IMS has emerged as the industry’s leading architecture for next-generation networks. It has been adopted by the cable, wireline and wireless standards bodies as the reference architecture for all communications applications. Such unanimous accord is a first in the history of the industry.

The value of IMS is in providing a single network for any access supporting multiple services. Given the complexity of communications networks, it’s really the only way to successfully launch new applications and ensure low operating costs.

For BroadSoft and our customers, IMS provides defined interfaces that ensure interoperability in multi-vendor networks and across different service providers. We are seeing service providers using IMS for innovative services on new broadband access.

Where We Are and Where We’re Going

Today IMS is focused on basic services that mainly replicate PSTN services. Looking forward, the true value of IMS is enabling a richer set of services—which will include things like IPTV, messaging, presence and gaming—and driving new revenue streams.

We are already seeing service providers using IMS to deliver rich services, and expect this to become the norm, in the very near future. This will look something like this:

  • Voice moves to rich media including high-definition voice, video, enhanced messaging, presence and content-sharing.
  • Fixed broadband moves to fixed-and-mobile broadband—all access is IP, and the applications are access-independent.
  • Basic service moves to a set of advanced, integrated services that offer a seamless user experience.
  • All siloed networks move to a single core network for all access types.

IMS is quickly migrating to multimedia and multiservice applications with end users taking advantage of feature-rich, high-value services.

BroadSoft Tackles IMS’s Toughest Challenges

This evolution is putting some IMS design principles to the test. Specifically there are two key challenges: 1) service orchestration and 2) service data management.

Today’s standard service orchestration model is very basic and very limited—well suited for loose integration of some applications but ill suited for more complex blending of services. Most service orchestration issues aren’t apparent until integration—a point where it may be too late to address them.

We’re working closely with service providers and third-party application vendors to simplify service orchestration for common-use cases that we’ve experienced and those we expect to see in the future.

Service-data management also poses some tough challenges in multi-service offerings. If every application requires its own data and exposes a separate provisioning interface, the need to maintain multiple subscriber databases drives up operating costs.

Many service providers are now looking toward centralizing their subscriber provisioning and service data. In this scenario all user-centric application data is hosted on the home subscriber server (HSS).

We have a number of key customers who are designing network architectures in which all user profile and service data is stored in a central repository.

BroadSoft is the leading IMS application server vendor. By focusing on the hard problems and working closely with our customers, we will continue to lead the industry’s evolution.

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