IMS goes to work

Voice over IP has become a household term in corporate enterprises, too. After some years of vacillation while the residential VoIP market took off, enterprises of all sizes have begun to embrace VoIP. The next step in the evolution of voice service is fixed/mobile convergence, but this time around, enterprises are much more likely to be proving grounds rather than latecomers.

Initial forays into FMC, such as BT's Fusion service, are targeting enterprise users, and enterprise users fit the profile for the types of customers who would be interested in maintaining call continuity from one network coverage area to another. Early FMC services are using unlicensed mobile access technology. But as IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architectures become more prevalent, so will the voice call continuity (VCC) specification the way that IMS environments allow seamless hand-off of voice calls.

But FMC voice is just one way that an IMS-based service can change how, where and when we work. The fear many enterprise folks may have about innovations in call continuity is that it's just one more thing that will contribute to rampant workaholism. But IMS has far greater implications in the working world than just seamlessly connected voice phone calls.

The flexibility and presence intelligence inherent to IMS can actually make work life easier by consolidating work functions that normally would take multiple steps and numerous conversations into one seamless act of conversation and collaboration.

“It's one person, but many devices and many different connectivity contexts,” said Torben Warming, vice president of strategic planning and market development for IP communications for Ericsson. “You need to have the freedom to place multiple devices under one ID and have them interoperate.”

The corporate enterprise features a multitude of opportunities for users to carry on mixed-mode, mixed-network, mixed-device call sessions all in the space of a single conversation and all under the roof of a single enterprise. For example, take the hypothetical case of Sue and Steve: A communications session might start with Sue needing to discuss an important project with Steve. Sue, sitting at her desk in the main office building of a corporate campus, uses her desk phone to check her co-worker Steve's presence and availability on the network.

She calls Steve, who, because he is away from his desk, receives the call on his dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular phone. Because Steve is located in a nearby warehouse on the campus that is too dense for cellular coverage but contains a Wi-Fi access point, his phone actually uses the Wi-Fi network to support the ensuing conversation.

As the conversation progresses, Sue tells Steve that they need to work together on some quick fixes to the big project before it gets finalized. They begin to discuss the changes as Steve leaves the warehouse, walking outside on a path that leads from the warehouse to the main building. During this portion of the conversation, the call gets handed off from Wi-Fi coverage to the cellular network and back again to a different Wi-Fi access point when Steve enters the main building

Steve reaches his desk, which is located on a different floor than Sue's. Steve says, “I'm at my desk, so let's get on video and open up the project document in our collaboration program so we can change the stuff that needs to be changed.” The call transfers to Steve's desktop, and they both click to open video windows on their respective PCs. They open separate windows containing the project and trade off taking control of the document as they make changes to it.

That's a lengthy and seemingly complicated example of a multi-mode communications session as supported by an IMS architecture. But here's another way to describe it: Sue calls Steve about their big project, and they make some changes to it.

That's all enterprise users need to know about what happened. Getting business tasks done is what's important to them. The “how,” particularly the really technical details, doesn't matter.

“The corporate enterprise really shouldn't have to know what the IMS is,” said Jouni Welander, director of new multimedia solutions for Nokia. “What they get out of it should only be about carriers helping them solve business productivity problems. It's about having richer ways of communicating while you're in the enterprise.”

Welander said other potential IMS-based applications include the ability to send video training material to an employee in the field who only has access to a hand-held, while a live voice conversation is going on. Or, an IMS-based service could have a system of security cameras on a corporate campus send text or video alerts or reports to roving security personnel.

Corporate enterprises that already use IP PBXes and hosted VoIP services could be well on their way to having the network and service foundation to migrate to such applications. “Carriers can add these capabilities to the list of managed services that they already provide to an enterprise,” said Ericsson's Warming.

Nokia's Welander added that new IMS applications could be packaged as a hosted IMS service center in much the same way carriers package hosted VoIP services.

As public carrier networks evolve to have IMS cores, an IP PBX also could evolve to become an element on the fringe of that network, which naturally acts as an IMS gateway. “The new capabilities of public networks need to be expanded to private networks to allow enterprises access to those blended services,” Warming said. “You need IMS to be the network integration layer between the two.”

It's unlikely that very large enterprises, which once eschewed carrier help to build their own Ethernet networks, would want to build their own IMS cores within their private networks. Welander said Nokia has talked to some globally distributed corporations about doing that, but in an environment of increasingly frequent IT outsourcing, most firms will want the carrier to take responsibility for managing the network integration and the applications that result from it.

In fact, the ability to provide IMS-based services can give service providers new to the enterprise market-such as cable TV companies and mobile carriers-the tools to gain some competitive leverage, Welander said. Part of the reason why enterprises weren't so quick to adopt VoIP is that carriers weren't aggressive in marketing it as a reliable, hosted service. If the competition has anything to say about it, that won't happen with IMS.