Yankee Group Finds that the Road to IMS is Anything but Smooth.

Addressing Inadequacies and Bottlenecks of IMS Will Transform the Hype into Reality

BOSTON -- Yankee Group today announced that while the communications industry has accepted IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture as the unifying technology, there are number of gaps in the architecture limiting increased adoption and implementation of the standard. These gaping holes and inadequacies in the architecture that have surfaced must be addressed by vendors and carriers that have invested in IMS.

According to IMS Architecture: Time for Introspection and Reality Check, a Yankee Group Report published recently, the growing interest of carriers in adopting IMS or next-generation architecture is met by increasing challenges. All major carriers and vendors now have IMS in their road maps because it is being recognized as the unifying architecture. Some of the reasons for carrier adoption include: achieving fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), creating new services and quicker service delivery, providing a consistent user experience and utilizing legacy infrastructure to create composite services. However, the carrier community is taking a very cautious approach toward next-generation architecture for several serious reasons as well.

Some key challenges facing carriers' adoption of IMS and next-generation architecture include:

* Standard compliance for vendors: vendors' solutions are still not fully standard-compliant

* Vendor solution interoperability: there are immature standards and a lack of vendor solution interoperability

* Support for Service Initiation Protocol (SIP)- and non-SIP-based services: adoption of SIP is a new requirement

* Service orchestration: orchestration functionality is critical, but lacks a proper standards definition

"The promises of IMS architecture for carriers and service providers can be truly mind-boggling. Beneath all the academics and hype, the road to IMS and next-generation architecture is rocky and treacherous," said Arindam Banerjee, Yankee Group senior analyst. "An aggressive approach to IMS has a greater chance of failing. A slower and more cautious path to IMS will help reduce uncertainty and provide greater architectural stability, which will subsequently result in increased APRU and improved customer stickiness."

NOTE TO EDITORS

For interviews contact:

* Arindam Banerjee, Yankee Group senior analyst, 617-880-0321, [e-mail]

* Christina Oh, Yankee Group public relations, 617-880-0238, [e-mail]

YANKEE GROUP (www.yankeegroup.com)

The people of Yankee Group are the global connectivity experts[TM]Cothe leading source of insight and counsel for builders, operators and users of connectivity solutions. For more than 35 years, Yankee Group has conducted primary research that charts the pace of technology change and its effect on networks, consumers and enterprises. Headquartered in Boston, Yankee Group has a global presence including operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.