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August 1, 2003

IN THIS ISSUE:

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Fellow MSF Members

Following my usual practice, I am writing to give you my perspective on our recent Technical Committee meeting in Ottawa and to reinforce understanding of how the MSF Board of Directors and the MSF Technical Committee are trying to create real value- add for you the membership.

Industry Perspective
Ottawa was important for us in a number of ways. To set the scene, the Opening Plenary presentation entitled "Network transformation, a strategy for value creation" was given by Peter Carbone, Vice-President Strategy, Nortel Networks. It is always a real pleasure to see guest speakers come in and talk about the value that they see the forum bringing to the industry. To have such a distinguished guest give such an impressive speech on network transformation and his recognition of the role of the MSF in the industry was an important statement to the correctness of the focus that we have brought to our work over the last few years.

Understanding the role of the MSF in the industry is clearly paramount if we are to concentrate on providing true value-add opportunities for our membership. Within my own company, BT, we clearly see the benefits of MSF membership in relation to BT's strategic initiative to provide a future network based on the concept of a single, flexible, multi-service network based on an IP over MPLS core.

Key Opportunities for the MSF
The primary opportunity here is for the MSF is to help expedite definition of an appropriate open flexible architecture which will stand the test of time and within which best of breed components can be cost effectively procured and deployed from multiple vendors. Because this work is so forward looking, there are few references to provide specification and give confidence that emergent solutions are fit for purpose. Because the MSF is a fast moving collaborative industry wide initiative, it can help here considerably through:
  1. the development of appropriate Implementation Agreements (IA's) to assist in procurement specification & RFI's
  2. the validation of major network elements, including use of the Global MSF Interoperability (GMI) 2004 as a proof of concept that PSTN quality services VoIP over an MPLS enabled core network is viable
GMI 2004
In Ottawa, it was a real pleasure to see MSF's Technical Chair, Rich Seagerthe Technical Leadership, GMI Planning Team and Marketing Committee work together as a team to really get into gear with driving the detail of what is required to make GMI 2004 a real success. No doubt Rich will tell you the detail of this in his report, but for me, the work to define the physical scenarios and IA's that will drive GMI2004 is bang on track.

New Board Members
Finally, a few words to welcome our new Board members - Byung-Sun Lee from ETRI and Dr. Hongbeom Jeon from Korea Telecom. If ever there was proof that the MSF is on track, this is it. For those of you at the MSF Technical meeting in Korea in November 2002, you will remember how important KT & ETRI were to the success of our visit and I and the MSF BoD look forward greatly to working with these key players in the Asian telecommunications industry.

I hope this helps with your understanding of all that we are trying to achieve for you through your membership of this important global forum. I thank you for your continued support and I look forward to meeting you all again in Vancouver this October.

Roger Ward,
MSF President

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TC CHAIR's NOTEBOOK

I would like to thank everybody who participated in the third Technical Committee meeting of 2003 in Ottawa, Canada at the beginning of July. The event was quite successful with numerous contributions received and reviewed over the course of the 3-day meeting. The highlights of the meeting include:
  • bringing several implementation agreements a step closer to the straw ballot stage
  • nearing conclusion on the confirmation of the physical scenarios that will be utilized in support of the GMI2004 event
  • achieving significant progress in the architecture-management work to aid in maintaining and operating the MSF architecture.
The GMI Planning team will issue the Product Requirements Document (PRD), which will outline the details related to the GMI 2004 event that is now scheduled to occur in the 3rd - 4th Quarter of 2004. This event is gaining great momentum within the industry as we continue to drive towards displaying the service architecture, applications, management and security aspects of a VoIP network. We are entering a very important phase of this event in terms of selecting the physical scenarios and completion of the Implementation Agreements as defined by the working groups. These will need to be matured over the next two meetings allowing Interoperability group to continue its planning and execution of the event itself.

Another white paper was approved for release, Service Solutions in Next-Generation Networks. Please take the time to obtain this from the website; it is a very interesting document. This document can be found at http://www.msforum.org/techinfo/reports.shtml.

The Technical Committee leadership was expanded in Ottawa as Stuart Hart, Vice President of Engineering for NG Technologies LC was elected as Vice-Chair of the Interoperability Working Group. With this recent election, the Technical Committee leadership is now at full strength as it heads into the final meeting of 2003 and into a very big year for the MSF in 2004. Your Technical Leadership Team is now comprised of:

Rich Seager: TC Chairperson
Avri Doria: TC Vice-Chairperson

Mike Kallas: Architecture Chairperson
Stuart Walker: Architecture Vice-Chairperson

Chris Gallon: Protocol and Control Chairperson
Mitch Laman: Protocol and Control Vice-Chairperson

Ben Schultz: Interoperability Chairperson
Stuart Hart: Interoperability Vice-Chairperson

We have more work to do in the months leading to the next Technical Committee meeting in Vancouver. And the TC leadership expects to present the first view of the 2004 Technical Roadmap for the TC to comment and supply input at that meeting.

Thank you again for a very successful event in Ottawa. See you in October!

Rich Seager,
Technical Committee Chair

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MSF Welcomes New Board Members

In July, MSF elected two Board members, Hongbeom Jeon from Korea Telecom and Byung-Sun Lee from ETRI. The election of these two members shows strong support from two key companies in a very important region.

Speaking about Korea Telecom's participation in MSF, Hongbeom Jeon said, "The MSF is leading the next generation telecommunications movement by providing viable implementation agreements for carriers. Korea Telecom recognizes that we can benefit from the MSF by collaborating with other carriers and vendors and by helping shape the future of multiservice switching. KT is excited to play a role in the MSF's leadership and I look forward to contributing as a board member."

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Industry Update

MSF and the ITU

MSF President, Roger Ward, recently represented the MSF at the ITU Informal Forum Summit (IFS) in San Francisco. The meeting, the second-only ever held, was a gathering of all the heads of the fora and standards development organizations (SDOs), with whom ITU-T has a relationship.

The Informal Forum Summit concept provides a place for the heads of many such forums to get together to agree on proposals for better collaboration. Following a fruitful first summit in 2001, a second summit hopes to build on that success by establishing a regular meeting-ground for improving awareness of the activities of the various different fora and establishing common-ground as a basis for improved collaboration.

"…the ICT industry has gone through a very painful transition period which has not yet shown signs of a turnaround. Like many industries, forums are also undergoing changes, some merge, others disappear, and new ones are created. However, the spirit of cooperation among forums/SDOs and ITU remains. I am very pleased with the fact that, despite the current difficulties we are facing, 36 forums/SDOs are present," said Houlin Zhao, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB).


MSF President Roger Ward (second from right) dines with ITU-TSB Director Houlin Zhao at the ITU-T 2003 Informal Forum Summit in San Francisco.

MSF Announces Joint Task Force with PARLAY

The MSF Technical Committee is pleased to announce the formation of a Joint Task Force with the Parlay Group. The objectives of this working group are to (1) Enable a common understanding of how Parlay Applications run over an MSF Network Solution, (2) demonstrate Parlay applications as part of the MSF GMI2004 event, and (3) Promote Parlay Group member participation in the GMI2004 event for both Parlay GW and Parlay applications.

The charter for the MSF-Parlay Group Joint Task Force is available on the MSF web site at http://www.msforum.org/techinfo/workgroup.shtml#parlay. A new email list, msf-parlay@msforum.org, has been created for this joint working group. MSF members who wish to be involved in this working group should log into the members area of the MSF web site at http://www.msforum.org/bin/c5i?mid=6&rid=4 and add themselves to the msf-parlay mailing list.

For additional information on the Joint Task Force, please contact MSF Vice-President Chris Daniel at cdaniel@leapstone.com or Parlay Group Board of Director Frank Burghardt at frank.burghardt@siemens.com.

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MSF Announces New Technical Reports

In order to address the relevance of MSF technology to hot topics in today's switching industry, focusing on how the MSF Architecture works with specific technologies, MSF has created two new Technical Reports. For these and a list of all the MSF Technical Reports, please go to the MSF website at http://www.msforum.org/techinfo/reports.shtml. Back to In This Issue

MSF To Host the Carriers Program at the Q403 MSF Technical Committee Meeting

MSF celebrates its Fifth Anniversary by hosting The Carriers Program at the Westin Grand Vancouver in October. The Carriers Program is designed to give Service Providers an opportunity to speak directly to their suppliers - to open a dialogue about their critical needs how MSFis responding with its Technical Roadmap and give vendors a chance to get the "straight talk" from their customers. This is a not-to-be missed event!

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MSF Technical Committee Meeting

The next MSF Technical Committee meeting will be held Tuesday-Thursday, October 28-30, 2003, at the Westin Grand Vancouver in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

To register for the meeting, please complete the on-line registration process on the MSF web site under Meetings and Events (http://www.msforum.org/events/upcoming.shtml). The registration fee is $325 if you register before Tuesday, October 14, 2003 and $450 after that date.

Hotel accommodations with the Westin Grand Vancouver must be made by Friday, October 10, 2003. Please call +1.604.602.1999 to make your reservations. You must mention "Multiservice Switching Forum" in order to secure the discounted room rate of $199 CAD (approx. $143 USD).

Please note the following important deadlines for this meeting:

Room Reservations Deadline: Friday, October 10, 2003
Meeting Registration Deadline: Tuesday, October 14
Contribution Deadline: Tuesday, October 14

BRING A FRIEND! - Don't forget to invite your friend or colleague -- anyone who is interested in MSF -- to the upcoming MSF Technical Committee Meeting. If you do bring a guest, we will ask a board member and/or a member of the TC leadership to roll out the welcome wagon and spend some personal time with them to help them understand the benefits of participation. Guests of MSF members can register easily by contacting Cindy Morgan at cmorgan@msforum.org or +1.510-608-5925.

Membership participation is the driving force behind MSF's success. Please join us in Vancouver and continue to support MSF's mission.

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CONTACT US!

Feedback? Want to include something in the next issue? We want to hear from you! Send your comments and contributions for the next issue to jfitzpatrick@msforum.org.


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