Selling Software? What's your sign?

Thankfully, the era when the first question out of someone's mouth when they wanted to know more about you was, “What's your sign?” was short-lived. The question was designed to put people in a box so others could make certain assumptions about them, regardless of any meaningful truth.

But for companies selling both hardware- and software-based network support solutions at this year's Supercomm event, one question, asked a thousand times, began to have a similar ring to it.

Instead of asking, “What's your sign?” carriers were asking vendors, “What's your IMS?” And IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) as it turns out, is a neat little box one can put companies in and make certain assumptions about them. The difference between being asked if you are a Sagittarius or a CFCS function, however, is that when answered honestly, the information actually means something.

The tremendous focus being put on IMS seems to have the potential to change how companies market and sell their products to carriers.

“Providers around the world are rushing to embrace IMS as a concept, but the issue is that IMS is first and foremost an architecture of functional elements. It is not a product architecture,” said Seamus Hourihan, vice president of marketing and product management at Acme Packet, a provider of session border control (SBC) products.

Therefore, Hourihan said, companies must define which of the functional elements of the new architecture they support. Some products may support one element or three or four. That is the box vendors will find themselves placed into.

“They have a shopping list of these functional elements,” Hourihan said.

To illustrate this, Acme Packet, as well as several other vendors, came to Supercomm not armed with specific new products for IMS, but equipped with clear definitions of how they see themselves fitting into the architecture. Although it has some session initiation protocol (SIP) extensions for IMS on its road map, Acme Packet laid out its vision of the role of the session border controller in the IMS architecture.

According to Acme Packet, the SBC supports IMS in five key areas: security, service reach maximization, service level agreement assurance, revenue and profit protection, and regulatory and law enforcement. Two types of SBC supply this support.

The Access Session Border Controller incorporates the Proxy-Call Session Control function and the Access Border Gateway Function, while the Interconnect Session Border Controller incorporates support for the Interconnect Border Control Function, the Inter-working Function and the Interconnect Border Gateway functions. Both SBCs support external interfaces to policy servers for admission control, which is defined by the IMS Policy Decision Function and the ETSI Resource and Admission Control Subsystem.

Part of the problem with defining one's IMS functional fit is that it sounds like slide-ware to most people. For now, the only way for vendors to prove they are IMS-compliant is through public pronouncements about deployments that have had specific requirements for IMS compliance. Unfortunately, these are few, if not non-existent.

“There are no compliance or certification groups,” Hourihan said. “So in terms of interoperability certification today, you prove yourself in the labs.”

Actually, there is another way: entering the right partnerships. NexTone, another SBC provider, talked about its ISM game at Supercomm as well. NexTone joined IBM as a partner in its quest to deliver IMS solutions to telecom.

And speaking of quests, NexTone helped New Global Telecom win a SuperQuest award for its iPartition service, which is based on NexTone Communications' iView Management System. NGT won the award in the Network Design and Services category for best network infrastructure.

NexTone also introduced its IP Multimedia Exchange (IMX) platform, which manages the rapid growth of traffic between wireline carriers and mobile operators. It also is designed to interconnect multiple IMS networks and help VoIP providers exchange minutes with mobile carriers.

“It is a way for carriers to migrate to IMS,” said Dan Dearing, vice president of marketing at NexTone. “And IMS has matured sufficiently for it to be a unifying architecture for all service providers.”

The NexTone IMX serves as an IPX, or interworking network exchange, such as those operated by clearinghouse providers. It includes support for network-based policy and session routing as well as IPv6 network address translation.

Not to be outdone, SBC provider Netrake also had its IMS game face on and introduced a new Security Gateway and a new Session Manager for its nCite product line designed to help manage escalating requirements for session management and provide a pathway to IMS.

The nCite Session Manager provides a single end-point into service provider networks that acts as a focal point for initial inbound signaling traffic and routes traffic to the appropriate session controller for call processing and control.

The security gateway provides a security association between end points and the core network to ensure privacy and security. It provides the same association for signaling and media using IPSec encryption.

“Carriers see the border controller as a critical point in the network and from a security aspect will become a bigger and bigger play,” said Mark Neider, director of product management for Netrake.

Broadvox said at Supercomm it has deployed Netrake solutions to control authorized traffic passing between the networks of its peering partners.

Up a step in the hierarchical pecking order from the SBC is the softswitch. At least one provider of this technology, Sonus Networks, also had IMS on its mind as it introduced the IMX Multimedia Application Platform (not to be confused with the aforementioned NexTone IMX.)

Sonus also introduced a scaled-down version of its GSX9000 Open Services Switch called the GSX4000 Open Services Switch.

“The IMX fulfills another element of our IMS solution that we didn't have our own piece to,” said Mike Hluchyi, founder and chief technology officer at Sonus.

The IMX is a Web-based multimedia environment that enables wireline and wireless operators to develop, integrate, launch and manage advanced services. The company built the technology, for which it had previously partnered.

“We decided we wanted to be as extensible as we could and decided to build it ourselves,” Hluchyi said.

It uses a common database, which in the context of IMS is equivalent to the HSS, or Home Subscriber Server. It also employs all open SIP-based interfaces.

The GSX4000 supports border management between IP networks and legacy networks from a single platform. It is designed to help service providers expand their VoIP services into new geographic areas.

Many of the preceding product and strategy announcements are indicators that companies have placed their bets on certain technologies and that the time is right to start bringing them to market. More evidence comes in the form of contract extensions from the likes of Covad Communications and the growing presence of desktop king Microsoft in the telecom market space. Both indicators at Supercomm this year happened to involve Sylantro.

Sylantro got a three-year extension on its contract with Covad to provide additional licenses and associated services for Covad's VoIP, vPBX and other services. It is potentially worth millions to Sylantro and will address Covad's next phase of service deployment. “The market is evolving from what were the investment years of 2003 and 2004 to the deployment years of 2005 and beyond, said Bernard Gutnick, vice president of product marketing for Sylantro.

The Microsoft agreement includes the integration of Sylantro's and Microsoft's platforms and the collaboration, co-marketing and co-selling of voice-enabled hosted collaboration solutions.

Amdocs, the billing and customer care company, also signed an agreement with Microsoft. Theirs will be to jointly develop, market and deliver solutions through a combination of Amdocs' consulting and implementation services, the Amdocs 6 software portfolio and Microsoft Communications Connected Services Framework.

The companies will build solutions for Microsoft's hosted messaging and collaboration solutions as well as the Microsoft IPTV platform that supports flow-through provisioning and usage collection. Amdocs also will port some of its solutions to Microsoft's operating systems.

“It's a relationship we have been working on for some time and we are now starting to bring some value to the market together with our solutions,” said Mike Couture, vice president of marketing for Amdocs.

Microsoft, in turn, signed a five-year deal with AT&T to develop and deploy IP communications services using AT&T's IP backbone and Microsoft's Connected Services Framework platform (see story on page 31).

There was other non-IMS work getting done, such as Simpler Networks putting its EZ-MDF micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) for automating main distribution frame (MDF) into a coupe of field trials.

Unlike other solutions that have tried to automate the MDF using robotics, Simpler's MEMS is 200 times faster than conventional relays. The product was in development for about five years.

“It's not a sexy technology; it's meat and potatoes, but there's no way a next-generation carrier can do without it,” said Harry Carr, CEO of Simpler Networks.