Featuring Dr. George Kontopidis, SVP, Products and Technology Strategy
Joanne Babbitt, Product Marketing Manager, Platform Solutions recently had a chat with George Kontopidis, NMS’s Sr. VP of Products and Technology Strategy, who is working on platform products and technology strategy, about what really matters in mobile applications.
Joanne: From a user perspective, what really matters in mobile applications?
George: Current mobile applications are about person-to-person communications. The Web 2.0 world has proved that the next layer of human interaction is participation in communities and exchanges of thoughts and multimedia content. Mobile devices and applications need to better facilitate group interactivity and provide a portal to rich content. To enable this level of functionality, devices, platforms, and applications need to allow members of a community to exchange data while they are conversing on an audio or video call. This class of applications and their respective service offerings from the operators are known as blended services or combinational services.
J: What are the necessary technology pieces for operators to deliver combinational services?
G: Combinational services can be delivered in existing 2.5G and IN infrastructure, but with limitations. For an excellent user experience, a 3G network with converged services over the IP Multimedia System (IMS) infrastructure is required. The reason IMS is so desirable is because it uses a common media network based on IP, over which any mixed media (voice, video, images, text, etc.) can be transported. Furthermore, the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) used in IMS allows for direct communication between the terminal devices (handsets) and the core application servers. But while the core network elements within IMS are necessary, they alone are not sufficient for implementing combinational services. The terminating handsets must also be able to handle concurrent sessions on a single “phone call,” allowing two or more subscribers on an audio or video call to exchange other multimedia information and even browse on various content sites at the same time.
J: What is NMS’s direction in respect to this space?
G: As discussed, to realize new combinational network services, designers need to consider not only the network side of the application but also the corresponding handset client portion. The need for end-to-end network services is a necessity for an acceptable user experience. Furthermore, self-provisioning and personalizing these services requires a richer graphical interface than the handsets themselves can offer — the use of desktop browsers or specialized PC clients is necessary. Only the combination of a simple and intuitive handset user interface, an interactive and content-rich network application, and a desktop client personalization extension will provide a superb user experience.
For better economy of scale, it makes sense to create a platform for developing and deploying combination services, utilizing common elements of the network and the handset clients. NMS envisions providing such a platform, which will accelerate the new breed of IMS applications and significantly reduce the time-to-market for innovating combinational services. That’s what we call a seamless, end-to-end IMS platform!
J: What are the challenges facing developers in the new world of IMS?
G: The “old way” of developing network applications required implementation of the call control logic, media handling, and the necessary interfacing to the OSS/BSS systems. Alternatively, developers could attach their applications as intelligent peripherals to the Intelligent Network (IN) or the Advanced IN. In the IMS world, application development becomes simpler and more complex at the same time. It becomes simpler because there is a clear separation of the call logic from the user interaction logic and with standardized billing interfaces. It becomes more complex because the developer has to interface with a multiplicity of APIs and be aware of the respective functionality underneath. Most of the commercial Service Deployment Platforms (SDPs) offer a collective set of Java-based APIs for IMS application development. These frameworks can be very expensive, heavily customized per operator, and not mature enough for third-party development.
J: What can developers do to reduce the impact of these challenges?
G: My recommendations could be summarized as follows:
- Understand the basic IMS topology and interfaces, especially the IMS Service Control (ISC) interface or its variant abstracted by the SDP. Accessing web content via web services is also essential.
- Get access to the specific development environment of a Service Provider (SP). Each environment is different, but targets the ISVs and third-party application developers. This is easier said than done; it involves extensive business negotiations with the SPs.
- Focus the effort on network services that matter to the SP. Even excellent application ideas might not be relevant to the strategic objective of the SP, or they may have been tested previously somewhere else. Interacting with the SPs directly will ensure compatibility of interests.
Nevertheless, IMS application development has a long way-to-go before the process is matured and streamlined. The expectation though is that it will be worth it!