This article appeared in the August/September 2005 edition of wireless.europe magazine.

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IMS Shifts Network Design and Deployment

An article by Garrett Choi, VP Business Development, Continuous Computing

IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) will support a new generation of services and will change how network infrastructure and applications platforms are designed and built.

The evolution of wireless and wireline infrastructure to a converged all-IP backbone is creating an opportunity for the delivery of innovative voice, data and multimedia services on a global scale. Today's UMTS network has evolved from the simple GSM release 97 (R97) network to the 2.5G GPRS networks based on R98 and R99, and then to 3G networks based on R4. Now the industry has moved on to R5 and R6, where the concept of an Internet Protocol (IP) backbone is introduced.

The next step will be the implementation of IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS), which will support the convergence of wireless and wireline infrastructure to a converged, all-IP backbone. This wil create a global opportunity for the delivery of innovative voice, data and multimedia services.

While the cellular industry has been the driving force behind IMS, the technology will benefit a wide range of companies including mobile operators, voice over IP (VoIP) providers, and traditional telecom carriers. All of these organizations will use IMS to offer multimedia applications that function on both traditional circuit-switched and modern next-generation packet-switched networks. IMS has an open-system architecture that will support the creation and delivery of services by various fixed and mobile network operators working in cooperation with each other. IMS therefore stands in striking contrast to the traditional, single-operator industry paradigm.

This shift is customer driven, with increasingly fickle subscribers demanding newer and more integrated services delivered by single, access-independent networks — and at lower prices. IMS promises to meet these requirements because it supports the convergence of any traditional or packet-switched fixed or mobile network. Indeed, IMS permits the use of different core-network architectures so that service layers and elements can be mixed, and will allow providers to customize services for specific subscribers and industries. Ultimately, IMS will support widespread IP-based services including push-to-talk, video conferencing, instant messaging and presence.

IMS is poised to alter the telecom market dramatically over the next few years and service providers must re-evaluate how they implement and deploy services aimed at generating revenue and retaining subscribers. Indeed the telecom services market has already begun to shift and is no longer dominated by a small number of suppliers. The market has become highly competitive with small, medium and large providers vying for customer attention — and IMS will further fracture and stratify the industy.

IMS combined with subscriber demand for converged services is changing how network infrastructure and applications platforms are designed and built. Ten years ago, when the pace of service deployment was much slower than today, equipment manufacturers almost always designed their own service platforms in-house. A proprietary telecom platform involves the integration of numerous third-party products — including processing, switching, media and storage line cards; wireless, VoIP and signaling protocol stacks; high availability (HA) middleware; and integrated management software.

Putting all of these subsystems together is no small feat and the development of a proprietary platform often took several years. In the past, an equipment maker could spend millions of dollars and devote several man-years of effort to create a platform. Today, however, such platforms could rapidly become obsolete and the rationale for designing and building platforms in-house is becoming weaker and weaker.

Instead of going it alone, equipment makers realize that time-to-market can be reduced if two or more subsystem vendors work together to pre-integrate subsystems. As a result, equipment makers have shifted their criteria for selecting suppliers to favor the ability to design and produce pre-assembled, pre-integrated and differentiated functional elements.

Figure 1: The pre-integration approach reduces the number of suppliers and thereby the time taken to realize ready-for-deployment platforms.

This approach illustrated in figure 1 has allowed vendors to focus on discrete elements of the value chain. In this example Supplier 2 provides lower-layer network protocol stacks running on the I/O card, while Supplier 1 provides the upper-layer network protocol stack running on the intelligent carrier board. Supplier 1 also provides management and HA software, as well as integration expertise for the subsystems.

Either supplier can provide convergence-layer softwarew, which enables compatibility with third-party upper-layer protocol stacks, and also eliminates that integration step for the equipment maker. Regardless of the lower-level division of labor, the equipment maker maintains responsibility for developing application-layer software that gives the system its personality and performs the desired network function, such as HLR, MSC, softswitch, or signaling gateway.

Today, leading equipment makers benefit greatly from this second-generation model of network infrastructure development because it allows them to employ in-house technologies and intellectual property, while benefiting from easily obtainable, virtually off-the-shelf standards-based HA platforms. As IMS becomes a reality, leading equipment vendors will continue to benefit from this model of development.

Unlike the giants, smaller telecom equipment makers will struggle with the second-generation model because the pace of network and service deployment will be so quick. Continuous Computing has addressed this challenge with the introduction of its Network Service-Ready Platforms, which includes the Trillium+plus product line. Network Service-Ready Platforms provide AdvancedTCA or CompactPCI platform hardware, protocol software, and integrated management software and all other technologies that are required to ensure that an OSI layer 7 application can perform in a carrier-class environment.

The Platform is standardized and can be used "out-of-the-box." This allows the equipment manufacturer to focus on application development instead of working with protocol source code — significantly reducing the time-to-market. The Platform can be deployed on its own, or combined with other network elements to create larger systems. Therefore the Platform allows smaller equipment makers to keep pace with the larger manufacturers as deployment speeds are further accelerated by IMS.

Growing customer demand for converged services and the emergence of IMS is forcing equipment makers of all sizes to develop reliable and flexible infrastructure, which can be integrated rapidly into increasingly dynamic networks. By taking advantage of the platform building blocks made available by the second-generation model of infrastructure development, the larger equipment makers will benefit from the financial promise of IMS. Similarly, smaller equipment makers can use the latest generation of telecom infrastructure — such as Continuous Computing's Network Service-Ready Platforms — to ensure a place for their products in emerging IMS networks.