IMS is Starting to Sizzle

 By Richard "Zippy" Grigonis          

Things are certainly heating up in the IMS world. For example, Ericsson (News - Alert) and the Beijing branch of China Netcom have been jointly constructing China’s first commercial IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) network. Ericsson supplies both the IMS hardware and system integration services so that the IMS system interoperates with China’s existing, more idiosyncratic networks.

At home, Motorola (News - Alert) has announced a new grand alliance (or confederation, conglomeration, mass-accumulation, or whatever you prefer) of 12 companies that will be part of its new IMS ecosystem. The 12 partners are Acme Packet, Apertio, Colibria, Iperia, IP Unity Glenayre (News - Alert) , jNetX, NetNumber, OpenCloud, RadiSys, Sonus Networks, Sylantro Systems, and Ubiquity Software.

Realizing that it couldn’t “go it alone”, Motorola is calling upon these partners to provide the various network elements (application feature servers, home subscriber servers, media gateways, presence servers, session border controllers, and so forth) that will make the Motorola ecosystem “real” and dovetail nicely with Motorola’s own IMS control server, thus jumpstarting equally “real” IMS deployments. Having so many separate “minds” in this “brains trust” will undoubtedly help spur further innovation.

The idea for assembling this group occurred in the course of Motorola’s WiMAX (News - Alert) project in Pakistan for Wateen Telecom, which involved gathering suitable partners with which the company had had some experience and knew that their products were fully tested.

And, in just a few days, Yours Truly will be briefed by the IMS Forum (News - Alert) (our industry’s only Forum focused on the delivery of IMS service interoperability, verification and certification) on what happened at their second Plugfest, the premier event for testing IMS applications and services interoperability, which was held June 4-8, 2007 at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (IOL). Participants for this testing extravaganza included Empirix, Sonus, and ARGELA. Plugfest II results are also being announced at the NXTcomm (News - Alert) show, held June 15-21, 2007 in Chicago. [Our magazine is proud to have not one but two IMS Forum columnists, Mike Kalillian, the President and Chairman, as well as their marketing guru, David Hayward.]

You may recall Plugfest I was also a great success, which involved 15 different carrier-grade platforms that indeed demonstrated the maturity of end-to-end IMS multi-vendor interoperability, and validated a methodology for future testing events. Whereas Plugfest I focused more on the network layer, Plugfest II added VoIP, IP PBXs and Fixed Mobile Convergence (News - Alert) (FMC) applications and service layer interoperability to the testing mix.

And speaking of FMC, don’t miss the article on it in this issue by Yours Truly. You may find a surprise or two lurking there. . .

Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s (News - Alert) IP Communications Group.