On Thursday at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO in San Diego, Stan Holcomb, vice president of Lucent’s Worldwide Services group, surmised that each conferee in the keynote hall had heard the term “convergence” at least once already during the event — and likely several times. His assessment certainly seems accurate, given the state of the IP Communications industry today, where telephony, the Internet, and multimedia content no longer represent disparate silos. Rather, the three are intimately connected for industry participants.

The new converged communications world, Holcomb said, is about the creation of new services, services that combine the different aspects of communication, and it’s about having the ability to rapidly bring those services to market. IMS, he explained, is what facilitates network transformation to enable new blended lifestyle services.

But, he cautioned that, in order to cost effectively meet new demands, “the challenge is to leverage your existing legacy network without being tied to it.” He added that the focus should be on creating meaningful converged services, not simply becoming a conduit, a “dumb pipe.”

Holcomb added, “We can’t implement IMS effectively in the service provider market unless we understand it.” Which means that time must be taken to truly understand what kinds of services are important to both consumers and business customers.

According to Lucent, hosted or managed models present a strong opportunity for service providers. They allow service providers to roll out new services quickly, and they allow customers to quickly and easily benefit from those services. The managed services model also allows service providers to create myriad offerings that can easily be bundled in various combinations to meet varying needs. Importantly, Lucent’s research has also shown that both consumers and business customers are willing to pay for blended, hosted services where they can enable and disable applications as needed.

Hosted models enable more rapid implementation, a quicker path to realized revenues, minimized risk, and improved network reliability and availability, not to mention the ability to more effectively focus (and refocus) resources as needed.

So, the question is not when will converged arrive: As Holcomb noted, “Convergence (News - Alert) is here.” The real question is, how can service providers take advantage of the benefits convergence brings?

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Erik Linask is Associate Editor of Internet Telephony. Prior to joining TMC, Erik was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication, where he also managed the magazine’s survey research. Erik began his professional career at management consulting firm Leadership Research Institute.