IBM on Monday announced middleware extensions to help telecommunications carriers to create, deploy and manage new, revenue-generating converged services combining voice, video and data over both fixed and mobile networks.
IBM announced the delivery of IBM WebSphere IMS Connector, IBM WebSphere Presence Server, and IBM WebSphere Telecom Web Services server, extending its WebSphere software portfolio to enable a flexible, IMS-compliant services plane solution supporting the creation and deployment of IP-based services.
The announcement builds upon news last month that IBM has integrated SIP technology at the core of its WebSphere Application Server, to deliver a converged http/SIP service execution platform.
Until now, carriers have been encumbered with inflexible silos supporting individual services that are not easily integrated and have traditionally taken 18 to 24 months to deploy. The proliferation of broadband communications and IP technology is creating new opportunities to leverage commercial off-the-shelf components to more quickly and cost-effectively deliver creative, multimedia based communications services. Emerging standards such as IMS and SIP, combined with service oriented architecture principles, enable service providers to leverage reusable components while abstracting the creation and execution of new applications from the underlying network to more rapidly deliver revenue-generating converged services.
IBM also has delivered enhancements its Eclipse-based Rational unified service creation environment with converged http/SIP application development tools to enable the development of converged services, delivering features such as seamless failover, edge routing and load balancing, to provide high QoS for end users.
IBM has kicked off a managed beta of its IMS service enablers and will make the products generally available in the third quarter of 2006. Embedded SIP capabilities in WebSphere Application Server Version 6.1 and associated converged http/SIP tooling are available today.
"By extending our market-leading IT software to support next-generation telecom services, we are enabling service providers to leverage a proven, open standards based, software platform in their network environments to reap some of the benefits that enterprise IT organizations have seen with a service-oriented approach to application development and delivery,” said Tim Greisinger, worldwide director of communications sector software solutions. “Complemented by the service assurance management capabilities brought with our acquisition of Micromuse several months ago, IBM now can offer a breadth of service plane capabilities to carriers for creating, deploying and managing next-generation services."
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