Advanced Collaborative Services Provisioning in Next Generation Networks

The 3GPP IMS subsystem, adopted also by the ITU-T/ETSI NGN initiative, proves to be a powerful framework for the provision of conferencing services. Collaborative Services, although based on multipoint conferencing, present their own set of requirements and distinguishing features. This paper tries to present an overview of the conferencing framework available in IMS-based networks, in order to analyse next the requirements and necessary extensions for advanced collaborative service provisioning in this environment. Finally, an architecture proposal for an IMS-compatible collaborative server is presented, and the undertaken validation experiments and prototypes tackled.