During Supercomm, I took a closer look at the IBM Blade Center.  The IBM booth happened to have some IMS demos, and one in particular caught my eye: a gaming app running on some PDAs (I have a blown up photo in my photo archive).  I thought this was very interesting, as it gave a little snippet of the future of IMS, where partnering is key.  IBM has developed a big ecosystem of vendors to support its IMS offerings.  The IT folks are beginning to take over the telco world (slowly but surely).  So IBM (for that gaming demo) was relying upon the Audio Codes MGW, the Brooktrout MRF, the Nextone CSCF, the Terraplay gaming app, the Ubiquity SIP Application Server and the Leapstone SCIM. 

So what is from IBM besides the Blade Center blade/chassis shown above?  The Presence Server and the IBM Global Services organization that puts together the entire solution.  That last item goes a long way into making this best-of-breed concept a viable option.