work. This, it argues, will allow them to build a customer bases for IMS-like applications in ad-vance of actual deployment. An important feature of Kodiak's solutions is that they do not require specific client software; they work with any wireless or landline phone. The company has developed a migration plan to repurpose the RTX system for IMS infrastruc-tures, but with backwards-compatibility to pre-IMS Kodiak implementations.

6.24 Leapstone Systems Inc. Leapstone delivers what it calls "intelligent service delivery and content management solutions" for network operators. Its main objective is to reduce the cost and time to market for new applica-tions, a key IMS objective. Its core IMS product is the CCE Service Broker, which can act as the S-CSCF and the SCIM in an IMS environment, as well as handling subscriber service-profile functions. As an SCIM, the broker can integrate applications from different kinds of AS, including SIP, Parlay, and IN-based applications. As a broker, it also handles orchestration of services in a single communications session. The product can also handle certain aspects of resource-policy definition. Leapstone showed its product working alongside an HP HSS and a Ubiquity AS in an Intel ATCA platform at Supercomm, and also provided SCIM functionality for a demonstration of IMS in an IBM blade server. In addition to these companies, it is also partnering with BEA, Cirpack, Con-vedia, IP Unity, Nortel, Sonus, Sylantro, and Ubiquity, among others.

6.25 Netrake Corp. Netrake is a supplier of SBCs and security gateways. In the IMS-related area, it offers what it de-scribes as a "pre-IMS" solution that meets the UMA spec for FMC. Netrake believes that UMA is a better short-term solution for FMC than IMS, which it believes still lacks certain important ele-ments in the media area. The company argues that IMS standards are insufficiently defined to allow for a clear solution yet. However, the company has defined a roadmap for customers that allow them to use its security gateway today and migrate to IMS later. It says that "80 percent of functionality is common to both GSM and IMS security gateways." Netrake says it can supply the SEG (IMS acronym for the security gateway) with key enhancements such as denial-of-service (DOS) protection, rogue RTP protection, and policy management.

6.26 Newport Networks Ltd. (London: NNG) Newport is an SBC vendor, founded in 2000 and based in the U.K. Its core product for IMS is the 1460 SBC. Newport sees an increasing role for SBCs as an IP-to-IP gateway between fixed and mobile net-works, offering a cheaper solution in all-IP scenarios than traditional media gateways. It also ad-vocates the use of SBCs to protect a mobile operator's infrastructure from third-party actions. Its SBC provides functions such as session admission control and prevention of DOS attacks, and can also translate between IPv6 and IPv4 and interwork between SIP and H.323. The 1460 can bridge between networks using different security mechanisms, e.g. IPSec and TLS. In May 2005 Newport announced a technology partnership with bandwidth management special-ist Operax, whereby the two vendors will together work on components that comply with Tispan standards.


6.27 NewStep Networks Inc. NewStep was spun out of Bell Canada in 2002, and has since filed 15 patents for its signaling and service-control solutions. Its core product, the Converged Services Node, is primarily de-signed to enable FMC applications to be supported over any access-network type. NewStep's software allows for network-based call control to seamlessly hand off between cellular and WiFi networks in-call when a dualmode handset is being used. Other applications allow calls to be parked and picked up from a different kind if phone (e.g. from a cellular to a fixed phone) during the call, and for automatic reconnect of calls in the event of poor reception conditions. It also works with Microsoft Live Communications Server. These services are offered via the Converged Services Node (CSN), which can also handle bill-ing and operations, administration, and maintenance functions, creating call data records that include a single record for calls that have traversed more than one type of network. From an IMS point of view, the CSN will morph into an IMS AS that links via the ISC to third-party CSCFs. However, NewStep is at pains to point out that from a signaling perspective it will not be IMS-exclusive, but will retain equally important links to legacy resources and equipment via SS7. The company's initial customers include Bell Canada and AllStream. Its solutions partners include Cisco, Ericsson, and Microsoft, while on the device side it is partnering with Motorola, Nokia, and RIM. Systems partners include HP and Sun.

6.28 NexTone Communications Inc. NexTone is a supplier of real-time session managers and SBCs. For IMS, NexTone is offering its Real-time Session Manager, a policy manager and enforcement point that provides centralized QOS/SLA management, traffic engineering, and location services in IMS networks. The RSM also acts as an application service broker. It manages traffic flows between feature servers, media gateways, and other application devices, and can allocate resources in advance, per application. In the IMS space, NexTone is arguing for "session-aware" networks that resolve difficulties asso-ciated with providing adequate QOS in an IMS network running on MPLS. NexTone argues that conventional approaches based on DiffServ are not adequate in networks running a lot of real-time traffic. Instead, it advocates an approach that provides a hybrid solution utilizing DiffServ to distinguish real-time traffic from Web traffic and enabling more granular classification of real-time traffic on an endpoint, user, and application basis. NexTone advocates the deployment of CSCF-capable SBCs at the network edge and real-time session managers in the network core, so as to more tightly couple control-layer and transport-layer (MPLS) functionality. A second product, the NexTone IP Multimedia Exchange, launched in June 2005, is designed to interconnect 3G mobile, VOIP, and IMS networks and facilitate roaming between different ser-vice-provider networks. The exchange was used by IBM for VOIP-to-IMS interconnectivity in its Supercomm demonstration in June 2005. Features include network-based policy and session routing, which provides end-to-end control of real-time sessions across networks; SIP features to support mobile gaming, chat, and other real-time applications as subscribers roam between net-works; transcoding of wireline codecs on VOIP networks to wireless codecs on IMS networks; and IPv4-to-IPv6 network address translation. NexTone's customers include KPN, while partners include BroadSoft, Brooktrout, Convedia, Sonus, and Telica.


6.29 Open Cloud Ltd. Open Cloud was formed in 2000 with the goal of developing telecom software using JAIN SLEE. Its key IMS product proposition is Rhino, a JAIN SLEE-compliant application environment that Open Cloud believes is well suited to the development of mass-market IMS applications. JAIN SLEE is one of a number of application-development environments that can be used to create IMS applications. Rhino can be used in SS7, OSA-Parlay, and SIP-IMS environments. Open Cloud claims Rhino was the first JAIN SLEE telecom platform that was commercially launched. It was co-development lead of the platform along with Sun. In addition to Sun, the company's partners include BEA, HP, and Ulticom.

6.30 Openwave Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: OPWV) Openwave, founded 1994, is a major provider of client-application software and development kits to the mobile industry, especially mobile data and messaging applications, but also makes a wide range of other products for both wireless and wireline applications. Its software is said to be in use on 900 million handsets around the world. Openwave has created a POC client that will be migrated to the OMA POC standard this year. At the same time, Openwave says it is actively engaged in the development of IMS-based clients that include picture chat, push to view, and push to message (push to send).

6.31 Operax AB Operax launched in Sweden in 2000 and now employs 50 people. It sells two products:

• The Operax Triple Play manager, designed primarily to ensure uninterrupted delivery of video in a triple-play bundle.

• The Operax Bandwidth Manager, designed to control access to bandwidth in NGNs. Operax's proposition centers on the underlying technology that it uses for allocating bandwidth, which is protected by a variety of patents. Its main feature is the ability to make allocations based on very fine-grained information, in real time (based on current network conditions), and at the level of individual customers and specific applications. Operax says its product can work with standardized QOS mechanisms based for example on DiffServ and MPLS, but adds to these in a way that allows service providers to differentiate, customize, make better use of bandwidth, and offer stronger service guarantees. In the context of IMS, the Bandwidth Manager acts as the PDF, but with additional features, cre-ating what Operax calls "an extended PDF." Because the Tispan version of IMS includes call ad-mission control as a key addition, Operax says it is basing its IMS approach more on Tispan than 3GPP. However, where Tispan Release 1 includes call admission control only in the access net-work, Operax takes it end to end. "Tispan is the first standardized architecture that uses our basic approach, so we see it as a big opportunity," the company says. Operax notes that Tispan Release 1 specs are already appearing in wireline RFPs, even though it will not be published before September 2005. However, because the Bandwidth Manager is a discrete function within a wider whole, Operax is anxious to see certain interfaces more clearly standardized. The company's first contract was not with a telco but with the Dutch army, which is using the bandwidth manager in mobile-warfare scenarios.


Operax is in trials with France Telecom and KPN. Although Operax has been evangelizing its concept with service providers, it expects to work largely through major equipment vendors for contracts. It believes it needs key strategic partners in three areas – traditional equipment ven-dors, systems integrators, and softswitch vendors – and is currently working to nail down deals.

6.32 Outsmart Ltd. Outsmart is a developer of software for FMC. Its core product is the SmartFMC, which was launched in February 2005 and is designed to support VOIP on any connected terminal, whether wired or wireline. It sees its solution as appropriate in particular for mobile service providers seek-ing to reach a customer base using wireline or other non-cellular terminals. SmartFMC integrates SIP-based telephones into the mobile core, allowing these to appear in the mobile network as mobile phones and utilize all the services in the mobile network. It is said to interoperate with all standard SIP-compliant media gateways and terminals. In effect, it is an en-hanced media gateway product. In IMS, Outsmart believes it will be able to utilize its expertise in connecting dissimilar networks to bring non-IMS terminals and networks into its IMS proposition. "With our solution, non-IMS termi-nals can be deployed and can reach IMS." This means service providers can continue to draw on previously deployed services such as prepaid services, but in an IMS context. "Our mission is to bridge between two worlds, so IMS is a big opportunity for us," it says. The company's partners include AudioCodes (with which it is developing a specific IMS solution), IBM, and Nortel, among others.

6.33 Persona Software Inc. Persona, formerly Longboard, is a vendor of SIP-based ASs, aimed primarily at mobile and FMC environments. Its flagship product is the Longboard Mobility Application Platform, a SIP-based AS that provides session-control signaling, with the functionality to serve as an AS, a SIP proxy, a SIP registrar, and a SIP gateway proxy. It also contains an integrated SIP servlet engine, a routing engine, a presence server, and an ENUM server. Persona also offers service-creation tools. Persona says its application-layer products can work without modification in an IMS environment. The company sees its key advantages as experience, the ability to scale to very large networks, and proven carrier-grade reliability. Persona has been focusing strongly on "personal mobility applications" and has created the OnePhone, a SIP-based application that enables a single handset and phone number to operate in both cellular and 802.11 WLANs with seamless roaming. It has also built a SIP-based IP Cen-trex application. The company works mostly through partnerships with incumbent vendors, and it also has a wide range of partners in other areas. Its partners include Siemens, Brooktrout, Convedia, Sun, Acme Packet, Netrake, and Sonus. Persona sees an emerging opportunity for wireline telcos and MSOs to enter the mobile space, and it says it is seeing much more interest in IMS on the wireline than the wireless side. The com-pany's strength is in the developed Asian market, which it entered in the wake of the U.S. telecom recession earlier this decade. Its customers in Asia include NTT (supplied through an OEM deal with NEC) and Fusion Communications, also in Japan.


However, Persona's current sales focus is in Europe, where it sees the strongest opportunities for FMC propositions. It is currently in several large-scale trials in Europe, and it hopes to convert these into sales before the end of 2005.

6.34 Personeta Inc. Personeta was established five years ago with the aim of enabling rapid service creation regard-less of the underlying network infrastructure. As a result, the company says "we have become an AS for IMS by default," since it had already created an IMS-like abstraction environment and did not need to do any further development to fit into the IMS environment above the ISC interface. Its core product is the Tapps network service controller, which can be used in an IMS network in two ways:

• As an AS interfacing directly with the CSCF and HSS using standard IMS interfaces.

• As a third-party AS interfacing with an OSA/Parlay gateway to allow access to third-party developers or service providers.

Personeta's experience is its strongest suit. The company supports development of applications in SIP, IN, AIN, and other legacy environments, but also in many variants – for example, it says it can support over 15 different vendor SIP implementations, and it believes it has the widest range of Java-based APIs in the business. It sees support for legacy environments as essential in a situation in which islands of functionality will persist for many years – not just in telco networks, but also in legacy IP or portal software – for example AOL Instant Messaging. Personeta cites a series of case studies in which it has reduced application-development time to less than three months using this platform. The company also sees its ability to separate application development into secure and insecure elements as a key strength, and it cites rapid application-development times in actual deploy-ments of its products. Personeta also handles service brokering and SCIM functionality, currently to handle brokerage between AIN, SIP, and Web-services applications. It does not directly develop applications itself. Personeta sells mainly through major equipment vendors and systems integrators.

6.35 Qualphone Inc. Qualphone has created an IMS client and SDK, which was shown at Supercomm as part of IBM's IMS demonstration. The Qualphone Eclipse Device IMS Toolkit allows users to write, compile, test, and debug IMS client applications.

6.36 Radvision Ltd. (Nasdaq: RVSN) Radvision is a specialized provider of videoconferencing and videotelephony products and tech-nologies that has recently been focusing on converged voice, video, and data products for IP and 3G networks. At 3GSM Congress in February 2005, Radvision announced a partnership with Lucent under which Lucent will use Radvision's Scopia 3G video gateway as the basis for videotelephony ser-vices in Lucent's IMS solution. It demonstrated interworking of the product between 3G video phones and a soft video client running on a PC.


Radvision is well positioned to provide links between wireless and wireline video services in IMS-like networks. Its mobile video services gateway supports bi-directional videotelephony and streaming sessions between 3G handsets running on the 3G-324M video standard, and IP (SIP and H.323) or ISDN-based video terminals in the wireline network. The company provides open APIs for custom application development.

6.37 SIPquest Inc. SIPquest makes SIP software for both servers and clients, primarily in wireless environments, though it says its software can also be used in wireline devices. Its IMS product is a GUI-based IMS client that enables users of smartphones and PDAs to ac-cess IMS applications and functions such as presence, instant messaging, buddy lists, click-to-call call routing and other call-control functions, and address books. It supports client environ-ments that currently include Java J2ME, Nokia, Symbian, PocketPC, and RIM. Devices that are currently supported include the RIM Blackberry 6000/7000 series, Sony Ericsson P900 series, Nokia 6800 series, and Motorola A1000. SIPquest plans a further client around the third quarter of 2005 that is designed for dualmode de-vices. It will also offer software that enables legacy handsets to access IMS features and func-tionality. The company also makes server software for SIP applications, though this has not yet been transitioned to IMS. SIPquest's main IMS partner is Nortel. SIPquest supplies its IMS client as part of Nortel's IMS proposition (Converged Multimedia Services). SIPquest is also working with IBM, Cirpack, and a major provider of signaling software, and it hopes to sign several further deals with Tier 1 incum-bents this year. The company is mainly focused on client applications that are aimed at enterprises, since it sees this as the key initial target. However, it expects to move to consumer products as soon as (IMS-ready) handset prices are at consumer levels, in addition to adding further IMS-related functional-ity to the existing product.

6.38 Sonim Technologies Inc. Sonim is one of a small number of companies that is focused on both client and server applica-tion software for IMS. The company has been among the principal designers of the OMA Release 1 spec for POC, and it expects to add further applications oriented around presence functionality in the next 12 months. On the server side, its core product is the Xtend family of server solutions. This is a carrier-grade server platform that includes provisioning, charging, and operations, administration, and mainte-nance functionality. The first member of the family is the Sonim Xtend POC AS, which comes with a standard IMS ISC interface. Sonim sells its software primarily through partnerships, most notably Ericsson and Nortel, but also with a variety of Tier 2 mobile device vendors such as LG and Sharp. It sees OMA POC as a way to force open hitherto proprietary handset OSs, and therefore as complementary with the overall aims of IMS. Sonim supports all open mobile OSs, including Microsoft and Symbian. The company expects commercial release of handsets based on OMA POC Release 1 in early 2006. Later in 2006, it expects to see more generalized push-to-X applications, such as push to listen and push to chat. Sonim argues that the constraining factor in IMS is in the handset, rather than the core.


6.39 Sylantro Systems Corp. Sylantro is a major provider of application feature servers for hosted communications services, with 60 customers around the world. It specializes in IP Centrex, hosted PBX and, more recently, consumer VOIP. It is currently migrating to an IMS architecture. In June, it announced Release 4.0 of its software, which specifically includes support for 3GPP IMS applications and will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2005. The company sees the IMS architecture as a means to implement FMC applications using its application feature server. Sylantro has worked with Alcatel to implement its AS with Alcatel's 5020 softswitch. It is also in lab trials with Siemens and several other unannounced softswitch vendors. Sylantro is implementing the ISC interface to its AS and has a service-creation environment that it says is "agnostic in regard to the CSCF used." It says it is conducting interoperability tests with leading wireless switch vendors to ensure that it can work with different vendor SIP environments. So far as actual IMS implementations are concerned, Sylantro said in May it sees these as "six to nine months away," but that this will depend in part on what its partners do. Sylantro sees its core strengths as its wide base of actual deployments and the scaleability of its solution. The company's wide range of partners includes Alcatel, Cisco, Convedia, IPeria, Juni-per, Siemens, and Sonus. Current customers (not IMS) include Broadvox, Covad, Qwest, SBC, Swisscom, and TeliaSonera.

6.40 Tatara Systems Inc. Tatara was established in 2000 to build solutions for mobile convergence that allowed service providers to offer services on any platform to customers, including cellular phones, laptops, and PDAs operating on a variety of access networks. Its core product is the Mobile Services Conver-gence Platform, the core of which is the Subscriber Gateway. In March 2005, Tatara announced an IMS-compliant FMC extension to this platform that enables IMS to be extended from non-3G network services to WLAN, DSL, cable, and WiMax networks. It says that the platform can be deployed in a pre-IMS environment but is compliant with IMS and can continue to be used as service providers move to IMS. The Tatara equipment handles secure tunneling and termination of services, authentication, QOS enforcement, and presence and location management, among other things. Tatara also supplies a Service Manager SDK for handset and terminal client software. The company has several customers, including Telus and Vodafone, which is using this platform in the U.K. to provide service to customers connected to BT WiFi OpenZone hotspots. It is run-ning trials with several major wireless and wireline service providers in the U.S. It says that most trials are focused on enterprise services. Tatara sees its strengths as the modularity of its design approach; support for both IP and circuit-based networks; support for both voice and non-voice services, including SMS; and most impor-tantly, its focus on security, in particular the ability to work through VPNs, firewalls, and NAT tra-versal without user reconfiguration. Tatara sees the secure delivery of voice and data through its dedicated channel as a unique strength that is not specified in the IMS standards, and has proposed its solution as an extension to the standard.


6.41 Tazz Networks Inc. Tazz is a policy-control specialist that provides software to control customer access to network resources. Tazz says it works in 3GPP, Tispan, and PacketCable environments. It developed its solution before IMS was developed to meet the need for policy control in, for example, DSL net-works, where there was already a requirement for automating prepaid Internet access, providing dynamic QOS, controlling bandwidth dynamically, and offering differentiated services, among other things. Tazz's aim was to pull together information on subscribers residing in a variety of devices to create an overall policy architecture that operated dynamically, in real time. Tazz sees its approach as highly applicable to IMS and is planning to "map IMS to real-time de-vice control." However, it believes that this will take at least one to two years, because of the rela-tive immaturity of policy control in IMS and related environments. Like other vendors, Tazz sees the IMS PDF function as "light on detail" for real-world policy envi-ronments and too oriented to 3GPP environments. In particular, it has been designed for a GGSN mobile situation, but in broadband applications must work with B-RAS, DPI switches, MPLS edge devices, DSLAMs, and so on – any device, in fact, that is controlling access to service features. Approaches to policy control vary considerably across these different network environments, and there is controversy about whether the PDF should be confined to a relatively lightweight "dumb" role or given a more complex "inline" role. Tazz favors the latter, arguing that without it the com-plexity just gets shifted elsewhere, but it recognizes that this issue is not yet resolved. From this point of view, Tazz believes that Tispan "is going in the right direction" for achieving complete abstraction between transport and control layers. However, the DSL Forum is also working in this area, and Tazz notes that there is a need to build bridges between these various organizations to create an overall policy architecture. Despite these differences, Tazz is trying to accommodate all of the various approaches. It nor-mally works through partnerships with incumbent vendors and systems integrators on large con-tract tenders. "This is not a black-box market" it notes. "Everything must be customized for spe-cific environments." The company believes its main strength is its access-agnostic approach to policy control, giving it the ability to work across multiple access networks. Initially it was focused on wireline environ-ments, but it is now adding wireless to this portfolio, though Tazz notes that the requirement for differentiated services and accompanying policy control is driven largely by bandwidth, and most mobile networks remain restricted to GPRS bandwidth. Tazz recently won an important contract to work with BT on a policy-enabled network infrastruc-ture as part of BTs much-touted 21CN network migration.

6.42 Tekelec Inc. (Nasdaq: TKLC) Although Tekelec does not fit into any particular equipment category, it is a major player in the IMS area, transitioning products in a range of areas to IMS, including signaling and other gate-ways, core control-layer products, and ASs. Tekelec's core strength is signaling, and here it has championed the need to create links in IMS back in the SS7 core in order to support legacy network applications. Like several other IMS ven-dors, Tekelec argues that well-engineered links allow service providers to tap into legacy applica-tions such as freephone, rather than rewriting them for IMS. Tekelec argues that its approach is more efficient than some others because it creates a gateway between SIP and SS7 without the need to go into the applications level itself. "We believe that a


faster and more cost-effective way to accomplish this is through a centralized SIP-to-SS7 gate-way collocated at the edge of the SS7 signaling network." In this approach, SIP "invites" are transformed in TCAP queries. Tekelec's range of gateways includes a SIP to SS7 gateway; an SMS gateway; a presence gate-way; a mobility manager; an MGW; and an MGC. At Supercomm, Tekelec launched a range of IMS servers with the tag "Real Convergence":

• IMS-based messaging for all types of messaging, including number portability and ENUM

• Presence

• IP Centrex

• VOIP services with seamless handoff between cellular and WLAN

• Prepaid functionality for a variety of voice and data services Tekelec's range of business lines has been extended in recent years by several softswitch com-pany acquisitions – Steleus, Taqua, and VocalData, all acquired in 2004. In addition to media functionality, Tekelec's proposition now includes all CSCF functionality, but not HSS. Tekelec also provides a range of performance-management products for use with IMS.

6.43 Ubiquity Software Corp. Ubiquity was established in 1993 and began developing IMS products earlier than most compa-nies; it decided to begin work on an IMS product line focused on SIP ASs in 2002. It successfully raised over $35 million on the London Stock Exchange in May 2005 and has 70 customers. Ubiquity's product can be used either as a run-time SIP AS or as a SIP application-creation envi-ronment. Ubiquity also markets a SIP toolkit. It sees this as a means for service providers to move away from applications from the incumbents to either develop their own applications or use third-party commercial application developers. As a result of its early entry, focus, and customer base, Ubiquity is now strongly positioned in the programmable IMS AS space, with one of the most comprehensive partnership rosters in the IMS business. The company works largely through partnerships, and rarely sells directly to service providers. Partners include BEA, Brooktrout, Convedia, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, Siemens, Sonus, and Sun. Ubiquity has strong relationships with both incumbent vendors and with those providing SDPs; it believes that each has its place. These relationships vary in intensity, from simple interoperability deals to full-blown OEMs. Among recent partnerships, Ubiquity has announced:

• A strategic marketing relationship with Nortel and completion of integration of the Ubiquity SIP AS in Nortel's IMS solution.

• Successful interoperability testing within the Motorola IMS Interoperability Program.

• A strategic partnership for the integration of the Ubiquity SIP AS into IMS@Vantage, Siemens's IMS.

• A global agreement in which HP will resell Ubiquity's ASs as part of its IMS solution.

• An agreement in which Nokia will resell Ubiquity's SIP AS as part of its IMS solution.

• Integration of the SIP AS into IBM WebSphere.


6.44 Ulticom Inc. (Nasdaq: ULCM) Ulticom is a developer of signaling software that is used in a variety of fixed/mobile environments, including messaging, mobility, payment, roaming, and location-based services using SIP, SS7, and SIGTRAN signaling. It has 300 service provider customers. Its core product is Signalware, which was upgraded in February 2005 for use in IMS environ-ments. IMS-Ready Signalware is designed to operate with emerging network components such as SIP and Diameter as well as legacy components such as GSM MAP, Camel, INAP, and SS7. Ulticom's partners are mostly computing platform companies, including BEA, IBM, Intel, RadiSys, and Sun.

6.45 VeriSign Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) VeriSign, established 1995, is a leading provider of routing services: It runs two of the Internet's root servers and handles all .com and .net inquiries on the Internet. It also runs what it says is one of the largest SS7 networks in the world. VeriSign's core product for IMS is the Network Routing Directory, launched October 2004, a core IP registry and HSS platform for IMS. The directory can support ENUM, SIP, and SS7 and was built on VeriSign's preexisting Advanced Transaction and Lookup and Signaling (Atlas) platform, which has been in service for seven years. Among its features, the directory can support several tiers for routing and directory for VOIP, al-lowing providers to customize services for different customers' needs. VeriSign describes this product as "similar" to the IMS HSS, and in product literature it indicates that the directory also includes CSCF and BGCF functions. VeriSign's key strength is its longstanding dominance of the directory business.


Appendix A: About the Author GRAHAM FINNIE SENIOR ANALYST, HEAVY READING Finnie has been researching telecommunications for almost 20 years, formerly as a journalist and latterly as an analyst and consultant. He joins Heavy Reading from a ten-year tenure at the Yan-kee Group, where he was most recently responsible for establishing a European broadband and media research program. Finnie has published reports on a wide range of topics, including broadband consumer usage trends, pricing and packaging of telecom services, home networking, prospects for Europe's in-cumbent telcos, European communications regulation, and infrastructure developments. As a journalist, Finnie was editor-in-chief of the award-winning industry paper Communications Week International and has edited several other leading trade publications. Finnie is based in the U.K. and can be reached at [email protected].

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IMS and the Future of Network Convergence - pudn.comread.pudn.com/downloads66/doc/237211/HeavyReding report.pdf · Figure 3.5 Huawei's Overall IMS Architecture ... IP Multimedia Subsystem