IP Multimedia Systems (IMS) has been in the wings for some time. There have been several deployments by the major equipment manufacturers, but IMS is simply not happening. The vision of IMS is truly grandiose. IMS envisages an all-IP core with several servers known as Call Session Control Function (CSCF) participating to setup, maintain and release call sessions.
In the 3GPP Release 5 Architecture IMS draws an architecture of Proxy CSCF (P-CSCF), Serving CSCF(S-CSCF), Interrogating CSCF(I-CSCF), Breakout CSCF(B-CSCF), Home Subscriber Server(HSS) and Application Servers (AS) acting in concert in setting up, maintaining and release media sessions. The main protocols used in IMS are SIP/SDP for managing media sessions which could be voice, data or video and DIAMETER for connecting to the HSS and the Application Servers.
IMS is also access agnostic and is capable of handling landline or wireless calls over multiple devices from the mobile, laptop, PDA, smartphones or tablet PCs. The application possibilities of IMS are endless from video calling, live multi-player games to video chatting and mobile handoffs of calls from mobile phones to laptop. Despite the numerous possibilities IMS has not made prime time. While IMS technology paints a grand picture it has somehow not caught on. IMS as a technology, holds a lot of promise but has remained just that – promising technology.
The technology has not made the inroads into people’s imaginations or turned into a money spinner for Operators. One of the reasons may be that Operators are averse to investing enormous amounts into new technology and turning their network upside down.
This article provides an innovative approach to introducing IMS in the network by taking advantage of the public cloud!
Since IMS is an all-IP network and the protocol between the CSCF servers is SIP/SDP over TCP IP it can be readily seen that IMS is a prime candidate for the public cloud. An IMS architecture that has to be deployed on the cloud would have several instances of P-CSCFs, S-CSCFs, B-CSCFs, HSS and ASes all sitting on the cloud. An architectural diagram is shown below.
Deploying the CSCFs on the public cloud has multiple benefits. For one it a cloud deployment will eliminate the upfront CAPEX costs for the Operator. The cost savings can be passed on to the consumers whose video, data or voice calls will be cheaper. Besides, the absence of CAPEX will provide better margins to the operator. Lower costs to the consumer and better margins for the Operator is truly an unbeatable combination.
Also the elasticity of the cloud can be taken advantage of by the operator who can start small and automatically scale as the user base grows.
Thus a cloud based IMS deployment is truly a great combination both for the subscriber, the operator and the equipment manufactures. The cloud’s elasticity will automatically provide for growth as the irresistibility of IMSes high speed video applications catches public imagination.
If IMS as a technology needs to become common place then Operators should plan on deploying their IMS on the public cloud and reap the manifold benefits.
Please see my post for a more detailed view of the above post in “Architecting a cloud based IP Multimedia System (IMS)”
A related post of relevance is “Adding the OpenFlow variable to the IMS equation“.
Giga thoughts ... 