IPSF is busy preparing for its next plenary meeting in beautiful Stockholm, Sweden. Graciously hosted by our friends at Telenor, the meeting is scheduled for May 20-22, 2008. As you might expect, the focus of this meeting will be the NGNsphere field trial which we’ve been splashing across our website for a while now. Our meetings are always great occasions for collaboration and we expect this one to be no different. We expect a lot of excitement, discussion, and debate over the important next steps for NGNsphere. As always, we also welcome folks interested in learning more about IPsphere Forum by attending one of our meetings as observers. This is a great opportunity to get involved! 

And for more information on our lovely host city, here’s a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm
(And don’t forget to check out our IPSF entry on Wikipedia too!)

Technorati tags: Plenary, NGNsphere

IPSF is proud to announce the publication of its Session Services and Resource Management (SSRM) specification. As you know, the IPsphere Forum has focused squarely on the Business of IP - and in particular, on a framework that will transform the way providers of services partner to deliver these services. We like to refer to this dynamic as “multistakeholder” services. An important aspect of multistakeholder services is defining how providers partner - even when they are employing different service frameworks. IPsphere Forum has always understood that a world of many service frameworks is a reality. To address this, IPSF embarked on a set of specifications that enable an IPsphere environment to complement session-based environments comprised of real-time services like voice. Specifically, SSRM details how providers of services can harmonize their IPsphere deployment with existing service frameworks like IMS - easing operations and improving their service velocity. We invite you to take a look into the SSRM specification and, as always, encourage your input and feedback.

Technorati tags: SSRM, Specification, Multi-stakeholder

You’ve probably noticed a new addition to our marquee – the announcement of a new feature on our website, “Imagine IPsphere.” It is indeed true that one of the things that drives us as a body is imaging the possibilities for networking. Most of the time we try to restrain ourselves somewhat. But sometimes it’s fun (and useful) to take off our skeptic hats and simply imagine what an IPsphere world might look like. We’ve posted two examples of this in the new section. Take a look and see if you agree. Or not. Either scenario is a good opportunity to get involved in IPsphere Forum and let us know about what you imagine for our industry. And check back frequently as we’re certain to imagine more scenarios…

Technorati Tags: networking, Imagine IPsphere

Greetings everyone and Happy New Year!  We trust you all had a happy holiday season and are ready for another eventful year.  The IPsphere Forum is certainly prepared for a busy – and exciting – 2008.  There’s a lot going on.  As you can see from our very cool rolling marquee, we are quite excited about the NGNsphere Field Trial – our biggest implementation effort to date.  You’ll see more on this in the coming weeks and months.  We’ll also be announcing our 2008 meeting dates and locations soon.  We’ll certainly have a lot to discuss given the scope of NGNsphere.  Our meetings are always a source of great ideas, energy, debates, and ultimately progress so we’re anxious to get the schedule published.  Stay tuned for more on this as well and check back often.  And, if you’re someone from an organization with an interest in IPsphere, please contact us about attending one of these meetings as an observer.  We’d love to talk to you!

Technorati tags: NGN, field trial

Well November and 4^th quarter of 2007 is upon us already, the northern hemisphere has just dropped daylight savings time while those of us in the southern hemisphere “spring forward”. The IPSF heads into the last 2 months of the year off a very progressive plenary hosted in Dinard, France by France Telecom/Orange. Our gratitude to Marc Fossier (FT CTO) and his team Philippe Lucas, Christian Jacquenet and Nadine Lancelot for their exceptional hospitality and facilitating skills. So, what happened at IPSF Dinard and what are next steps heading into our Q4 workshop in London?

The really big news from Dinard is the commitment of at least 5 of the world’s tier 1 network operators to joint field trials in early 2008.  (See corresponding press release for more details.) This field trial will enable operators to trial various multi-stakeholder use cases across their networks in a pre-commercial validation of the IPsphere framework enablement of richer online experiences. Expect to hear more from us on this – we’re thinking of calling it “NGNsphere” and would certainly welcome your thoughts on a name  - later in ’07 and early ’08.

Speaking of IMS and NGNs, our specification for inter-working of IPsphere with IMS and related NGN frameworks was taken closer to its final ballot at Dinard. This effort is being worked under the title “Session Services Resource Management” and will – all being well – be released into the public domain very early in 2008. This is a very important, and quite detailed, body of work and its editor – Peter Busschbach of Alcatel-Lucent – was awarded the IPsphere Circle of Excellence award at Dinard in recognition of his exceptional commitment to advancing this activity. Congratulations and thank you once again Peter!!

On the specification front, a large number of quite detailed contributions to our next IPsphere release specification were presented and reviewed in Dinard. The plenary meeting prioritized several of these for inclusion in straw ballot text for next specification and this work is underway now for further acceleration in the November London workshop. I’ll just cite the topics of these contributions here and attempt to explore them in further detail in subsequent Stratosphere postings; Fault Management, Fractal Decomposition of Services/Elements, Data Model and Template Structuring, Publication & Repositories, Adjacencies & Bindings, In-Service Modification of a Service, Functional Elements, IPsphere Glossary updates, TM Forum harmonization.

The IPSF has a variety if liaisons and collaborations with related industry efforts underway, one of these is with the GSM Association where the IPsphere framework and the GSM-A IPX initiative offer quite complementary capabilities to one another. The Dinard plenary agreed to kick off an activity group that will work up an IPX use case to demonstrate how the IPsphere framework might be leveraged to facilitate the establishment and federation of IPX exchanges. This AG will get underway at the London workshop in November.

IPSF Dinard was themed “Content & IPsphere” and, in addition to the work outlined above, several contributions outlined how Web and other content service providers could leverage the IPsphere framework in ways that didn’t require them to modify their current practices majorly. Under the banner of “vertical partnerships” the advancing of these contributions was recognized as being key to enabling network operators and so called “over-the-top” service providers to readily and easily collaborate to rapidly and creatively innovate to offer online experiences that are just not (either or both technically or economically) feasible today. More on this in subsequent postings too. 

At Dinard we also nailed down the IPSF plenary meeting schedule for 2008: In January we will come together in Shenzhen, China thanks to our hosts at Huawei. In July we will meet in Dublin in conjunction with the MultiService Forum, and in late Q3/early Q4 2008 we will meet in Canada. There is more information available on the IPsphere Forum web site, and its constantly being updated so do come back and visit regularly.

There you have it, my quick yet thorough update post-Dinard. More from me again in a few days – in the meantime do drop us your thoughts, they are always welcomed and appreciated; just email us at info@ipsphereforum.org

Cheers, Kevin Dillon
IPsphere Forum Chairman

Technorati Tags: NGN, ContentSphere, IMS, Service Provider Agreement, Session Services Resource Management

A key area of focus in Dinard and subsequent meetings will be the design of facile means for web application developers to take advantage of the capabilities offered by the IPsphere framework. There are many examples of how today’s developers are constrained in their ability to innovate and create richer experiences (try watching a full screen video live over your broadband connection). While the IPsphere framework provides the platform for multi-stakeholder collaboration necessary to overcome these constraints in the technical sense, the framework must also be able to be exercised in ways that are familiar to the web application developer community.

If we don’t get this right we’ll have solved the technical constraints, but have erected procedural constraints – the Forum can’t and won’t allow that to happen. The IPSF Board is taking steps right now to diversify membership and participation into the web service provider and application developer communities to ensure the framework is readily leveragable to extend their innovation abilities.

–Kevin Dillon, Chairman IPsphere Forum

Technorati tags:  web application, multi-stakeholder, IPsphere Framework

Take a look at the IPsphere Forum foundation specification, known as our “Release 1 Technical Specification”, on our website.  This document is THE reference to understand how the IPsphere framework has been architected and how it operates. It’s a very readable specification and spells out how Forum members have leveraged SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) principles to create a framework that enables ANY service provider in the supply chain to offer service ELEMENTS for use in a retail service experience, and that enables retail service providers to ORCHESTRATE the overall service experience. 

There is, of course, further work underway right now in the IPSF to build upon this foundation specification. For instance, the means by which IPsphere framework can inter-work with IMS/NGN network resources has recently exited our straw ballot process and is anticipated to be published in the near future. Detailed contributions on a range of additional topics areas are in advanced stages and will be considered at length during our Dinard (France Telecom sponsored) meeting at the end of this month. More on these topics here in Stratosphere post-Dinard! 

–Kevin Dillon, Chairman IPsphere Forum

Technorati tags:  SOA, IMS, NGN

Welcome to Stratosphere, the place for up-to-date, topical, informal news and views from the executives of the IPsphere Forum. Stratosphere kicks off today with the launch of our new website and is intended to be a timely source of information for both members and non-members.

IPsphere Forum members are working to design, publish and implement an open standard framework for network-enabled services to be readily and rapidly assembled using the competencies and technology resources of multiple stakeholders. This framework will facilitate unprecedented cooperation between - and among - Web and Telco service providers, creating what will, in effect, be an ecosystem which enables unfettered innovation in online experiences.

For instance, one of the IPsphere Forum’s key use cases is known as “content delivery” – in the use case the IPsphere framework provides the mechanism for content provider and network operator cooperation to cost effectively deliver high quality, full screen video-based applications.

–Kevin Dillon, Chairman IPsphere Forum

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Telco 2.0, IPsphere Forum, service provider, network operator, content delivery