At the most general level, a network can be conceptualized as a mechanism, frequently drawn as a cloud, connecting any subset of (people, data, applications) together. SIP/IMS is optimized for connections involving people to people and data, because the session holding times are typically long and the user-interface properties have to suit people (audio, video adapted to the terminal device capabilities).
When applications connect to applications, they exchange formatted byte streams. The sessions can be ultrashort, and protocol support is required to choreograph sessions, as there is no human common sense to rely upon. This is the world of computer record exchange, remote procedure calls, asynchronous communications, transaction capabilities, and session management protocols. XML has emerged as the syntactic framework of choice for application internet-working, and both Microsoft and the Java communities have developed application platform architectures. These platforms are Microsoft’s .NET and the Java community’s Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition) respectively. They run on computer servers connected to the Internet and provide a preexisting platform onto which E-business applications can be installed. Java EE and .NET systems talk across high-quality IP/MPLS transport networks. Carriers get to play by providing a JAVA EE or .NET hosting service so that customers can install their applications via standardized interfaces. The carrier may also provide many other useful services:
§ Data backup and restore,
§ Hosted application development environment,
§ Managed applications, web server, application server,
§ Caching and content distribution services,
§ Security monitoring.
It is fair to say that hosting of application platforms is at the cutting edge of hosting services today. Most carriers are happier providing managed servers, network connectivity, and application monitoring on top of operating systems such as Windows and Unix/Linux.
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