I recently had a chance to announce the news that the IPCC was changing its name to the IMS Forum. Since then, TMC has had a chance to interview Michael Khalilian the Chairman of the IMS Forum on his association and the IMS market.

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What is the mission of the IMS Forum?

The mission of the IMS Forum is to accelerate the adoption of IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) by providing an environment for discussion and resolution of real-world implementation issues relating to interoperability, best practices, and standards-based architectures in the application layer. In addition, the Forum will provide consultancy to the industry, service providers, and vendors on best practices and approaches for IMS rollouts and interconnectivity. Also of note, is that the IMS Forum will also provide consultancy and expertise to the industry on best practices and approaches for IMS rollouts, interconnectivity and convergence. The work of the IMS Forum builds on the groundbreaking efforts of the International Packet Communications Consortium (IPCC), the International Softswitch Consortium (ISC) founded in 1998, and the IP and Multimedia Carrier Coalition created in 1996.

How important is IMS to the future of telecommunications?

IMS is the frame work for the next generation solution eliminating the barriers between wireline, wireless and cable networks, allowing for the realization of true fixed-wireless convergence and the associated efficiencies and capabilities. Against that backdrop, the IMS Forum will serve as the industry resource for widespread education. IMS allows for a converged services delivery and signaling and control platform. Also IMS is the architecture to bundled number of applications and services ranging from VoIP to IPTV to music and multimedia offering to residential consumers and enhanced services and applications to business consumers.

Please describe the impetus to transition from the IPCC to become the IMS Forum.

As my IMS Board member Ahmed Bencheikh, Director Devices and Services Technology Architecture, Office of CTO, Sprint Nextel Corporation, points out, we are witnessing an industry in motion and transition in regard to IMS applications, interconnection with service delivery and security. And, with VoIP proliferation continuing at a very aggressive rate, it has become quite clear that we are going through a major transition toward IP multimedia convergence and are witnessing the dawn of a new era of communications driven by bundled services, applications, multimedia content delivery, and telecommunications convergence. Against that backdrop, the IMS Forum will serve as the industry resource for widespread education. IMS allows for a converged services delivery and signaling and control platform.

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The IMS Forum association members couldn’t be happier about the transition to the new name and mission and if you are interested in the future of IMS you should be getting behind the IMS Forum immediately.

The promise of IMS is fantastic but getting there will take hard work. The IMS Forum is the one association that is dedicated to ensuring that that proper IMS education is delivered to those that need it and furthermore it will help educate the market and ensure that pesky problems like interoperability are solved. In short if you are interested in IP Multimedia Subsystem technology and solutions, you need to join the IMS Forum.