IMS Networks Going Virtual

According to IHS (NYSE:IHS), service providers are optimistic about moving IMS voice networks to NFV. The research house interviewed global service providers that have, or will have by the end of 2017, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) core equipment in their networks. Of those, 8% are running IMS network elements in a network functions virtualization (NFV) environment today.

"Though only a small number of service providers who took part in our IMS strategies survey are currently running IMS in a virtualized environment, more are on the path by starting to utilize software running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware as a stepping stone to full NFV," wrote Diane Myers, IHS research director for VoIP, UC and IMS. "One of the biggest drivers for NFV is the ability to scale services up and down quickly and introduce new network services more efficiently and in a timely manner, which makes IMS a good early fit for NFV."

Other findings indicate:

• 80% of service provider respondents indicated that parts of their IMS elements will be running in an NFV environment by 2017, which IHS believes is somewhat optimistic.
• Today, 60% to 65% of respondents are running residential voice over broadband, SIP trunking or hosted business VoIP over IMS, which is expected to grow to 88% by 2017.
• Telephony application servers (TAS) are an important element to commercializing an IMS network: 72% of respondents have already installed voice application servers.
• In an open-ended question asking respondents who they consider to be the top three IMS infrastructure vendors, operators most often named Huawei, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent.