BSS/OSS Vendors Plug Into IMS Forum

“We have heavy acceptance from the industry on IMS, but to actually do it, you have to be able to bill, manage and secure the networks and services. That it why it is more important than ever that we put a billing component and other OSSs into our plan of implementation,” said Michael Khalilian, chairman and president of the IMS Forum.

HP and Amdocs were the two primary BSS and OSS vendors joining the event this time around. Other vendors included Acision, Apha Networks, Data Connection, Empirix, Mavenir Systems, Mu Security, NextPoint Networks, Radvision, Sonus Networks, Starent Networks and Tekelec.

Nigel Upton, general manager of BSS products in HP’s Communications, Media and Entertainment group, said that if market leaders like Amdocs and HP can help demonstrate IMS compliance with both excellent performance and a low, total cost of ownership, it will drive operators to adopt.

“Through Plugfest IV, we were able to show that you could have real-time billing and charging and not have to build another silo,” Upton said.

He added that new multimedia and entertainment services are forcing vendors to address real-time charging for multiple services on the same handset device or multiple devices. “Building another silo is a painful way to go,” Upton said. “So [operators] are saying they need to put in real-time charging solutions and want to know that they are using standard IMS interfaces like DIAMETER and that it works well.”

The advantage of the plugfest, Upton said, is that it provides as much of a real-world environment as one can get where vendors can prove their IMS compliance. Khalilian said that it gives BSS and OSS vendors formal results that they can take back to their own forums, such as the TM Forum, and work with confidence in developing their own standards (which are outside of the 3GPP IMS standard.)

As companies have tried to figure out how to deploy Web 2.0 applications through different mashups, Upton said, there was a lot of frustration with people claiming full IMS compliance and full DIAMETER support. “But when they tried to do a proof of concept, the whole thing fell apart,” he said. “So we were strongly encouraged to find a forum that would allow us to, in a neutral setting and as close to real worlds as you could get, demonstrate interoperability that would increase confidence not lower it.”