IMS for Enterprises

We discuss how the IMS architecture is applicable to the enterprise environment, the relevance it has for enterprise users, different options for integrating private and public IMS infrastructures, and the impact of those options on enterprises and IMS service providers. Similarly, we review IMS architecture, discuss the requirements of enterprise communications systems, and present four possible architectures for the use of IMS by enterprises. We also discuss the possibility of using the service oriented architecture (SOA) to integrate IMS-based enterprise communications systems within enterprise information technology (IT) infrastructure. We have built a softswitch prototype based on the IMS architecture. We describe the implementation and the lessons we learned from this experience.