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 September 1, 2005
Roger Ward, BT As a successful global forum, we recognise the importance of the opportunities we can together make happen cost effectively that are difficult or impossible for our members to achieve by themselves. The MSF has a good track record of organising collaboration around its Global MSF Interoperability events programme to enable both public proof of MSF Architecture and Implementation Agreements as well as providing a unique test and specification proving environment for carriers and vendors alike. For those of you fortunate enough to be with us at our 3Q technical meeting held in Ottawa last month, you will know that together, we have now made significant progress towards making GMI 2006 a reality - moving from what the project planners call "the inception phase" to the "planning phase" of what is going to be a very exciting and demanding programme. To add weight to this change in tempo, the MSF Board of Directors has now set the GMI 2006 dates as 16 - 27 October 2006 and appointed the GMI 2006 planning team under the leadership of Avri Doria to develop the Project Requirements Document (PRD) in response to the member requirements documented in the GMI 2006 CRD. The deadline for the draft PRD is such that it will be available for discussion at our 4Q/05 meeting in Nagoya, Japan. Let's now look at some of the highlights of the Ottawa 3Q/5 meeting in more detail. 1. IMS: Enabling Services Wherever the Customer and Whatever the Access Which ever way you look at it, IMS is pretty important to both the industry and the MSF. Breaking the tradition of the Tuesday evening members' social event, Ottawa saw us mix business with pleasure with a very successful evening tutorial/ social event that was sponsored by Nortel Networks. The tutorial saw Duncan Mills of Vodafone and Stuart Walker of Leapstone examine just how and why IMS might be the answer to solving the challenges of fixed mobile convergence and also, how it might provide the justification companies need to make the move to NGN. The evening finished with Jim McEachern and a Nortel colleague demonstrating some practical applications that IMS technology can provide already, all of which was a very good primer for the discussions on the appropriateness of MSF physical scenarios for GMI 2006.
2. GMI 2006 - Finalising Member Requirements In a voluntary organisation such as the MSF, it is vital to properly understand the focus and depth of member requirements prior to any commitment to an event as major as GMI 2006. As promised in Madrid back in April, this quarter has seen the MSF focus on further development of the GMI 2006 proposition, with a detailed membership questionnaire to check initial findings as well as ample other opportunities for members to comment on the proposals for this important event. The good news coming from the questionnaire is a very strong level of member support with:
In looking at the technical focus of GMI 2006, it is important to realise that although IMS is an important aspect of what we shall be doing, it is not the only area considered worthy of a "very important" score. In descending order of priority, the membership questionnaire underpinned the importance of all of the following areas:
All of this is now enshrined in the GMI 2006 CRD (msf2005.054.03.doc). The important next steps are now to define and commit to the detail of making it all happen (the PRD, the physical test scenarios, the list of candidate IA's, the host sites, the test specifications). The good news is that we have had a good response to volunteers for the GMI 2006 project team and this group of people are now regularly meeting to be able to present to our next meeting in Nagoya how we are going to make GMI 2006 an outstanding success and the detailed contributions that we will be expecting over the next 12 months! You will also be interested to know that we plan to go public on our plans for GMI 2006 at Fall VON in Boston in a few weeks time and already, I am pleased to be able to announce already that we have the support of the major carriers within the MSF for this programme. 3. Circle of Excellence Award
As we move the 2005/6 programme from inception to reality, it is important for everybody to play their part and volunteer to contribute to the development of the Implementation Agreements and Test Plans. It is always good to be able to recognize outstanding contributions publicly and it was a particular pleasure to present the MSF 3Q/05 Circle of Excellence Award to Yasuyuki Matsuoka of NTT for his valuable contributions supporting the MSF's next generation QoS architecture. His development of the COPS-PR Implementation Agreement and his contribution to the QoS discussion with his knowledge of the latest router technologies will do much to help us with our ambition to make the demonstration of QoS enabled Next Generation Networks the very bedrock of our GMI 2006 programme. 4. Welcome to New Members As well as our technical achievements, it is important that we keep our membership base strong through providing real value add to companies who are prepared to invest in working through the MSF to achieve their business objectives. We were pleased to see Logica and Nextone as our guests in Ottawa and early indications are that they will be joining us, along with a few other prospects who have strongly come into the frame over the last few weeks, albeit that I am not at liberty to at present disclose their identity. And Finally…… Do remember that in a forum as diverse as the MSF, good communication is everything. So please forward this and other information about the MSF to anybody in your company who might benefit from getting more involved in our work. As they say, if you like what we do, tell your friends - if there are things we could do better, tell me! I look forward to seeing you all in Nagoya, 18 - 20 October 2005! Roger Ward - MSF President, BT
Avri Doria, ETRI Once again, the MSF had a rich and full Technical Committee meeting. For those who only follow the MSF remotely, I do recommend that you plan to attend a meeting at some point because it is at the meetings that the true vitality and spirit of the organizations really comes alive. In this report I will cover some of the technical progress being made as well as some of the plans for GMI 2006. The work of the IMS team has now, almost entirely, been absorbed into the working groups, though the team will remain to help coordinate plans for GMI 2006. With Stuart Walker's coordination the team did a great job of elucidating the many issues that needed to be resolved in the MSF effort to converge our work on broadband technology with the IMS architecture of 3GPP. During the meeting we had extensive discussions on the relationship between MSF R2 architecture and the IMS architecture. We discussed the merging of the architectures as had been suggested by some of the members but resolved that for GMI 2006 and because elements of the necessary broadband architectural support for mutiservices were missing from the 3GPP charter, the only practical solution was to continue on the path we originally set out on: interworking of systems that support the MSF IAs with the new IMS systems that are starting to appear in the market. By interworking we mean the ability for services that are initiated on either an MSF system or an IMS system to be able to be completed on the other system. The plans may also include the ability to roam between the systems. The MSF R2 physical architecture is being augmented with the boxes needed for this purpose. Just as we worked with Parlay liaisons for GMI 2004 to make sure that we had IAs that could achieve MSF-Parlay interworking, we will work with 3GPP liaisons to insure that we can interwork with IMS. In terms of some of the work still on the list as result of lessons learned in GMI 2004, the MSF Session Border Gateway Requirements is on its well way to becoming a product specification. A lot of thanks go to those who have been working to reach agreements on this almost ubiquitous piece of network box. Two more white papers have been approved by the Architecture working group and the Editorial board. The first of them, Bandwidth Management in Next Generation Packet Networks, has been released, while the second, Testability in the NGN, is going through final preparation and will be released shortly. The Architecture group also made progress in defining the scenarios for GMI 2006 and the R2+ Architecture. Anyone who has not yet reviewed these should do so soon since they are the technical basis of GMI 2006. Work is also ongoing on aligning the current MSF SIP IAs with IMS. In the Protocol and Control working group, the new IAs necessary for GMI 2006 have been identified. The list of IAs can be found at: http://www.msforum.org/private/GMI2006_IA_Table.shtml. Having a list of IAs, however, is just the start. There is a lot of work to be done on these IAs; we still need editors for most of these documents and need contributions of content for these IAs. Now that the membership has decided that we should have another GMI, it is time for the member companies to get involved in making the IAs represent the interests and talents of the MSF membership. If you want the GMI to be truly representative and a good venue for your company, then please get involved. The work load for GMI 2006 is too large for us to depend on the few regulars who always volunteer. Please, bring the talent from you companies into this effort. The GMI 2006 planning team has been formed and is already up to speed. We are currently working on the response to the BoD CRD, requirements for the event, and will have the PRD, the plan for GMI 2006, and the Host requirements document ready for membership review before the Nagoya meeting. Additionally, we are currently working on a questionnaire for potential participants. The GMI team has developed a list of all the boxes that will be required by the proposed scenarios. The questionnaire will be anonymous and will be a survey of which equipment the various respondent would consider bringing to the event. When this questionnaire comes out, please respond. It will help the planning team gauge the interest and will help the technical committee focus on the work that is most likely to be tested. A lot is happening between the meetings, and there will be detailed presentations of the proposed plans for GMI 2006 at the next meeting, so plan to attend. The MSF TC and the GMI planning team needs all our members to make the event a success. The proposed date for GMI 2006 is 16-27 October 2006, only a little more than a year away at this writing. The clock on GMI 2006 has started. Avri Doria - MSF Technical Committee Chair, ETRI
DO YOU SUPPORT R2? LOOK WHO SAID "YES!" MSF is pleased to announce that the following companies have declared themselves supporters of the MSF Release 2 Architecture:
The MSF Release 2 Implementation Guidelines are available at http://www.msforum.org/techinfo/implementation.shtml. If your company is ready to declare its support for R2, let us know! We'll post your logo on the MSF R2 page with relevant product information and a link to your website. For more information, please contact Julianne Fitzpatrick at jfitzpatrick@msforum.org.
MSF will present the panel "Where Wireline Meets Wireless: the Role of IMS in the Network of the Future" at Fall VON on Tuesday, September 20th, from 3.30pm - 4.45pm. The distinguished MSF Panel is as follows:
MSF will also exhibit at the show. Come see us or send your customers to Booth #350.
HOT OFF THE PRESSES - BANDWIDTH MANAGER WHITE PAPER The Technical Leadership has just completed the final draft of the technical report Bandwidth Management in Next Generation Packet Networks. This very important white paper is now available on the MSF website at http://www.msforum.org/techinfo/reports/MSF-TR-ARCH-005-FINAL.pdf.
MSF TECHNICAL COMMITTEE MEETING: OCTOBER 18-20, NAGOYA, JAPAN Hilton Nagoya Hotel Meeting Registration
NOTE: You MUST submit payment information when registering for the meeting in order to secure your registration. To submit payment, click on the "Pay" button after saving your registration record. By submitting credit card information, you will secure your reservation. The actual payment will be charged to your card on Tuesday, October 11, 2005, and your receipt will be delivered to you when you check in on site. Meeting registrations cancelled before Tuesday, October 11, 2005 will receive a full refund. After October 11, no refunds will be provided. Please note the following important deadlines for this meeting:
Hotel Reservations MultiService Forum 2005 Travel Desk MSF Room Rate: ¥18,000 single/ ¥28,000 twin per night, including 10% service charge, 5% consumption tax and breakfast. Please use the attached reservation form to make your reservation. Membership participation is the driving force behind MSF's success. Please
join us in Nagoya and continue to support MSF's mission.
Congratulations to the following award winners: Circle of Excellence Award Yasuyuki Matsuoka, NTT Matsuoka-san has produced several valuable contributions that support MSF's next generation QoS architecture. He developed the COPS-PR Implementation Agreement and contributed to the QoS discussion with his distinguished knowledge of the latest router technologies. Due to his important contributions, MSF is the only the forum that will successfully demonstrate a real NGN QoS solution. Above and Beyond Awards Duncan Mills, Vodafone The MSF Board of Directors, Marketing Committee and the entire membership would like to extend their sincere appreciation to Duncan, Stuart and Dan for their efforts in creating and delivering the IMS Tutorial Program at the MSF Q3 meeting in Ottawa. Their presentation greatly contributed to our understanding of the importance of IMS and added significantly to the work being done within the MSF to incorporate appropriate aspects of IMS specification and interoperability within our 2005/6 work plan and GMI2006. It goes without saying that the success that the MSF has enjoyed over its 7 year history can be directly attributed to the hard work and dedication of volunteers like these.
Want to include something in the next issue? We want to hear from you!
Send your comments and contributions for the next issue to Julianne Fitzpatrick
at jfitzpatrick@msforum.org.
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