Software has been powering both the telecommunications network and the Internet for many years now. Software will continue to power the network in the future too, while networks and services become more complex and sophisticated. Telecommunications systems are among the most complex systems that have ever been built by humankind. This complexity, along with the high variety of systems and their longevity pose very high requirements on the software engineering.

Telecommunications has penetrated many aspects of our lives. It has become an almost ubiquitous utility in Europe and elsewhere, always available when we need to use its services. Beyond that, telecommunications support many mission and safety critical applications in our lives. Emergency calls, like calling help after a road accident, depend solely on a reliable telecommunications infrastructure. At the same time software runs in the core of all telecommunications systems, being a key element not only to sustain the knowledge society, but literally to support our safety and well-being in emergency situations and beyond.

As all commercial companies are under extreme market pressure, telecommunications operators face a dilemma. How to remain competitive without sacrificing thorough quality controls? In order to ensure a highly available, reliable, robust and fault tolerant telecommunications network, industry has developed and is continuing to develop advanced software technologies to increase the quality of the software embedded in the telecommunications infrastructure.

Sustaining and increasing competitiveness in the telecommunications market is another area where advanced software technologies are contributing. Although business process efficiency has typically improved, this improvement was usually very expensive due to proprietary solutions. Standards and the introduction of ‘Common Of The Shelve’ (COTS) software components promise a dramatic improvement in this are too.

These are only two examples of challenges that are a constant concern for telecommunications operators and service providers. In this issue of EURESCOM mess@ge we present the main activities and results of EURESCOM projects in the area of advanced software technologies for telecom infrastructures. However, the whole area of software for telecommunications systems is so broad that we can only capture a snapshot.

The EURESCOM study on "Impacts of changes in enterprise software construction for telecommunications" (P1149) is reporting on the assessment of OMG’s Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and its suitability for the telecommunications domain. To complement the view of the project we have asked the Object Management Group (OMG) to provide us with their own vision of where the MDA can be beneficial to the whole ICT market.

The OLIVES Project on "Workflow-based On-line Validation of Complex Component based Internet Services" (P1108) investigated fully automated, co-ordination-based techniques for the control and adaptation of the behaviour of distributed software applications – in particular Internet services – with the goal of validating and augmenting their Quality of Service (QoS).

Addressing the increased importance of automated business-to-business (B2B) processes amongst players in the ICT industries the EURESCOM project on "e-Commerce Based Service and Network Management" (P1106) has developed a framework to support the evolution of Operation Support Systems (OSS). Automated B2B for OSS will be among the most important capabilities for next generation networks based upon IP and open network APIs.

While hard facts and estimated market figures about future demand in ICT are debatable, we can assume that the next generation networks will have to support a much wider variety of services and applications than today. Support for ubiquitous computing and communications will certainly dominate the forthcoming challenges in future advanced software technologies for telecommunications infrastructures.

The vision of the next step of the networked knowledge society is that billions of small, intelligent devices will be equipped with spontaneous peering capabilities and have access to information and provide access to services on the network. The industry today makes small steps to try to envisage the impacts of the vision of the Ubiquitous Network on the software infrastructure of next generation networks.

The innovative solutions presented in this cover story have to be seen as part of the effort of telecommunication operators and service providers to provide flexible, reliable, robust and fault tolerant information infrastructures.

Experience from the past has taught us that there will soon be services out there we did not plan for today. To stay competitive we have to be prepared for the unplanned. Advanced software technologies can be of great help for this.