E-marketplaces: A Telecom Operator Perspective

New generation E-Marketplaces are manageable systems that allow offering products composed by atomic services. These services can be provided by different providers coming from different industries. This framework offers capabilities to manage the whole product lifecycle. Such marketplaces bring the opportunity to reduce the time-to-market period as well as the amount of money invested. Moreover, it allows removing entrance barriers to new providers. Nowadays trends in marketplaces are focused on the syndication process of providers, but they usually miss the key technology that can bring new opportunities and improve the quality of such marketplaces: IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). e-Marketplaces can benefit from a true integration between Telco and Web 2.0 services. This paper reviews e-Marketplace definitions and technologies and provides an insight on how IMS can play a fundamental role in the e-marketplaces of the future. An example case study is presented for illustration.