Sun Microsystems and Ericsson have teamed up to create an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) server as part of the open source Glassfish Java application server. 

To kick-start the project, unveiled at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Ericsson has donated code for its Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Servlet to the open source project.

The new IMS server is part of a strategy to expand Glassfish into the communication server market.

"People are fixated on [Glassfish] being an enterprise transaction system, but it is really much more useful for many other realms," said Rich Green, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems, in the opening keynote at JavaOne.

"Using Glassfish as a server side technology to power the next generation of communication from the server to the mobile device to the desktop to the people around the world is where we are going next."

The SIP standard sets up communication sessions using a range of technologies, with the choice of medium depending on availability.

Technologies that can support SIP include internet telephones, mobile phones, instant messaging and video messaging.

SIP also allows for presence awareness, informing a user seeking to contact a co-worker whether they are available, travelling, on the phone or in a meeting.

Martin Harriman, vice president of marketing and business development at Ericsson, acknowledged that the company is new to the field of open source software.

But Ericsson realised that it needed a broader community to create a communications server that would have broad appeal.

"If we are going to develop an ecosystem around IMS that is really going to change how people live their lives, we cannot do that on our own. This is a big step for us," Harriman said.

Ericsson has taken ownership of the SIP project within the Glassfish project.

Sun launched Glassfish as an open source project in June 2006. The software is based on Apache's Tomcat application server and is governed by the open source Common Development and Distribution Licence.