Understanding the convergence jungle: putting the buzzwords NGN, IMS, SDP, and SOA into the right context Thomas Magedanz Professor, TU Berlin, Director of NGNI, Fraunhofer Institute, Germany Abstract Next Generation Networks (NGNs) are representing an important milestone in the evolution of fixed and mobile telecommunication networks towards an all-IP based multimedia services network environment. Positioned in the centre of the convergence of telecommunications and the internet, a major question arising is what kind of future multimedia killer applications will justify the huge investments to be undertaken for NGN introduction. Based on the success of the internet under the banner of Web 2.0 the hard lesson learned by the telecoms industry is, that there won’t be any single killer application in the future but rather a multitude of the niche services have to provided to a broadening spectrum of user groups also called communities. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is supposed as international standard to provide as a structured over the top (OTT) service control architecture these kinds of presence-based community communication and information services. However, the IMS is not standardising how services have to be developed and provided in an efficient way. The notion of Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) is addressing this spectrum of needed functionalities on top of various network types, including emerging NGN and IMS infrastructures. This means that SDPs and IMS are considered today as important platforms on top of NGNs for the efficient implementation of an open set of multimedia services. Efficiency in this context is enabled by the concept of reusable service components designed independently of underlying network technologies, which brings us to the notion of Service oriented Architectures (SOA) considered today as holy grail for future proof system design. This talk introduces the main buzzwords of converging networks and puts them into context by outlining a target SOA Telco architecture, which is forming the base of the FOKUS Open SOA Telco playground, an extensible technology testbed for prototyping innovative multimedia applications on top of converging networks. Application examples, such as an IMS-enabled Facebook application as well as an IMS-based Community IPTV service will be shown. Speaker’s Biography Thomas Magedanz (PhD) is full professor in the electrical engineering and computer sciences faculty at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, leading the chair for next generation networks (www.av.tu-berlin.de). In addition, he is director of the “next generation network infrastructure” division of the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS (www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/ngni ), which also provides various testbeds and tools in the context of Next Generation Networks and Open Converged Service Environments.. The most popular ones include the Open Source IMS Core (www.openimscore.org ) and the Open IMS Playground (www.open-ims.org) established in 2004. In 2007 he opened the new Open SOA Telco Playground (www.opensoaplayground.org ) for IMS/Web2.0/SOA service prototyping and the Media Interoperability Laboratory (www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/go/mil/) for converged IPTV services. Since more than 20 years Prof. Magedanz is working in the convergence field of fixed and mobile telecommunications, the internet and information technologies, which resulted in many international R&D projects centred around Next Generation Service Delivery platforms based on the aforementioned testbeds. In 2007 Prof. Magedanz joined the European FIRE (Future Internet Research Environment) Expert Group. In the course of his research activities he published more than 200 technical papers/articles. In addition, Prof Magedanz is senior member of the IEEE, and editorial board member of several journals. In 2006, Prof Magedanz has been assigned as Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Cape Town, South Africa (www.ee.uct.ac.za ). Since 2007, he is also Visiting Professor to the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Computing at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland (http://www.wit.ie).