Simon Torrance - the mind behind the IMS Insider blog - put together the following post on the IMS Insider's blog.
IMS Insider: IMS is just an application. The basic premise, as you can tell from the title of the post, is that IMS isn't necessarily a platform, but is just an applicaiton.
From the post... The big IT platform vendors have long offered a suite of both horizontal business applications (e.g. HR, Finance) as well as vertical solutions (e.g. manufacturing). As far as this vendor is concerned, a telco is just another software application that resides in a common application, storage and management framework. Granted, there are some special tweaks and extra capabilities needed, but not a separate supplier ecosystem.
As my source puts it: "IMS isn't a platform. We're the platform, IMS is just an application. And you don't hard wire an application into your network, particularly one as complex and inflexible as IMS."
I couldn't agree more that the future looks bleak for equipment providers, and bright for folks that can cost effectively pump out applications, services and features to a marketplace that is ever-changing. The secret to IMS isn't IMS at all! The "secret sauce" that makes the IMS argument actually lies in the delivery of services. The folks that have consumed the IMS kool-aid would like you to believe that there's value in managing the sessions between the end-user and the application, or "thing of interest". That is a broad statement that only holds true in a small subset of circumstances. It majority, the less complication and "moving parts" between the end-user and application, the better.
IMS also attempts to control the subscriber, the features that are offered to the subscriber, and the communications to/from the subscriber. This is contrary to what the market really wants and needs. It's about the applications, and IP/SIP are the great enablers. NOT IMS.
Adam "voiploser" Uzelac
