4th International FOKUS IMS Workshop 2008

Next Event:
5th International FOKUS IMS Workshop 2009

Previous Events: 1st FOKUS IMS Workshop 2004 2nd International FOKUS IMS Workshop 2006 3rd International FOKUS IMS Workshop 2007

PDF-Download: Invitation Flyer Program Flyer

This series of FOKUS IMS events will be continued in 2008!

Fraunhofer FOKUS, FOKUSfriends and DLC e.V. in cooperation with the Chair for Next Generation Networks (AV) at the Technische Universität Berlin organize the 4th International FOKUS IMS Workshop 2008 “Challenges and Opportunities in a Converged Services World - an Update on IMS, IPTV, SDPs, SOA and Web X.0” Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, Berlin, Germany November 6-7, 2008

About FOKUS and this Workshop Series

The Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS (Research Center for Open Communication Systems in Germany) is an independent research organization performing since 20 years with 220 international scientists applied research in the converging fields of internet, telecommunications, entertainment and information technologies. Basis for the many industry sponsored research and development projects, mainly performing new concept and architecture and protocol developments, as well as concept prototyping proof are so called technology testbeds. One of these is the Open IMS Playground, a global pioneering IMS testbed established in the year 2004, which has been extended following the market trends into two directions in 2006, the FOKUS Open SOA Telco Playground, focusing on Next Generation Network and Future Internet Applications based on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and Web 2.0 principles, and the Media Interoperability Lab, which addresses the global trend to integrate IPTV with interactive communication capabilities and other multimedia content services.

This is the fourth of a series of FOKUS events around IMS and NGNs. Whereas the first one in 2004 was devoted to the official opening of the FOKUS Open IMS Playground, the 2006 workshop has been used to make publicly available the core of this NGN testbed, namely the Open Source IMS Core System (OSIMS) and to discuss hot topics like Fixed Mobile Convergence and PSTN replacement. Since then this enabling software for NGN and IMS testbed establishment has been downloaded many ten thousands times from various operators, vendors, integrators, and academic institutions around the globe. We are proud to state, that a global and vivid OSIMS and IMS testbed community has been established since then. The last year’s event, which - as the previous events - was again attended by 300 people from 29 nations, has given insights into the broadening scope of service convergence in the fields of interactive IPTV and Web 2.0 impacts on NGN service and platform evolution.

Based on our presence of most of the international IMS events and the intense discussions at these events and with our partners and customers, we know that nevertheless some key challenges for successful IMS deployment have to be still mastered. Thus we shaped the 2008 event around these issues.

About this Year's Event

The many questions around IMS are no doubt primarily based on the inherent complexity of a converging network world, the emerging role of open service delivery platforms and the uncertainty about future business models and value chains. Therefore we want to discuss at our upcoming IMS event the following questions:

• what has operators family driven to deploy IMS regardless the many uncertainties about the business case;
• how many standards and to which extend must an IMS system support, and how these are exploited for emerging Triple Play and IPTV service offers;
• how does an IMS integrate with service delivery platforms and how will such an environment be controlled and managed and most importantly how does IMS relate to SOA and Web 2.0 principles;
  and finally
• what are the future directions in IMS developments and what role will IMS as standard NGN and related open testbeds play in face of the future internet research activities?

Based on the many positive comments about the last events, we want to maintain the basic size and structure of this event to maintain the appreciated ”open family atmosphere” and stimulate the discussions among the participants.

On Thursday morning two parallel tutorials about the IMS Basics and Standards as well the Open Source IMS Core System will enable newcomers to the topic and our family to get up to speed and prepared for the remaining workshop.

Thursday afternoon features four parallel interactive workshops, which will feature 2-3 stimulus presentations and then allow the participants to present their ideas and to start a vivid discussion about the specific subject matters.

Again we will prepare an interesting evening event which allows continuing the potentially hot debates of the afternoon in a more relaxed atmosphere. We know it will be tough to top the previous social events, but be assured, you will be overwhelmed again.

The following conference day (Friday) will address the workshop topics from an industry perspective, where mainly operators are presenting their views in presentations, and vendors will add their views in corresponding session panels.

Alongside the workshops and the conference we will have again a vendor exhibition showing the state of the art of IMS technology and applications, as well as now service demonstrations from the FOKUS Playground, such as converged media applications as well as Telco-enriched Web 2.0 applications. More details about these demos and the sponsors/exhibitors will be made available in the future.

back     top