Kumar Vemuri

Method and apparatus for understanding natural language

In a speech recognition system capable of identifying particular words, input speech signals can be processed to detect certain patterns and word combinations. The recognition of these speech patterns and word combinations allow the speech recognition system to replace a number-driven menu, automated attendant systems. Once the speech recognition system recognizes the input speech signal, it confirms the accuracy of the identified speech pattern or word combinations with the user.

Delivering seamless services in open networks using intelligent service mediation

In this era of converged networks, service providers are seeking ways to seamlessly provide a wide spectrum of services and applications that will differentiate them from their competitors and add to their revenue streams. At the same time, new industry initiatives are pushing toward open networks, in which third-party application providers can use application programming interfaces (APIs) such as Parlay, Open Services Architecture (OSA), and Java∗ APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN∗) to access network services. One challenge for network operators is to attract and engage third-party application providers while protecting the network from harm. We propose using intelligent service mediation to enable operators to open their networks safely through policy management techniques and to reduce the complexity involved in delivering applications developed by third parties over public switched and mobile networks. We also describe an implementation of intelligent service mediation.

Are you there? Reflections on presence server architectures

Presence is a leading service enabler that permits the leveraging of existing unused dynamic network and user-specified states to enhance the end-user experience regardless of network type. This letter explores the evolution of presence standards, discusses the converged architecture and value-added components of presence, and provides a simple application example to illustrate how presence works.

A Parlay and SPIRITS-based architecture for service mediation

Telecommunications service providers today have a great opportunity to leverage third-party content partners and enterprise network-hosted applications to generate new revenue; the industry has two service mediation technologies that are suitable for addressing this: Parlay and session initiation protocol (SIP). Parlay is a family of application programming interfaces (APIs) defined by an industry consortium seeking to standardize a set of abstract high-level interfaces for use by third-party programmers in building applications that leverage the services and functionality exposed by telecommunication network elements. SPIRITS, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) architecture and associated SIP-based protocol, enables call-processing elements in a telephone network to make service requests that are then processed on Internet-hosted servers. This paper presents a powerful approach for combining the advanced service creation capabilities of the Parlay API with the session control facilities of SIP to leverage the telecommunication network-hosted intelligent networking (IN) services through SPIRITS.

Enhanced active phone book services: Blended lifestyle services made real!

Typical address book software provides for personalization of the end user service experience and introduces a level of stickiness to a service offering. There are tremendous opportunities to extend this experience into a true blended lifestyle service by enhancing the basic functionality with dynamic and context-sensitive features. Enhanced active phone book services introduce an innovation that offers value-add through cleverly blending various next-generation service enablers and network capabilities into a dynamic address book for the user, spanning wireless and converged networks. This paper outlines the enhanced active phone book value proposition for service providers, paints the standards landscape underpinning the service, and offers design choices for a possible platform architecture that supports the service.

Authorization mechanisms for mobile commerce implementations in enhanced prepaid solutions

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) provides an exciting set of new capabilities that service providers can leverage to grow their revenue base while attracting new services that enhance the end-user experience. With these new opportunities the risk of new security threats that need to be addressed also arises. In this paper, security issues — in particular, those dealing with service and subscriber authorizations — in enhanced prepaid implementations for m-commerce — are discussed. These products typically provide an enriched rating engine and a highly configurable feature set for service and content charging in wireless networks. Client application and subscriber-level authentication and authorization are key mechanisms that serve to regulate access to, and usage of, content-based transactions in m-commerce. Solution architectures and a discussion of authorization criteria are presented.

Service mediation standards

The trend in service standardization has moved away from specifying individual services, via the classification of service toolkits, to the concept of defining a service mediation architecture. The prime objective of service mediation is the proliferation of innovative end-user applications by means of network transparency and abstracted network capabilities. This implies requirements alignment and also dependencies and harmonization between various involved standards bodies. This paper addresses the impact of these implications, as well as the latest developments and directions in service mediation standards and why and how these are different from traditional standards with respect to issues like conformance and backwards compatibility. The paper homes in on Parlay and Open Service Access (OSA) in particular and looks at how Parlay/OSA capabilities are evolving and how they relate to the Web Services model. The recent embracing of JAIN∗ and Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) as technology realization of the common Parlay/OSA interface definitions are also discussed.

The Parlay proxy manager — Architecture considerations

The Parlay/OSA standards enable service providers to safely expose, in a regulated manner, pre-packaged network service capabilities to a large body of external third-party application developers. The objective is to facilitate the rapid development and deployment of new applications that could significantly enhance the end-user experience and improve the revenue-generating potential. The Parlay/OSA model supports service sessions to permit client applications to connect to various services hosted by a Parlay or open service access (OSA) gateway. Framework services may be configured to enable a suitable distribution of load at a session level granularity among the various service instances. Finer granularity of request distribution and more reliable end-to-end service access may be achieved through support for proxy manager architectures. In this paper, we present schemes for load distribution and higher reliability, and proxy manager architecture alternatives. We then further extend the proxy concept to application mediation and cross-protocol, cross-domain service reuse.