The fixed mobile convergence of telecommunication networks along with the telecom-IP network convergence have opened up prospects for a rich ecosystem of Next-Generation Converged Network technologies and applications. Such applications are envisioned to have the capability of seamlessly accessing services in the IP network and at the same time leverage the legacy capabilities/functionalities of Telco networks. Emergence of principles like Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0, along with gradual adoption of industry standards like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Java API for Internetworking (JAIN) is making this convergence possible.

The trends in the telecom roadmap have forced traditional carriers to take note of the challenges that come bundled along with the value proposition of converged services. The challenges stem from the fact that a converged network needs to carry a multitude of high-bandwidth triple-play (voice, video and data) services over a single network that is much more distributed, multipoint, diverse and interactive in nature. Till recently, the major thrust of service providers has been to offer the basic transport of information between end users. These services mostly involved narrowband voice calls, with a single point-to-point connection per call. While existing services will remain part of the providers’ offerings, customer expectations will migrate towards more advanced (real-time) broadband, multimedia, and information intensive services. End users will interact with the network via sophisticated devices, and be able to select from a wide range of Quality-of-Service (QoS) options. To cater to these emerging service paradigms, network intelligence will not just relate to the creative routing of connections based on database look-ups, but will take on a broader scope including multimedia session management, co-ordination of multi-protocol connections, advanced security, etc. To stay ahead in the competition and provide market leading offerings, carriers further need to enable a global ecosystem of third party independent application developers to deliver converged services leveraging open standards-based service delivery platform. Finally, to establish a common architecture for the convergence among services and networks, standards and frameworks will be required to ensure the interoperability of networks and applications, and facilitate best utilization of the existing telecommunications infrastructure within the converged ecosystem.

It is in this setting of an open services market- with service operators, application developers as well as the IT infrastructure as stakeholders, that we view the role of middleware to be crucial.  The goal of the workshop is to explore how and to what extent middleware can address these challenges, and focus on the development of middleware technologies that can foster the growth of the new era of telecommunications.

Topics of Interest

We are seeking original, unpublished papers on different aspects of middleware technologies for enabling Next-Generation Network (NGN) services and applications.
Topics of submission include, but are not limited to, the following areas of converged networks:

• Middleware architecture for converged networks
• NGN Middleware for triple play services
• NGN Middleware for ad hoc, mobile and wireless services
• Publish/Subscribe middleware
• Presence and contextual data management
• Trust, security and privacy issues
• Scalable, Adaptive, and Self-Managing aspects of middleware
• Converged networks policy-based management, monitoring and control
• Middleware support for NGN inter-networking, non-NGN interoperability, migration
• QoS provisioning, service differentiation, accounting, and billing
• NGN Middleware for context-aware applications
• NGN Middleware for collaborative/P2P applications
• NGN Middleware for Enterprise applications
• Service Modeling and Composition
• Service Deployment and Orchestration
• Programming paradigms, Web 2.0, and mashups
• Web Service/Grid-enabled middleware for converged networks

Workshop co-chairs

Arup Acharya
IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA
19 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 10532
Phone: +1 914 784 7481
Fax: +43 664 188 6275
arup@us.ibm.com

Thomas Magedanz
TU Berlin/Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
Room: 6027, Fraunhofer FOKUS
Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31
D-10589 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 3463 7229
magedanz@fokus.fhg.de

Organizing Committee

Nilanjan Banerjee
IBM India Research Laboratory
Telecom Research Innovation Center
Plot No. 4, Phase II, Block C
ISID Campus, Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj
New Delhi 110070, India
Phone: +91 11 6619 2100
Fax: +91 11 2613 8889

Dipanjan Chakraborty
IBM India Research Laboratory
Telecom Research Innovation Center
Plot No. 4, Phase II, Block C
ISID Campus, Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj
New Delhi 110070, India
Phone: +91 11 6619 2100
Fax: +91 11 2613 8889

Koustuv Dasgupta
IBM India Research Laboratory
Telecom Research Innovation Center
Plot No. 4, Phase II, Block C
ISID Campus, Institutional Area, Vasant Kunj
New Delhi 110070, India
Phone: +91 11 6619 2100
Fax: +91 11 2613 8889

Program Committee

• Khalid Al-Begain, University of Glamorgan, UK
• Guruduth Banaver, IBM Research, USA
• Paolo Bellavista, University of Bologna, Italy
• Udo Bub, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Germany
• Eric Burger, BEA Systems, USA
• Sajal Das, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
• Cristiano Di Flora, Nokia Research Center, Finland
• Roch H. Glitho, Concordia University, Canada
• Avshalom Houri, IBM Research, Haifa
• Anupam Joshi, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
• George T. Kormentzas, University of the Aegean, Greece
• Venkatesh Krishnaswamy, Avaya Labs, USA
• Edmundo Madeira, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil
• Archan Misra, IBM Research, USA
• Apratim Purakayastha, IBM Research, USA
• Stephan Steglich, TU Berlin / Fraunhofer FOKUS
• Martin Strohbach, NEC Network Laboratories, Germany
• Upkar Varshney, Georgia State University, USA
• Narayanan Venkitaraman, Motorola Labs, USA
• Arkady Zaslavsky, Monash University, Australia
• Johan Zuidweg, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Important Dates

• Paper submission: August 5th, 2007
• Author notification: September 15th, 2007
• Author Registration: See Middleware Conference main page.
• Camera-ready copies: October 1st, 2007
• Workshop date: November 26th, 2007

Submission Guidelines

We request papers describing original research and practical experiences in the standard ACM format no longer than 6 pages, including all text, references, appendices, and figures. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by three members of the program committee. The Middleware conference organizers will provide companion proceedings covering all workshops and plan to make all workshop papers available in the ACM Digital Library.

Papers must be submitted by the submission deadline using the workshop management system available at http://www.easychair.org/MNCNA2007/

Document templates can be found at the following URL:
http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

If you have further questions, please send an email to MNCNA 2007 Contact