Open Gardens

Earlier this week I spoke at the Osney media IP Telco world conference conference. This was a good conference with speakers whose views I respect like Niklas Blum of Fraunhofer FOKUS, Roberto Minerva of TIM, Graham Finney of heavy reading and others.

Many thanks to Ben Fletcher, Mari Tomkins, Sally Chatters and others at Osney media for inviting me to speak

I spoke on a panel called Deploying IMS: Opportunities and Challenges to Date – a challenging topic to say the least.

This blog is an extension of that talk with an attempt to continue the conversation ‘beyond the event’ – so to speak.

Graham Finnie, Chief Analyst at Heavy Reading chaired the panel asked : Where are the IMS applications? ( a now familiar question to many) – He then followed up by asking ‘Does anyone have a good word to say about IMS’?

So I decided to take the challenge – I partly answered the question on the panel – here is a more detailed reply.

Comments welcome on this chain of thought

IMS brings IP to the telecoms world.

IP traditionally implies dumb pipes – smart nodes(aka net neutrality principles – all packets are created equal)

Although IMS is IP based, it is philosophically the opposite of this principle since it seeks to make the network intelligent.

On one hand, thinking of IMS applications is a bit like thinking of 3G applications. Every application will be a 3G application but it really does not matter much anyway what the bearer is in most cases.

Consequently, if you flip this argument, then an IMS application needs to be an application that will make use of the (bearer) telecoms network itself.

So can such applications be possible?

In theory – yes.

In itself, making the network intelligent is not such a big issue.

Consider delay tolerant networks – which are used in military and space applications. In that case, all packets are not created equal especially when operating in hostile environments.

The real question is – are all packets created (commercially) equal?

Hence, the question spans more than the technical remit and is directly tied to business models and can be reframed as : Will people pay for applications with differential charging?

If such applications may be found then they would be ‘IMS’ applications in the true sense of the word

The context within which IMS operates cannot be ignored as well. The Internet and the Web are dominant. They are options for most IMS applications. The Internet and the Web are global and they are free. That does not help for IMS applications.

The Web / Internet is simultaneously IMS’s best dream(because the Internet is global and gets all the attention – features IMS aspires to acquire) but also it’s worst nightmare(because it is free and disruptive).

So, IMS applications must

a) Somehow uniquely leverage the network

b) For an Operator – and lets face it – IMS is mainly driven by Operators – be chargeable to the end user and

c) Must take the Internet into account – i.e. competing against the Internet will not work!

One key observation is; The Web is global. IMS is national at best – and in most cases sub-national in coverage(more than one Operator within a country). Also, end to end IMS connectivity issues are still not solved – and that hampers many IMS applications.

Ok. So what are the options. Here are some notes

a) Security: IMS can be viewed as a QOS network – and / or a secure network. Too much attention is placed on the QOS bit with the hope of gaining a share of the Internet pie – and not enough on the secure bit. Lets put it this way – will I tell my Operator about my music preferences? Probably not. However, can I trust my Operator to protect my 5 year old from malicious mobile content? Absolutely. So the security features of IMS coupled with trust are relevant – more so than the QOS features.

b) Mashups – SDP with IMS: I have touched on this a number of times on my blog. SDP(network abstraction) is a worthy goal. We will see it in some shape or form. Commercially, to make money tough, SDP needs to tie back to the mashups idea. This has some unsolved issues. For instance, have you seen a commercially successful mashup(for which people are willing to pay money for)? Its OK for Google to think long tail, mashups etc since the cost of experimentation is so low. But that does not work with network operators i.e. when there is an investment/cost – long tail is a difficult concept to adopt and hence there are some question marks as to how anyone will make money on an IMS/SDP approach.

c) Web services: IMS is not end to end yet – but there are options for instance SDP/IMS for an end to end IMS approach – SDP complements IMS by providing an end to end scenario. This area is being explored especially by Fraunhofer FOKUS(my company is a partner of Fraunhofer FOKUS). They key unknowns in this space are the billing model, the type of applications possible and the web services orchestration i.e. once the Telecoms/IMS service becomes like any other web service, how does it get monetised? How does it get orchestrated? See the issues pertaining to Web services orchestration

d) Local applications – I believe that telecoms will have a significant advantage with local applications – as will IMS (topic of a future blog)

e) Mobile VOIP – Topic of a separate blog. This can be a winner if managed correctly. End to End Mobile VOIP is an IMS application

f) Mobile Session based applications: In general – any session based applications which uniquely need the network / QOS to maintain quality of communication.

g) Applications that reduce friction and provide an instant response i.e. ‘better’ the same service available on the Web for free by using properties of the network in some way – topic of a separate blog

Comments welcome!

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