The IMS: IP Multimedia Concepts And Services, Second Edition

8.1. Group management's contribution to business

Group management can contribute to existing businesses and create a business of its own. Operators and other service providers have a major role to play in mass adoption of group management services in combination with other services like presence and instant messaging. A group management service can be part of the operator's service portfolio. The mobile domain, now reaching almost a billion subscribers worldwide, is a profitable platform for new consumer services. A group management service allowing users to store buddy lists and any other user data related to the presence service or any other service encourages customer loyalty, as shown by instant messaging in the fixed Internet. Users do not want to move to a new subscriber and waste time building their group management data all over again, just to save a couple of dollars.

Offering a basic group management service can give a competitive advantage for an operator over other operators who are not offering it: by binding their group management information to a particular operator's services, customers have available to them high-value services that other operators may not be able to offer without that information. Group management generates new traffic for existing services, like conferencing.