Repentance?

Lucent has a “new” vision, one that ostensibly combines a previous company blueprint for future network architectures with a bundled product offering unveiled last spring.

The new vision is called IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and it’s designed to provide Lucent customers with a roadmap for how to develop, provision and profit from next-generation, converged “lifestyle” services. Lifestyle services, according to Lucent, are those that combine voice, video, data, conferencing and messaging, accessible from any wireline or wireless device anywhere, and are personalized to the user’s particular lifestyle.

IMS The Vision should not be confused with – or should it? – IMS The Product Bundle unveiled by Lucent back in April even though the acronyms both stand for IP Multimedia Subsystem. IMS The Product Bundle combines gear from Lucent and partners Cisco, IBM and BroadSoft, to enable VoIP and multimedia services in 3G wireless networks.

Both IMSes are designed for an IP-based multimedia and telephony core network; based on standards from the IETF and the 3G Partnership Project; and support standardized interfaces between applications, network layers and back-office systems. The only difference, apparently, is that IMS The Vision is access agnostic – wireline has converted and can now worship alongside wireless.

Also, IMS The Product Bundle was based on Lucent’s vision at that time: Service Intelligent Network (SIN). IMS The Vision apparently replaces SIN though the elements of IMS The Vision look very SIN-ful (SINilar?) in Lucent’s IMS The Vision presentations. 

Indeed, some IMS The Vision slides look as if they actually superimpose IMS The Product Bundle on top of SIN!

So Lucent’s “new” vision has IMS The Product Bundle living in SIN to bear IMS The Vision. Will it be a winner? Who knows? But in the marketecture wars, it will be a SINner.