IMS has yet to reach its potential as a fundamental service integrator, especially now that the Internet, the iPhone and Skype have achieved that same goal.
Or so contends Sigma Systems CTO Brian Cappellani, who posits, for Pipeline, that IMS is not yet necessary – emphasis on the yet.
IMS will be critical when the communications industry gets its products out of silos and presents them in a unified manner, when real-time service fulfillment is possible, when subscribers have access to any service from any device at any time.
“IMS promises to give us access to any service connected to any network any time we want it,” writes Cappellani for Pipeline. “The problem is IMS only deals with signaling and setting up connectivity and QoS. Something else needs to tell IMS what to do and whether or not to do it.”
First, there are many challenges that stand in the way of getting IMS to that all-useful point. Cappellani lays those out in detail and delves into why it will take time before the IMS standard realizes its full potential.
