Most consumers require multiple interactive real-time communication services on a daily basis. Businesses also utilize various real-time unified communication applications including audio and video conferencing, unified messaging, interactive voice response applications and call center applications.

 All these services have something in common: real-time media processing. 

Usually when ordinary people that do not have any involvement within the telecommunications industry hear the words ‘media server,’ they will automatically think about a type of storage device that lives inside either their laptop or entertainment system that holds their audio and video content, or they might even think the term is referring to a content storage device that is located on an Internet site.

However in the telecommunications industry, the term IP media server refers to a common, shared IP media-processing platform for a broad range of IP audio, video, fax and speech applications in a next-generation VoIP or IMS services network.

Some examples of real-time media processing include: playing a ringback tone, media clip, or audio menu prompt in an IVR application; collecting digits from a telephone or mobile device; recording a multimedia message for future playback; or mixing multiple audio or video streams into a conference.

These products are usually classified as ‘servers’ due to the fact that they respond to IP media processing requests that come directly from a ‘client’ application, either a softswitch, the Call State Control Function in an IMS architecture, or a large variety of telecommunication application servers in various telecommunications network.