ICT convergence: Modeling issues

Abstract

Even though ICT convergence is a well-established and adopted concept, there is no consensus about the underlying software engineering approach to convergent ICT systems. Telecom engineers and software engineers traditionally use different approaches when developing services and applications. A main question is whether or not the differences are justified and should be maintained in the context of convergence? In this paper, we seek to answer this question by analyzing the different nature of the telecom domain and the computing domain. We identify a few fundamental differences that must be bridged when making convergent systems and we investigate how UML can be used as an enabler to build such bridges. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.