Day two of the Fierce IMS Executive Summit took off at a good clip: As of my deadline, Grant Lenahan, executive director and strategist of service delivery solutions at Telcordia, gave the morning's keynote address on "The Reality of IMS." The first hook for me was Lenahan's slide on the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of voice, messaging, IPTV and digital content: Not surprisingly, between 2005 and 2010 voice's CAGR is expected to fall 1.3 percent and while that's not a frightening percentage, the drop alone should motivate service providers to look to growing services like IPTV, digital content and even messaging, which will all increase by 83.8 percent, 19.5 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively. Lenahan cautioned that Voice, VoIP, plain Internet access (data services) and static "cable TV" will all commoditize since in their basic form, they're not different from the competitors--the key to the CAGR figures is that the growth areas depend on personalization and niche marketing, or in other words, "One Size Fits None." IMS infrastructures then, must support routing, charging, bundling, ad insertion, content delivery and other policies that create personalization and valued service. Lenahan pointed to Telcordia's client Disney Mobile as a prime example of this personalization, offering basic services with a twist. A successful IMS deployment will enable not more of the same, but more tailored services like Disney's, i.e. more of the different.
Telecommunications Magazine also has a great write-up on our IMS Killer Apps panel from yesterday, which included a packed house and a lively Q&A session. Panelists included: Brian Caskey of UTStarcom, Graham Ellis of Nokia Networks, Tony Kern of Deloitte and Touche, Masoud Loghmani of LogicTree and The Diffusion Group's Colin Dixon. Check out the write up, "Convergence is the Killer App."