IMS coming on strong in 2008?

When many people think about the future of VoIP, they go beyond voice to IP-based Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). The story on IMS is interesting because it's not a set of technologies that's coming out of small, obscure startups--the largest carriers are looking at IMS to bring new rich media experiences to their customer base.

Alcatel-Lucent is pushing its customers to deploy IMS-capable VoIP, even if they're not ready to immediately make the move into multi-media content. The reason, they say, is that the IMS capabilities will provide for a rich set of personalized services for customers, which can then be followed by multimedia offerings when the carrier (and customer base) is ready. There's an admission that interoperability between carriers can be exciting, but SS7 (signaling system 7), which leaves IMS optional, will ultimately be replaced by fully-IMS capable protocols and systems.

Of course, IMS isn't solely a carrier-grade service; enterprise VoIP systems can play, too. In fact, enterprise deployments can be easier and faster than carrier installations because enterprises tend to run on a shorter system life cycle than do carriers. For either corporate customers or carriers, though, there are significant reasons--that don't involve watching the latest episode of your favorite comedy--to look at moving IMS capabilities into the network infrastructure.

For more:
NetworkWorld has the entire article here

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