Dedication.

About the Authors.

Foreword.

A Note to the Reader.

Acknowledgements.

End-user Scenarios.

Scenario 1: The Operator’s Perspective.

Scenario 2: The Application Developer’s Perspective.

Scenario 3: End-user Perspective.

Scenario 4: Yet more perspectives.

News Flash (Sometime During 2003–2004).

Scenario 5: The Future.

Part I   Background and Introduction.

1    The Internet is Calling – Today’s Network Ecosystems and Their Evolution.

2    The Need for New Technologies.

3    Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

4    Parlay and OSA.

5    The Parlay Conceptual Architecture.

Part II The Standards In Detail.

6    Standards Capabilities and Directions.

7    Standards Capabilities and Directions II – Scenarios and Details.

8    Standards Capabilities and Directions III – The Lay of the Land.

Part III Building a Service Mediation Gateway.

9    Alternative Architectures.

10      Considerations for Building ‘Carrier-Grade’ Systems.

Part IV  Realizing Parlay.

11  Deploying Parlay Gateways.

12  Parlay and Legacy Systems – Handling Feature Interactions

13  Application Implementation Perspectives.

Part V  Advanced Topics and their Implementation.

14  The Parlay Proxy Manager (*).

15  Multi-Network Deployment Scenarios.

16  Parlay/OSA and XML-based Technologies.

Bibliography.

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms.

References.

Index.

Parlay/OSA: From Standards to Reality is an accessible primer on network ecosystems and operations today, discussing the need for Parlay, the details of standards, aspects of network evolution and support for legacy systems, and advanced topics from an implementation perspective. The authors examine the potential of the Parlay/OSA (Open Service Access) solution from a number of points of view: business need, service development and service deployment.

Parlay/OSA: From Standards to Reality:

• Provides a comprehensive account and examination of the Parlay technology.
• Covers standards capabilities and directions, and Service Capability Features, including call control, mobility management, data session control, generic messaging service and content-based charging and policy management.
• Addresses architectural alternatives and advanced architecture patterns.
• Provides use cases, architecture, deployment scenarios and advanced topics for further reading.

This invaluable resource will provide product managers, software developers, application developers, network architects and engineers, as well as advanced students and researchers in academia and industry, with an in-depth understanding of Parlay.

"Telecommunications today is all about services, and in this context Parlay has long been presented as the network-independent, developer friendly solution. This very timely book will help the reader understand the deep changes in the telecommunications market, present the Parlay solution in technical depth, and provide guidance on how to best deploy it in today's networks."

- Chelo Abarca, former 3GPP CN5 (OSA) chair

"This book provides the most comprehensive and useful description to date of what Parlay/OSA is and what it can do."

- Marc LeClerc, Chairman of the Parlay Marketing Work-Group.