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provisioning, inventory, and the service provider's business model play a vital role in IMS. The infrastructure must be always on, always available in direct response to the consumer demand for anytime, anywhere access. It must be configurable for user preferences allowing service providers to provide an individualized experience and offer customizable products, services, and content. Supporting any product at any price with any form of payment is required for e-commerce. The billing system needs to support legacy services in addition to real time, instantaneous transactions that provide a complete transaction at the time of purchase to subscribers.

Delivering products on demand supports the digital lifestyle in which consumers require instant gratification through applications, content, and e-commerce. Network architecture and design must support a container for these services and devices, otherwise provisioning is difficult, if not impossible, to manage. Deployment, maintenance, and management needs to be considered when evaluating IMS as a strategy. Taking the right steps up front to plan, architect, and design will result in quicker deployment, service delivery, and service assurance down the road.

The act of capturing data isn't enough anymore. Systems must interpret and execute data in order to provide intelligent, customized offerings. In addition to offering support, billing, and provisioning for multiples services, marketing, inventory and interoperability are a focus in the IMS infrastructure. Most importantly, service providers must implement an infrastructure that is adaptable to new business models. With the rate of change in the communications industry, service providers must invest in infrastructure that is evolutionary, not revolutionary; enables integration through open architecture; leverages the internet; and is near real time.