The Importance of IOT (Inter-Operability Testing)

By Ronald Gruia      

Even though the architecture is standards-based, we believe that interoperability issuesA recently completed Frost & Sullivan survey involving 53 fixed, mobile and cable operators around the world identified, among other details, the top factors inhibiting the growth of IMS. These caveats included the adjustment required by operators to the IMS business case, the work still in progress in the standards arena and the fact that IMS is not as “open” as advertised. Interoperability has been another hot button for IMS, as the promise of multi-vendor systems talking to each other is proving to be quite a challenge. are still arising as distinct equipment makers opt to implement their offerings in slightly different forms. Obviously, the lack of interoperability has a negative impact on the “pick the best-in-class vendor for each element” strategy, which might take sometime to become a reality. Systems integrators given the task to make different vendors’ equipment work together within the same network will face a difficult task.

In addition, the original IMS architects envisioning a single administered IMS domain in which the carrier had the full control. Nonetheless, there have been instances over the past year in which single operators had to deal with multiple instances of IMS deployments. Furthermore, the need for integration of separate IMS networks will only increase given the recent uptake in carrier consolidation and mergers and acquisitions. Therefore, operators are facing situations which contravene the original IMS intent and the need for IMS-to-IMS interworking will increase. Currently, this aspect of IMS operation is not addressed in the standards; however, in the future this is expected to be one of the key factors to be tackled.

From an industry-wide perspective, vendors and service providers have been engaged in various IOT (Inter-Operability Testing) events championed by a variety of different organizations. Some of these include industry associations such as the MSF (Multiservice Switching Forum), the GSM Association (Europe, Asia, US) and the IMS Forum (News - Alert) . These groups have been created via partnerships between some carriers and IMS infrastructure vendors. The MSF and the IMS Forum are two organizations that have been actively engaged in IOT. The GSM Association also had some interoperability initiatives in the UK, Europe, Asia and the U.S.

The first of the GSM Association’s Interop initiatives was announced on September of 2005 and involved vendors such as Ericsson (News - Alert) , Nokia and Siemens. TeliaSonera, Vodafone, Orange and KPN developed hubs to support IMS and achieved IMS IPv6 systems interoperability with IPv4 systems. The next iteration involved the above three vendors plus Lucent, LG, Motorola, NEC (News - Alert) , Samsung and Sony-Ericsson. The service tested in this case was video sharing, in an initiative led by TeliaSonera. This non-commercial second iteration was announced on February 2006 as a follow-up to the European IMS trials originally announced by the group in September 2005.

The MSF held in October 2006 its Global MSF Interoperability (GMI) event. The main goals of the biennial event were three-fold: 1) provide the industry with real feedback on IMS interoperability, 2) offer feedback on MSF Implementation Agreements (IAs) and 3) supply the industry with first specification to describe physical implementations of IMS-enabled devices in real-world
deployment scenarios.

The two-week long GMI event was simultaneously held at five carrier labs: BT, KT, NTT, Verizon (News - Alert) and Vodafone and at the University of New Hampshire, a well-known testing environment for various industry IOT events. The interoperability tests of 26 vendors’ equipment involved applications (e.g. FMC), IMS security, billing, interoperability and QoS. The trial tested multi-vendor interoperability within the IMS service framework, and validated the MSF Release 3 Implementation supporting the industry’s TISPAN and 3GPP IMS standards.

Another event is planned for January 15, 2007; namely, the “IMS Plugfest for Applications and Services”, to be held by the IMS Forum, a multi-vendor organization devoted to the advancement of standardized, interoperable IMS services and solutions. Some of the current members include Alcatel, Cisco, Cantata ( Brooktrout (News - Alert)), Convedia (RadiSys), CopperCom, Ditech Networks, Empirix, Juniper Networks, MetaSwitch, NewHeights Software, Newport Networks, NewStep Networks, Reef Point Systems, Sonus Networks (News - Alert) , Sprint Nextel, Sylantro Systems, Tekelec, Ubiquity Software and UT Starcom, among other companies.

The IMS Forum Plugfest testing will be conducted at the University of New Hampshire Inter-operability Lab (IOL). The main objective of the event is to establish agreed-upon requirements and criteria for IMS applications and services interoperability. What is distinctive about the IMS Forum’s event is that it represents a new approach to services testing which is access-agnostic and can encompass fixed, mobile and cable operators. More importantly, the IMS Forum has an entire roadmap that is planned, and this event represents just one milestone in that roadmap.

Besides the IMS Forum, MSF and GSM Association, there are a couple of other organizations also engaged in some areas of IMS interoperability testing. They are MobileIGNITE and the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance). MobileIGNITE is the newest of IMS-related forums, having been founded as an independent organization in November 2005. Prior to that, most MobileIGNITE members were part of an internal partnership program focused on FMC and formed by Bridgeport Networks. From an IMS perspective, the IOT focus of MobileIGNITE is on applications such as IP Centrex (SIP) to mobile network interworking including SS7 and IMS, as well as IMS-based VoIP over WiFi (News - Alert) circuit switched cellular voice. The OMA (Open Mobile Alliance), formed in 2002, has as its main goal the standardization of architectural issues related to mobile data services. From an IMS standpoint, the main initial focus was to develop the Push-To-Talk over Cellular (PoC) Release 1.0 standard, which was launched on June 2006. The OMA will be focusing on PoC client IOT.

Not Competition, Co-opetition
In order for these forums to make valuable contributions, they all have to be able to deliver valuable results, well-documented testing processes as well as interoperable solutions to the service provider community and the industry as a whole. These efforts certainly represent steps in the right direction toward solving the IMS interoperability challenge.

However, it will be desirable to see organizations such as the IMS Forum, MSF, GSM Association, MobileIGNITE and the OMA collaborating with each other as they strive to push the envelope in multi-vendor interoperability testing. The benefits of the closer alignment between these groups are manifold. By working closer together, these forums can divide and conquer, avoid duplication of effort and instead focus on different areas that need IOT. More importantly, by brining several players into the fold, a collaborative effort between these organizations can also prevent the testing of “semi-proprietary” solutions and architectures that are against the very “open standards” nature of IMS.

We have often witnessed that intense competition in some nascent areas can sometimes kill these market opportunities before they bear fruit. Hence, for the sake of better development of the IMS market, the cooperation between these efforts would be very worthwhile.

IMS Changing the Industry Forum Landscape
In the legacy AIN world, network equipment manufacturers rarely provided interoperability with other vendors’ gear. However, the disaggregation of transport, control, and application driven by IMS enables operators to source best-of-breed suppliers and products at each network layer.

Hence, the NEVs have to provide integration and guarantee interoperable multi-vendor solutions to their service
provider clientele.

Therefore, the advent of IMS has also impacted the industry forum setting, since these groups must now provide operators and vendors alike with ample opportunities to test, implement and run multi-vendor environments rather than just offering theoretical “best practices” guidelines or sponsoring closed solutions.

Last, but not least, IMS enables competition among all types of services providers, as it makes no distinction between DSL, fiber, cable or wireless broadband access. Differentiation in the future will come from consumer and business applications and services, not from ‘locked-in’ network architectures.

Ronald Gruia is Program Leader and Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan covering Emerging Communications Solutions. He can be reached at [email protected].