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Guest Column
Programmability
for SIP-based Services
Standard
interfaces and interoperability are cornerstones
By
Michael
Doerk
Senior Manager, Wireline Marketing
Nortel Networks
and
Robert
Beaumont,
IMS Product Line Management, Wireline Networks, Nortel
Networks
05-September-2003
Ask a group of
telecommunications professionals involved in the deployment
and delivery of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based
multimedia services to define “programmability”, you are
likely to get a variety of responses.
For some, “programmability”
may mean the ability to customize clients, incorporating
different graphics, changing colors, and modifying other
characteristics of the user interface.
Others may relate the term “programmability” to the
use of industry-standard languages and APIs such as Call
Processing Language (CPL), Extensible Markup Language (XML),
and SOAP to create customized service scripts.
There will be those individuals who think of
“programmability” in terms of more powerful service
creation tools, such as JAIN SIP Servlets and Parlay, which
leverage session management (call control), presence, and
Instant Messaging (IM) without the need for expert level
knowledge of the underlying protocol.
Finally, there are those that will consider
programmability to be an expression used to indicate that the
solution for delivery SIP-based multimedia services is open
and capable of interoperating with 3rd party
products and applications.
So, whose definition of
“programmability” as it relates to SIP-based multimedia
services is correct? The
answer is that, in a large part, they are all correct because
to achieve a truly “programmable” implementation of
services in a SIP network solution, programmability is
required in many solution elements utilizing a wide range of
tools.
To implement customized
end-to-end services, a SIP multimedia services solution must
deliver the service development tools necessary to provide the
appropriate level of programmability within each component of
its architecture. For
an increasing number of individuals, the overriding conclusion
is that the web services environment provides the best model
for SIP service programmability.
This desire to see the web services paradigm penetrate
the telephony network is based on the benefits that have been
realized from the penetration of the web services environment
into business systems, including ease and speed of service
development, as well as ready access to a large pool of
skilled resources.
Fundamental in this vision of
programmability is that, by exposing programmable interfaces
within SIP solutions to the web services environment, the web
services environment essentially becomes the Service Creation
Environment (SCE) for the Next Generation Network.
SIP delivers the underpinnings of this vision by
merging traditional voice telephony services with multimedia,
instant messaging, presence and the simplicity of HTTP.
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