Combining Web 2.0 and IMS: The Road to New Services and Business Models

 

The missing link between legacy and Internet-based communication services

 

By G. Dorbes, H. Amossé

 

The rapid rise of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Web 2.0 technologies has, in many ways, lowered the barriers to market entry for organizations that want to compete with traditional telecommunications providers. As a result, a growing number of service providers now must consider companies like Google as significant competitors for consumer and business subscriber revenues.

 

Service provider organizations that operate in even the slightest competitive environment are under intense pressure to rapidly move away from rigid network infrastructures and service delivery platforms. Replacing these environments at some point in the future will be a standard, open and more flexible IP network infrastructure that can accommodate:

 

• Multiple traffic types (voice, data, video)
• Variety of access types (wired and wireless)
• Various quality of service (QoS) performance requirements
• A variety of new and emerging business models

In the meantime, incumbent telecom operators must develop a hybrid migration strategy that leverages existing network infrastructures to enable a new generation of services. Meeting new demands will increasingly require service providers to offer consumers and businesses the ability to mix and match capabilities (voice, data, video over broadband wired or wireless infrastructures) at will. In so doing, the fundamental nature of the industry is changing, as telecom takes on many of the economic characteristics associated with the Web, to form a new Telco 2.0 business model.

 

This transformation must be executed while designing an end-to-end architecture that will cost-effectively guide carriers toward an optimal next generation networking environment.

 

Back to Basics: Understanding the Internet and its Services

 

To understand the service domains available on the Internet, it is useful to look at the Internet service landscape being divided into the following X and Y axis configuration (Figure 1). In this model, Internet services are either synchronous or asynchronous, and can involve either person-to-person communication or person-to-machine interactions.

 

 

The axes create four service quadrants:

 

• The Synchronous Person-to-Machine quadrant includes Media Services such as IPTV or Video-on-Demand (VoD). These services require real-time capabilities to deliver multimedia content.
• The Asynchronous Person-to-Machine quadrant includes Web-Based Services such as portals, eStores or blogs and the majority of services using a web browser.
• The Asynchronous Person-to-Person quadrant includes Messaging Services such as e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS) or voicemail.
• The Synchronous Person-to-Person quadrant includes Conversational Services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Instant Messaging (IM) or conferencing.

Many Internet services cover more than one of these domains and technologies. The combination of these configurations contributes to the development of mashups that provide new end-user-centric experiences for fixed and mobile Internet devices. This results in a “double-edged sword” situation that at once creates new revenue-generating opportunities, while opening the door to new agile competitors.

 

Consequences for Telecom Operators

 

It used to be that the only competition for telecom operators came from other telecom operators. Now traditional service providers are in competition with Internet players who have developed conversational services (IM, VoIP) based on the Internet architecture.

 

As a result, a greater number of players are competing in the domain of conversational services, including:

 

• Google talk-based on Jabber/ Extensible Messaging Presence Protocol (XMPP) open protocols
• Telco standards-based IMS
• Microsoft Live Messenger + Yahoo Messenger proprietary services
• Skype Person-to-Person (P2P) proprietary services

In some cases, these new players are offering services and rolling out business models that have not been seen before from traditional telecom players.

 

IMS in the Context of the Internet

 

But this is where IMS can come in and re-level the playing field for traditional telecom operators. Because IMS and Web technologies are not in the same quadrant, they can coexist to offer blended services. For instance, protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) are designed to work in more traditional telecom network environments. They do not have the same purpose as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which are standards that have been developed for the Web. And because IMS is a set of standard technologies that allow conversational services to coexist with the more proprietary telecom networks, it provides a platform from which telecom service providers can offer Internet (or Internet-like) services over their existing telecom networks.

 

Understanding Web 2.0

 

Web 2.0 encompasses both new uses and services on the Internet (e.g., Flickr, Gmail, Soapbox, Orb, Netvibes, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia) as well as specific technologies involved in delivering such services as Representational State Transfer (REST), Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (RSS) and COMET (HTTP-based push technology). These services have the common denominator of using HTTP protocols and being displayed in standard web browsers. All of these services and technologies contribute to improving the end-user experience of Internet services, using web browsers as the ultimate application client.

 

With Web-2.0-based technologies, a new content and information publishing paradigm is created where end users no longer perceive the Web as static information pages but rather as a platform for accessing highly interactive applications that can be easily blended with other services, applications and content. Similarly, IMS creates a new paradigm for service creation and service delivery. Web 2.0 can be seen as just one platform that can deliver IMS-based services, even as other traditional platforms continue to exist.

 

The compatibility between IMS and Web 2.0 technologies creates opportunities for cross-fertilization that can result in new, converged IMS-Web services that generate new streams of revenue.

 

 

Mixing Internet Technologies: A Standard Way of Thinking About New Services

 

A few major Internet service providers have adopted the global approach of proposing key Internet services for the four domains of Internet services in support of their core businesses (Table 1).

 

 

In this context, it is interesting to note that:

 

• All players have adopted a combination of conversational and Web 2.0 services.
• Most providers propose interconnections with legacy voice services either with their own brand (e.g., Skype) or in combination with operators who provide the interconnection capabilities on a regional basis (e.g., Microsoft and Verizon in the U.S.).
• All have a worldwide strategy. (This differentiates them from traditional operators who may cover one or several countries but rarely the world-as-a-whole.)

Conversational services – such as IMS services – are part of the strategy of all major Internet service providers, who create their own communication services with more-or-less proprietary technologies and link with legacy services.

 

These new players generally have business models that mix paid communication services (e.g. interconnection with legacy communication systems) and free services (that generate ad-based revenue) in their Web 2.0 business strategies.

 

Telecom operators can respond to these “new competitor” moves by:

 

• Partnering with Internet service providers to manage legacy communication services. The risk here is that the traditional service provider becomes a commodity for another branded service.
• Bundling services from major Internet players (e.g. IM) to associate their two brands with one service. The question is: Who will cannibalize whom?
• Providing key communication services (e.g., IM, VoIP, Multimedia Push/Share, Personal Address Book, etc.) and proliferating them to the largest possible audience by using IMS and Web 2.0 technologies to leverage the traditional proprietary telecom network.

A case can be made for each option. But if telecom operators want to keep their brands strong and profitable in the domain of communication services, they will have to build on their assets (use of standards, existing base of fixed and mobile legacy service users) and extend their service coverage to the Internet and all its applications.

 

This is why Alcatel-Lucent has integrated IMS and Web 2.0 into its product strategy; it gives operators the ability to deploy their fixed or mobile communication services to support traditional offerings or deploy new Internet-based services.

 

Building an IMS/Web 2.0 Strategy

 

The point is not how to replace Web 2.0 with IMS, or vice versa, but to determine how Web 2.0 can help telecom operators introduce their communication services into the web environment using their existing infrastructure and IMS.

 

Below are three examples of how Alcatel-Lucent can help our customers harness IMS to enable the deployment of new multimedia communication services in Web 2.0 environments.

 

Integrate IMS communication into operator Web portal

 

Here, IMS services are accessed through a standard web browser compatible with JavaScript. This can include:

 

• Address Book Management: display, modification, synchronization
• Share Presence with Contacts: display, modification, invitation
• Instant Messaging for one-to-one conversation with contacts
• Click to Dial to set up a call by the server

The benefits to using Web 2.0 interfaces for these applications include:

 

• No software installation is required and updates are automatic.
• Applications run on a wide variety of operating systems and browsers.
• Applications run not only on PCs, but on all types of terminals such as mobile devices and set-top boxes.
• The browser becomes a graphical user interface for all communication services.

 

IMS communication Web 2.0 Widget

 

Web widgets are pieces of code that can be deployed in separate HTML web pages and executed without any additional programming. Service providers can offer a set of IMS services by using these “widgets” to integrate different types of functionality into any Web 2.0 web portal such as iGoogle, Netvibes or Microsoft Live.com. The advantages of a Web 2.0 widget are that:

 

• It is a portable chunk of code that can be installed, embedded and executed within any HTML-based web page without additional compilation.
• Developers can write not only in HTML, but also in JavaScript, flash and other scripting languages.
• It allows users to create personalized web portals by blending services supported by various widgets in a single web page.

Web widgets provide an opportunity to introduce IMS-based communication services into any existing portal that supports this kind of mechanism (Figure 4).

 

 

IMS-enhanced Web pages

 

Existing web pages can be enriched with IMS services capabilities to deliver added value. A typical application would offer communication-related services such as Yellow Pages (Figure 5), enabling users to place calls by clicking a dynamically loaded IMS widget associated with the page or significant tags in the page. The widget can also support other services such as links to personal address book, presence and IM.

 

 

These examples illustrate opportunities to mix web and IMS services using Web 2.0 technologies and services. There are many other possibilities to cross-fertilize web and communication services such as VoIP, voice call and IM.

 

New Business Models

 

Web 2.0-based blended services create opportunities for telecom operators to embrace different business models. Legacy communication services are generally based on price/unit or on flat fees, while ad-based revenue models are popular on the Web. The right mix between these two depends on the objectives of the provider and the combination of content and communication services.

 

By itself, the combination of IMS and Web 2.0 does not introduce new business models, but because it represents a link between two different worlds, it may introduce operators to new business models which can stand alone or be used in various combinations. They include:

 

• Wholesaling -- An agreement between a “TRUE” operator (wholesaler) and a service provider in which the wholesaler owns and operates the access network and offers connectivity to one or more service providers. This is not unlike the model developed to support mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) such as in the relationship between US operator Sprint and Virgin Mobile.
• Outsourcing -- Reduce infrastructure costs, mitigate network evolution risks and focus effort on developing new services for defined customer segments
• Aggregation and Brokering -- Shift from the connectivity/transport services to content creation/application aggregation activities. Broker content to multiple operators and direct user information to multiple third parties.
• Advertising -- Grow advertising-based activities by selling branded items through sponsored services. An example of how this is enabled by IMS and Web 2.0 is context-aware advertising that delivers specific promotional information to user handsets based on their location.
• User Generated Content and Communities -- Establish a trusted, powerful consumer brand for personal and community information. Leverage consumer-generated content and add value to peer-to-peer applications.
• Asset Sharing -- Establish relationships with other “TRUE” operators that have: access, core and application assets. For example in 2007, Vodafone and Orange announced they would share their 3G radio access networks (RANs) in order to reduce costs.
• Fulfillment -- Team with content owners, producers, developers, terminal vendors and media buyers to bundle and blend media, entertainment and communication services.
• E-Commerce and M-Commerce – As value shifts from the platform to the applications, e-commerce and m-commerce offer service providers the ability to cash in on transactions performed by users running these different applications.

These business models will be covered more extensively in the next edition of Enriching Communications.

 

Conclusion

 

Alcatel-Lucent has developed a strong IMS-Web 2.0 solution strategy, as part of our Service Delivery Environment, because we believe this convergence offers opportunities for telecom operators by:

 

• Allowing operators to disseminate IMS-based support for legacy or multimedia communication services on web pages through web widget mechanisms.
• Positioning IMS as a credible approach for enabling IP conversation services over traditional proprietary telecom technologies.

While Web 2.0 and AJAX-based services are currently available on PC web browsers, there is a clear trend toward adoption of AJAX-compatible browsers on mobile phones and PDAs.

Alcatel-Lucent actively supports the Web2.0/IMS convergence strategy and has developed a Web 2.0 front end for the IMS Application Server Suite in order to provide operators with the strength of the IMS standards open to web technologies and uses. The ability of service providers to efficiently and cost-effectively develop and deploy new services is essential to advancing the further development of the Telco 2.0 era. For service delivery, Alcatel-Lucent proposes an IMS+Web 2.0 Service Delivery Environment in which operators can deliver, aggregate and manage converged communications services for subscribers, regardless of networks or devices. It is an opportune time to capitalize on these marketplace and technology dynamics by embracing new business models to improve performance within these new paradigms.

 

Guillaume Dorbes works in Applications Business Division, CTO organization, Villarceaux, France.
E-mail: guillaume.dorbes@alcatel-lucent.fr

 

Hervé Amossé is VP IP Communication & SDE Product Group, Applications Business Division, CTO organization, Villarceaux, France.
E-mail: herve.amosse@alcatel-lucent.fr

 

 

Associated Items

Web Page: Is there money in Web 2.0? (Telecommunications Online)

 

Web Page: Web 2.0 in Wikipedia

 

Web Seminar: Combining Telecom Web Services & Web 2.0 (LightReading, replay)