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Frens Jan Rumph
Profile: I am a researcher, technical consultant and software engineer based in Holland. I have specialized in Charging, Accounting and Billing architectures. From both a technical point of view (IETF, 3GPP, etc) and a business point of view (TM Forum, GBA).
Main interests: Telecom, Charging, Accounting, Billing, Service Orientation, Software Architectures, Software Engineering
Disclaimer: All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only.
I do not make any representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.
Furthermore, this is a personal weblog, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
IMS Forum Plugfest 5
The IMS Forum has announced its fifth Plugfest event and says it marks a major milestone in IMS certification. The IMS/NGN Forum plugfest will be held June 2nd to 6th, 2008 at the University of New Hampshire, InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham.
Plugfest 5 will address for the first time the certification of the User-to network ‘Gm interface,’ the vital link between end-users and service providers. In addition, Plugfest 5 will expand the success from previous interoperability events to include policy control, CSCF load balancing and load sharing, charging and billing, test and integration tools, user profiles including authorization credentials, service profiles and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) femtocell integration.
The IMS/NGN Forum will be hosting an open house and press conference on the Thursday, June 5 to allow IMS and NGN service providers, analysts, equipment vendors and system integrators to witness IMS/NGN Plugfest 5 live and discuss the IMS CertifiedTM and M-Play (mobility, multimedia and NGN services) testing programs. Plugfest 5 results will be announced on Wednesday, June 18 at the NXTComm 2008 conference in the Las Vegas convention center.
The following IMS and NGN companies are announcing today their participation in Plugfest 5: Intel, Ixia, HP, ZTE, Sonus Networks, Aricent, RADVISION, Radware, Mavenir Systems, NE Technologies/Marben, Starent Networks, Acision, and Wipro.
I wonder will be bringing the Billing software to the table? Will it be ZTE’s Zsmart? Or Aricent OCCS? Perhaps something out of the Acision hat?
Link: IMS Forum announcement
Frens Jan Rumph
HP and Amdocs claim IMS interoperability with legacy billing
Resulting from their joint efforts at the 4th IMS Forum’s plugfest, HP and Amdocs claim that they prove IMS interoperability with a Legacy Billing System.
The efforts by HP and Amdocs are indeed great steps that need to be taken in order for the IMS architecture to be successfully developed and brought to the industry. HP is even re-using this strategy toward other vendors as well. One of those vendors is Highdeal. They claim a ‘dramatic brakethrough’ in online charging. I do applaud these activities, as they strengthen the commercial viability of the IMS.
I do have some issues however with the claims. First of all, how legacy are the systems from Amdocs or Highdeal? It is claimed that Amdocs for instance communicates with HP through (at least some flavour) of diameter. Both products are top of the notch billing systems, and can hardly be called legacy!
Secondly, and even more important for me, is the question: what does this do to standardisation? I have raised the question earlier already in a previous post. This might make all the efforts put in the development of Online Charging System specifications useless. Is that a bad thing? I’m not sure, but one of the reasons for standardisation is to decrease vendor lock-in possibilities, so I’d say that this work should be continued. However if the industry is not adopting the standards… It would be nice to see HP, Amdocs, Highdeal and others to give back to 3GPP in the form of their protocols for communication towards rating and account balance management systems.
Source: HP and Amdocs claim (pdf)
Source: HP and Highdeal announcement
Frens Jan Rumph
Some information on IMS Plugfest IV
Thankfully I came across this an article on B/OSS about the IMS Forum’s Plugfest IV: . I know at least some results were presented at VON, but I didn’t get my hands on any info from there. So this is al I’ve got so far. Which is a shame! Sure there vendors, and therefore probably not THAT interested in sharing with the rest of us, but still…
You can read the article at: http://www.billingworld.com/articles/software-sector-plugs-in-to-ims-forum.html
Frens Jan Rumph
IMS Forum plugfest 4
A small step for man, a giant leap for interoperability. The IMS Forum is presenting its results from the 4th plugfest at VON. I hope they also disseminate the results somehow on the internet in more then just a news bulletin.
The latest press release from IMS Forum at claims a milestone in OSS and BSS interoperability. So that sounds good! So Amdocs has shown their IMS/Diameter portfolio. Unfortunately I don’t know the Amdocs portfolio from the inside (basically only names on their website). So I’m not really sure what this means. At least its moving in the right direction! And guys: share! And not just at VON, we’re not all able to go there 
Plugfest 5 is also working on Charging and Billing! I only know the title, but it sounds good: “NGN M-Play, OSS/BSS and Billing Applications”. Lets hope that more BSS vendors will join. We don’t wont te be interoperable with just Amdocs now do we.
Frens Jan Rumph
BSS/OSS support added to IMS plugfest
BSS/OSS support is added to the IMS plugfest, which is held the UNH InterOp Lab in New Hampshire by the IMS Forum.
It’s good to see that the IMS Forum is realizing the importance of including BSS and OSS components to the IMS plugfest event. In order to generate revenue from your services, you need to be able to charge for them! Results of Plugfest IV will be revealed on March 18th at Spring VON.X 2008 in San Jose.
The two main players in the fourth IMS plugfest providing BSS/OSS functionality are HP and Amdocs. This is a great way for them to get out of their own private labs and to really test whether their products adhere to standards defined by 3GPP and IETF.
Let’s see if charging and billing are the usual afterthought, with all the nasty hacks needed to still generate revenue, or that the IMS core and application vendors are up for the job. Hopefully also some more advanced tests will be performed than just offline and online charging for non-roaming subscribers without interconnect.
See also: http://www.imsforum.org/plugfest
Frens