Emerging IMS: Charting a New Direction (Cont'd)

Issues like QoS have yet to be addressed as they relate to IMS services. Therefore, OSS vendors, who often serve less as asbestos and more as firemen, may have their toughest IMS battles ahead of them. "IMS can operate over a legacy system too, and that brings in a whole other set of challenges," says Sobers. Todd Benjamin of Rodopi agrees that "One of the challenges here is that legacy systems generally assumed a closed environment in which an SP designed, developed, and delivered its own set of services." Clearly, IMS only moves the situation further away from that previous reality.

Can these challenges be overcome? Certainly. It is difficult to find a problem that the industry has not been able to solve, bypass, or render irrelevant. Given time, solutions will certainly come. The question is not 'if', but 'when', and that question may not be answered until IMS fully moves beyond the drawing board and into widespread use. Some, like Sobers, are optimistic. "From our point of view, [Micromuse] can support it today. We have the probes, the monitors, and the links to monitor all of the different devices." Other firms have equally optimistic outlooks.

However, optimism is somewhat easier to grab onto on the front end of a challenge. As IMS grows and changes, the true ability of firms to stay ahead of the curve will be tested, and it will be positive results that adorn the firms that display the most accurate vision of the future of IMS.

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