The Ericsson Composition Engine, a bridge between today’s IN and the next-generation IMS/IP networks for application development, is heading for general availability (GA) of its first release.

We met Frans de Rooij, strategic product manager for this new and interesting solution, and asked him to explain what it is and how it benefits developers.

De Rooij says the Composition Engine supports the development of IN-type applications and IMS applications, as well as a combination of the two. “It is a platform that primarily addresses the Next Generation IN domain of the Next Generation Network (NGN) and is basically about how we go from legacy IN (existing Intelligent Network) to IMS,” he says.

In addition, the platform supports a service-broker-type scenario, in which a number of applications can act on a call, and where business logic handles the triggering of the applications, referred to as Trigger Management (TRIM) for circuit switched and Service Capability Interaction Management (SCIM) for IMS.

The Composition Engine also supports protocol-convergence scenarios, making it possible to offer IN services to IMS subscribers and vice versa (denoted IM-SSF and reversed IM-SSF scenarios, respectively).

“The Composition Engine has obvious benefits for developers,” de Rooij says. “We now have one common platform for application development, which serves both the legacy world and the IMS world. It offers advanced-composition features that are very powerful and has already attracted a lot of interest from the market.”

Ericsson is now wrapping up the first release, 1.0, with acceptance tests ongoing in Brazil.

“According to schedule, these tests will be finalized by the end of April, and we will have a commercially-available (GA) product at the beginning of May,” de Rooij says.

“We are now starting up the 2.0 release, with the intention to fully open up the development environment to third parties, and plan to reach GA at the end of Q3 this year.”

Based on Ericsson’s Service Development Studio (SDS), IMS applications can already be developed for the Ericsson Composition Engine 1.0. Support for application development, using SDS, requiring circuit-switched IN protocols will be added in the 2.0 release.

The Composition Engine architecture is in accordance with the Ericsson Common Platform strategy characterized by the use of a service-oriented open Java Enterprise Architecture (JSR 289) and a standards-based Open Source Application server.

For the developer community, Ericsson Composition Engine provides:

• Software architecture and a programming model.
• Recommendation for which tools to use for development and testing.
• Hands-on test kits and startup kits.
• Hands-on example applications.

By Benny Ritzén

SDS