* White papers to learn about IMS
Over the past year or so, we’ve written several newsletters on IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). (One of our first newsletters explaining IMS can be found here.)
We contend that IMS deployments are critical to a service provider’s long-term success for multimedia services. Today, we’d like to recommend three whitepapers (all published by Webtorials) that give readers an update on where IMS stands.
The first paper comes from Lucent and is titled “IMS Early Adopters: Lessons Learned.” The paper includes:
* Technology lessons learned covering the importance of a stable network and the need to secure and restrict traffic, how to cope with dual mode service challenges, and the effective management of interconnect issues.
* Organizational lessons learned including how technology will impact a carrier’s organizational structure, the need for inter-organization process standardization, the importance of defining roles and responsibilities, and the importance of executive buy-in.
* Operational lessons learned including addressing service quality beyond the demark, the need to retool operational models, and problem resolution across multiple domains.
* Best practices such as the importance of the solution architect, the need for strong program management, instituting an IMS steering committee, selecting the right lab and testing strategy, and implementing a solution management function that lasts over the entire IMS lifecycle.
The second paper, also from Lucent, is titled “The Need for IMS Solution Management.” This paper discusses why a separate solutions management team should assume responsibility for ensuring that the total solution meets requirements over the entire lifecycle.
Finally, we recommend that readers who want to know where the industry stands on evolving softswitch architectures to IMS should read an overview by independent consultant Bob Bellman, titled: “From Softswitching To IMS: Are We There Yet?”. Bellman answers important questions for network planners such as whether they will be able to reuse VoIP gear in IMS, or must designers scrap it and start over? Also, he discusses whether there are equipment suppliers building IMS solutions from scratch or enhancing existing technology? And asks whether there are IMS opportunities for new equipment vendors, or have the incumbents already locked up the market?
Next week, we’ll report in on the recent VON trade show with some announcements and analysis.
