IMS World Forum – 25% discount for being a reader of this weblog

The 8th Annual IMS World Forum will be taking place in Barcelona from the 11th April – 14th April.  I’ll be running a pre-conference workshop entitled “IMS Market Status and Case Studies” the outline is shown below.  The workshop objectives are:

  • Provide a deep-dive quantified analysis of the IMS market status, enabling attendees to understand what operators and suppliers are thinking and planning.
  • Learn from real-world operator deployments understanding their challenges and opportunities.
  • An aim is not to provide yet another IMS technology training session; the vendors provide enough of them, rather a focused workshop of the practical realities of deploying IMS.  However, a brief IMS review is provided so all attendees no matter their background (especially non-technical) can understand the survey results and case studies.
  • The case studies will review the environment in which IMS is deployed, including IMS and SDP (Service Delivery Platform), Next generation IN (Intelligent Network), legacy IN, and JAIN SLEE (Java IN Service Logic Execution Environment).

The pre-requisites are light as the focus is on its current status and case studies rather than yet another tedious technology review:

  • Basic IP-knowledge
  • Basic telecom knowledge

Who should attend this class?  Really any non-technical or technical (geeky) managers responsible for, or whose platform / service / application will need to inter-operate with, IMS.

At first sight its fair to ask, why is a conference required on IMS, isn’t it old-hat? That’s just the point, IMS is becoming mainstream across mobile, fixed, cable and hybrid operators, Internet providers, application developers, IT/software players, network equipment and handset vendors, as reviewed in the “Market Status of IMS Report” discussed in this article. So we’re now facing the multitude of deployment, interoperability and operational issues that face any platform in telecoms. Only this platform is on which the core revenue service of voice is supported, hence the importance of these issues is high.

As my reader of my weblog, you are eligible for a 25% registration discount. Just contact me at ‘info at alanquayle dot com’ to receive the VIP code.

I’ll also be chairing stream B’s session 1: “How can operators take full benefit of the IMS architecture while providing key end-user services?” with operator presentations from Pieter Veenstra, Architect / Consultant, KPN and Walter Maurer, Group Regulatory & European Affairs, Telekom Austria.  As well as session 2: “Migration strategies & challenges from PSTN & 2G Networks to IMS” which includes operator presentations from Roland Schott, Deutsche Telekom and Katarina Sekaljic, Director of Department for Planning & Development, Serbia Telekom who will be reviewing their deployment experiences.  So we’ll have many opportunities to discuss and understand the practical realities operators are facing in implementating IMS.

Given all the BS spread on IMS in the past many people struggle to understand what it is.  The easiest way to think of IMS is simply a standardized softswitch so the service layer is independent from the switching layer, it can handle the quality of service issues over the access so streaming doesn’t kill the voice service, and all the advanced services roam across operators.  Everything else is just details 😉

IMS Market Status and Case Studies Workshop

09:15 – Registration

09:30 – Part 1: Brief Independent Introduction to IMS

  • What is IMS?
  • IMS drivers
  • IMS and NGN

10:00 – Part 2: Global IMS Market Survey

  • Interviewee analysis
  • IMS activities and plans
  • IMS barriers
  • Vendor ranking
  • IMS pricing
  • Rich Communications Suite
  • Conclusions

11:00 – Morning Break

11:15 – Part 3: Case Studies I

  • Verizon
    • Background and principles
    • Breaking down the silos
    • Service delivery ecosystem
    • Integration experience
    • Conclusions and recommendations
  • China Mobile
    • Full service operation overview
    • Challenges and requirements
    • Solution and deployment
    • Service roadmap

12:30 – Lunch

13:45 – Part 4: Case Studies II

  • Telecom Malaysia
    • Background and challenges
    • Network and service transformation project
    • Project results and recommendations given their experience
  • Vodafone Spain service broker
    • Homezone service description
    • Problem and solution description
  • FarEasTone
  • BT

15:00 – Afternoon refreshments

15:30 – Part 5: IMS Prognosis, Conclusions and Recommendations

  • IMS Prognosis: where is the marketing going?
  • Conclusions and Recommendations
    • Operator recommendations
    • Network equipment vendor recommendations
    • Service layer supplier recommendations
    • Handset and CPE vendor recommendations
    • Application developer recommendations
    • Investor recommendations

16:30 – End