Group management in value-added services over IMS networks

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a platform for service provisioning over IP networks, standardized by 3GPP. One of the key concepts of this technology is service enablers. Enablers are reusable modules encapsulating certain network functions, in order to simplify the development of new network services. In this paper, we present GroupManager, an enabler for group management that provides improved access interfaces for multi-user applications. This enabler, based in OMA´s XML Document Manager (XDM) can be configured and accessed manually, from a web browser, or automatically, using Web Services or Java interfaces. We also describe two new enablers that take advantage of GroupManager´s features: a group-based system for establishing videoconferences, and a document repository for multimedia sessions. Finally, we show a real service developed with these modules, consisting on a multi-user communication system for professional environments.