The ubiquity of IP and its impact on the back office including the OSS will be a focus of the converged IMS/NGN Forum’s sixth interoperability “plugfest” in January.
The plugfests explore interoperability issues among service providers, vendors, and applications and content providers seeking to use merged wireless and wireline transport systems as fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) tools. The leading glue that holds these next generation network platforms together is IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) protocols.
“OSS and billing is a must. Service delivery and signaling protocols are all important, but it’s also important to integrate the changing requirements and show the industry that these NGN (Next Generation Network) and IMS applications are ready for deployment,” said Michael Khalilian, chairman and CEO of the IMS Forum. “There are solutions for billing; solutions for management; solutions for security in place.”
All will work in a back-office environment where network convergence must be managed to deliver a plethora of content and applications across different network architectures. Past plugfests have focused on the infrastructure itself and how to converge wireless and wireline networks to seamlessly carry applications and services as part of quadruple plays using IMS. That focus is now moving into the back office because a number of enterprises and other commercial customers are on the forefront of demanding seamless wireless/wireline connectivity both inside and outside their office environments.
“We are identifying areas that need to be improved and showing what is ready and what needs to be improved as part of our plugfest and part of our planned launch of the IP B/OSS technical working group,” Khalilian said.
Performed at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, N.H., the plugfests bring together the technical and marketing expertise of 2,000 service providers, applications and content developers, and hardware/software vendors who comprise the IMS/NGN Forum. The next plugfest will include Intel, HP, Tekelec, Sonus Networks, Mu Dynamics, NE Technologies/Marben, Aricent, Wipro and Mavenir Systems as new participants.
“We are assisting the industry and want to push the vendors to make sure they have the right products and applications for the service providers and make sure the service providers’ needs are met with protocols and standards and issues about compatibility,” said Manuel Vexler, technical chair of the IMS Forum. “We want companies of all levels, service providers, integrators and vendors to get involved and participate so all their products meet all the requirements.”
While the IMS and NGN Forums have recently tied the knot after years of cohabitating, other working groups within both those organizations are expected to be similarly integrated into a common NGN Forum fold next year, including conventional B/OSS and IP-based B/OSS, Khalilian said.
