So what is the business case for IMS? This is the most burning question operators
around the world are asking right now. Those that have been working with the 3GPP understand
the business case, because they understand the value that IMS brings to their
business. The IMS does not represent new services, as many marketing departments
will tout. True, the IMS is a service enabler, but this makes a tough business case.
The IMS brings a much more effective and secure means of providing multimedia
services to your subscriber base, utilizing an all-IP core. It??™s about economy rather than
revenue generation. The best way to think of economy is to consider the margins your
services bring today. If you can reduce the cost of service implementation and make it
more secure (eliminating or reducing revenue loss), your margins increase, therefore
making IMS a better business case for delivering new services.
Introduction xv
All of that being said, IMS is not something that happens overnight. One only needs
to look back through history to understand the dynamics of introducing new technologies
into a service provider network. SS7 began development as early as 1964, yet it
was not implemented in the U.S. until the mid-1980s. Likewise, ATM was originally
documented in 1968 yet not implemented in the core network until the 1990s (in largescale
deployments).
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