New IMS/NGN Forum reflects reality of technology movements

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next-Generation Network (NGN) developments have been viewed, at different times by different people, as synonymous, sequential, or competitive with each other. A vague understanding of each movement and how the two concepts relate to each other, has contributed to somewhat slow adoption of both principles. Now, a merger of the IMS Forum and the NGN Forum, the chief trade groups responsible for promoting understanding and usage of these technologies, may help increase adoption of both.

The just-announced IMS/NGN Forum will focus on helping network operators adopt new IP-based architectures, whether they are complete IMS architectures or just more modular deployments of Session Initiation Protocol-based solutions and other moves that fall under a general NGN effort. The IMS Forum itself was traditionally more focused on IMS interoperability, and it led several successful interoperability plug-fests to that end. The NGN Forum traditionally had a more open charter around the overall IP migration.

The combination of efforts is not a surprising or ill-timed step to take, as it reflects how the world's network operators have begun to move forward, with previously grand IMS strategies giving way to step-wise adoption approaches and trials more focused on defined IMS or SIP components.

For more:
- see this post over at FierceVoIP
- read this report at Telephony

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