Within the context of the Enterprise Ireland funded ILRP (Industry Lead Research Programme) Project IMS ARCS, FOKUS supports the establishment of an Open Source IMS based testbed infrastructure to enable the local Irish SME industry to explore business opportunities in the IMS/NGN context.

Two Open IMS based testbed instances (one development and one productive environment) have recently been deployed at the Telecommunication Services and Systems Group (TSSG) at the Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) in Ireland. The testbeds, consisting of the Open Source IMS Core and several Fraunhofer FOKUS enabler components, will be used for prototype development and show case scenarios.

Using OS software, including FOKUS's Open IMS Core and MONSTER client, the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) and 25 Irish telecommunications industry players have successfully completed the IMS ARCS project which was financed by Enterprise Ireland over the last 2.5 years.

The successful project completion was accompanied by a final IMS ARCS Stakeholder Workshop in the Digital Hub in Dublin, Ireland on November 19, 2009, where Prof. Magedanz has given a keynote about the future role of IMS above evolving packet core networks in Next Generation Mobile Networks. Based on the expertise gained in IMS ARCS, Ericsson IMS equipment and the Open IMS Playground components, TSSG is launching an NGN testbed in spring 2010.

“The FOKUS Open IMS Playground toolkit and the related FOKUS support allowed us to rapidly gain the required IMS knowhow and to kick start our activities, including the development of interoperable IMS service prototypes, which can be easily ported to other IMS vendor platforms” reported Robert Mullins, IMS ARCS project manager.

Kevin Doolin, Competence Centre Manager of the Pervasive Communications Services group in TSSG said:

“TSSG has been working in close collaboration with the FOKUS Open IMS Core for 2 years, with a specific focus on winning the competitive funding for the IMS ARCS project. We especially like the flexibility, accessibility, and extensibility of the software infrastructure provided by FOKUS. This coupled with our joint expertise will pave the way for key future research in the NGN/IMS space”

Robert Mullins, Product Manager at TSSG said:

“The IMS ARCS testbed deployment by Fraunhofer FOKUS was carried out successfully and professionally, and will now be used for developing and testing prototype IMS services and service enablers, in addition to helping us gain a better understanding of IMS development process and issues.”