WO2009092586A1

WO2009092586A1 - Method and system for personalization of service delivery

Info

Publication number: WO2009092586A1
Application number: PCT/EP2009/000397
Authority: WO
Inventors: Anett Schuelke; Jochen Bauknecht; Marcus Kuhnen; Mario Lischka
Original assignee: Nec Europe Ltd
Priority date: 2008-01-25
Filing date: 2009-01-22
Publication date: 2009-07-30

Abstract

A method for personalization of service delivery in a packet-based communication environment, wherein users use single or multiple devices and are enabled to run multiple communication and/or content sessions simultaneously, is characterized in the steps of registering of said user's devices with a personalization communication control server, collecting information regarding the capabilities of said user's devices including dynamic modifications together with said user's preferences parameters together with the control of the user's current ongoing sessions, media and messages handling, and based on said collected information, specifying policies regarding preferred user actions, dynamically analyzing the status of all said user's devices as well as of all communication and content sessions and taking policy decisions on the basis of said analysis, and personalizing of sessions and their interactions by enforcing said policy decisions via obligations. Furthermore, a related system for personalization of service delivery is disclosed.

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PERSONALIZATION OF

SERVICE DELIVERY

The present invention relates to a method and a system for personalization of service delivery in a packet-based communication environment, wherein users use single or multiple devices and are enabled to run multiple communication and/or content sessions simultaneously.

In today's service world, content and communication services are separated. Content (e.g. website, web blogs, CMS) are linked with the internet or mobile web browsing world. Content is delivered on the demand or subscribed mode from a server system to a user. In the IP world a new platform has been created, called IMS (IP Multimedia System), for packet-based communication, with newly evolving service standards for e.g. PoC (Push-to-Talk over Cellular) service. Issues like feature interaction, service capability interaction, and especially service creation including services provided over different protocols and service domains are under investigation, development and trial phases aiming for commercial deployment.

Moreover today's mobile telecommunication industry faces strong competition to deliver new revenue-generating services. While there are high expectations in the future technologies, one of the crucial points is to fulfill user expectations with enhanced service value. Delivery of service is not only dependent on availability of connections, but mainly on capability of devices, service subscriptions, permissions, user profiles including predefined actions, etc., and their dynamic collaboration. The key concept to provide market differentiation is therefore personalization.

One of the key issues is to provide a personalization technology which neither depends on a specific service concept nor on a specific packet switched communication, and can be invoked across different consumed services. Those aspects are partially addressed within single service offering and in the light of addressing context awareness and adaptation. With the current given personalization techniques, any adaptation of services are given as modules acting within a single service. Personalization acting across different services, respecting all user's devices, context and preferences is not given.

According to the state of the art, within a specified service user-specific adaptation based on preferences and settings is already realized to some extent (e.g. multi- session handling configurations for PTTVPTX services). However, a personalization of service control across different applications and services is not possible. For example, within a PTX service, multiple sessions can be prioritized and delivery of media can be server controlled, e.g. voice half-duplex session with background text session filtered against another voice half-duplex session within a PTX server. An incoming full-duplex voice session from a different voice conferencing server is not aware of any of the other ongoing PTX sessions and has no way to be filtered/prioritized or adapted in relation to the already ongoing sessions within the network. All activities are limited to the handling of the receiving device or require the communication partner to be involved in any modification activity. This avoids full exploitation of users' capabilities (e.g. in cases in which users have different device/ networks) and causes to limitations of service usage.

Further examples of existing techniques addressing specific single aspects of user-specific control within a given service are:

• Video adaptation based on connection quality

• Automated forking and forwarding mechanisms (e.g. 3GPP)

• User-driven call processing code to setup user-specific session handling (e.g. IETF)

• Session updates between the end points (e.g. media adaptation)

• Triggered session transfer (e.g. context-driven switching devices scenario)

It is an object of the present invention to improve and further develop a method and a system of the initially described type in such a way that, by employing mechanisms that are readily to implement, the described limitations are overcome and that a converged personalization technology is realized with improvements in terms of advanced user experiences. In accordance with the invention the aforementioned object is accomplished by a method comprising the features of claim 1. According to this claim such a method is characterized in the steps of registering of said user's devices with a personalization communication control server, collecting information regarding the capabilities of said user's devices including dynamic modifications together with said user's preferences parameters together with the control of the user's current ongoing sessions, media and messages handling, and based on said collected information, specifying policies regarding preferred user actions, dynamically analyzing the status of all said user's devices as well as of all communication and content sessions and taking policy decisions on the basis of said analysis, and personalizing of sessions and their interactions by enforcing said policy decisions via obligations.

Furthermore, the aforementioned object is accomplished by a system comprising the features of independent claim 15. According to this claim, such a system is characterized in that the system includes a personalization communication control server comprising a session management module for registration of said user's devices, means for collecting information regarding the capabilities of said user's devices together with said user's preferences parameters, means for dynamically analyzing the status of all said user's devices as well as of all communication and content sessions a policy control module for specifying policies regarding preferred user actions based on said collected information and for taking policy decisions on the basis of said dynamic status analysis, and means for personalization of sessions by enforcing said policy decisions via obligations. - A -

According to the invention it has first been recognized that, the success of future NGN services depends on the ability to adapt and personalize service delivery according to the user's context as well as service and device capabilities. It has been recognized that personalization includes not only respecting explicit user preferences, but also offering optimized multi-device communication as well as optimized service interaction rules.

With the present invention a personalization mechanism is given acting across different services and respecting all user's devices, context and preferences. The invention achieves a coordinated consolidation of existing techniques of session invocation and modification as well as service requests to reach a new level of personalization service. The method and the system according to the present invention provide a conglomerate technology on a network-infrastructure component that may act as converged personalization provided as supplementary service across different services and service platforms. The invention gives a technique that provides personalization based on service capabilities but independent of any specific service logic within a service and the communication partners being involved. In other words, the invention allows for a service specific personalization to become convergent into a single user-centric communication control which includes communication as well as content service delivery.

The invention provides a service with a high level of personalization addressing service capability exploitation, interaction, and adaptation with user's preferences and capabilities. Extended usage includes any kind of context information to personalize in a user's ubiquitous multi-device environment. It allows for personalization of subscribed as well as ad hoc-delivered services in an open service market. The invention addresses a specific part of user-centricity in service delivery technology and gives significant market differentiation for SDP/SDF product offers.

The method and the system according to the present invention prove to be advantageous in that they enable user-centric service delivery across and transparent to intrinsic service business logic and in that they are addictive for users to control their service usage. The invention facilitates an intensive inter- service applicability (service convergence technology) independent of the communication partners and it is applicable across all packet based services. Moreover, the invention allows integration of intelligence of future terminals with further potential to exploit dynamic device capabilities (e.g. modalities, PAN networks, Adhoc scenarios).

According to a preferred embodiment user's preferences parameters include static user's device-context and/or dynamic user's device-context and/or user's profile information and/or context parameters. Static and dynamic user's device-context may include information like media capabilities, storage, etc. The term "static" in this context refers to information given by (fixed) device parameters or resulting from existing subscriptions of the user, whereas "dynamic" means that the respective information is given by soft parameters like adapted external devices (external storage, headphones, etc.) or network conditions. In addition, dynamic information takes especially into consideration the current status of the user (e.g. how many and which devices of all registered devices are currently active, which profiles are active, which sessions and with which dynamics (usage of bandwidths, media type, etc.) are running, etc.).

User's profile information may include a variety of preference settings per profile like e.g. communication preferences (e.g. restrictions on network or media types), communication preferences for roaming (e.g. send messages when abroad but no real-time group session invitations), information regarding communication handling like message forwarding, deferred delivery and/or rejection, storage preferences as well as synchronization settings for conversations, content and applications. Advantageously, a distributed and layered specification of user's preferences is provided.

Specifically, the context parameters may include context parameters in dynamic settings like e.g. presence and/or location and/or context of situations and/or assignment of context-based actions. Furthermore, the context parameters may relate to contact information and group membership context parameters like specific communication parameters based on contact/group categories, special settings on a per-contact-basis or context sharing information on contact/group basis. The respective information may be stored in device-based or in network- based address books that will be accessed for service invocation (including synchronizations)

All user's preferences parameters may be collected and assigned with their preferred actions. This can be applied generically per user, or even organized on per profile allowing multiple profiles per user. Preferably, as what regards the collection of user's preferences parameters, in particular with respect to information related to user's context, external sources, in particular external application frameworks may be utilized. For instance such frameworks may include applications detecting when the user's current location is in a typically noisy environment, like train stations, airports, sport arenas or the like. In this case a preference parameter specifying that no audio sessions should be received could be automatically generated.

Preferred actions enforced by dynamic policy decisions that are either assigned to the user's preferences parameters or given by the service providers as part of the service offers (e.g. via subscription model) may include notifications of session invitations and/or modifications/termination of existing sessions and/or modifications of/between devices (e.g. addition, modification or removal of devices) and/or transfers of sessions between devices and/or to other networks. Furthermore, preferred actions may include content delivery between equal or prioritized independent sessions for same or different application servers and/or content adaptation (e.g. muting/un-muting of media, adding/deleting of media). Preferred actions may even include enabling and/or complete disabling of devices or communication paths or communication services.

According to a preferred embodiment a session management module is provided as part of the personalization communication control server that performs registration procedures of said user's devices. In addition, the session management module may perform recognition of user's devices capability changes, recognition of user's preference settings, as well as the entire control of the user's current ongoing session and message handling. The session management module acts as the core module of the personalization communication control server to control the personalization of all communication on a per user basis and to enforce policy decisions. The session management module as well as all other modules of the modularized personalization communication control server, which will be described in detail later, may be distributed into the session control path as well as into the media path. In particular, as what regards session establishment and modification, the session management module may be configured to communicate with the dynamic and static data layer and to perform communication of capabilities and preferences to the data layer, to communicate with the policy layer for session modification requests and for decisions on multiple session and/or multiple device control, and to communicate with the media management for enforcement of media distribution on multiple session and/or multiple device control.

According to a further preferred embodiment a data layer module is provided at which user's preferences parameters, static and dynamic service capabilities (e.g. resulting from the user's subscriptions) of said user's devices and/or communication policies as well as the status of all active communications are stored. Moreover, decisions enforced by the session management module may be stored persistently at the data layer module to allow all communication control handling for a user to be recovered. To this end the data layer module may comprise various databases, e.g. for pre-configured data (users, user settings, devices), for session parameters (for example in form of a set of dynamic parameters resulting from ongoing session establishment and monitoring, e.g. media types per session, devices involved in each session, etc.), for device capabilities and user preferences as well as for communication policies.

According to a still further preferred embodiment a media management module is provided that controls the media distribution to and from said user's devices for single as well as multiple sessions. In particular, the media management module may comprise an interface to the session management module for control of media layer based on the policy-controlled session control decision enforcements. In this context the user-centricity of the proposed solution is it to be noted, which results in a converged view about a user, e.g. meaning that the personalization communication control server automatically integrates all different devices capabilities into a joint device capability set, and harmonizes this view to the user preferences. This provides that a user using actively multiple different devices is seen as a single user without publishing the knowledge that multiple devices are involved. The decision about the active device for a certain scenario is handled in the personalization communication control server as a user-centric network-based unit, so that the applications are actually unaware of any optimized device choice. In today's practice, normally a change of device needs to be negotiated end-to- end, which means the involvement of the network of both parties in a given scenario. The personalization communication control server provides further optimization. As the control is given to a particular user, any session modifications (e.g. switch of the device, change of access network connectivity) is handled by the personalization communication control server itself without the need to renegotiate the session with the other parties. The media management module may then just perform adjustment of necessary media adaptations.

Further configurations of the media management module may allow performing media mixing, i.e. to handle media of a single session by enforcing policy decisions on adding, modifying and/or deleting media types for a given session. Moreover, the media management module may perform media filtering. In this context it is to be noted that continuous media involves the interpretation of human reception. Consequently, a user can only receive a single voice communication at a certain moment in time. The media filtering may thus include the procedures of media filtering between multiple simultaneous sessions on the same device, of filtering on a prioritized session as well as redirecting the media to an intermediate storage, and of muting and un-muting of media streams going to different devices within the same or different sessions.

Advantageously, the media management module is also configured to perform media tagging enforcement. Such media tags are embedded into the media stream and may concern events relating to the media stream (e.g. goals in a television broadcast of a soccer game). The media management module may be configured to recognize media tags to be stored, dynamically managed and enforced, e.g. by avoiding splitting of synchronized media types in a given session, by avoiding sharing a given media to shared devices (e.g. for content protection), etc.

As what regards an effective integration into the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture, it may be provided that the personalization communication control server is implemented as an application server in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Alternatively, the personalization communication control server may be implemented as a SCIM (Service Capability Interaction Manager) interacting with MGWC (Media Gateway Controller) in the IMS. In order to avoid that the S-CSCF (Serving Call Session Control Function) of the IMS has to scan repetitively through the iFC (initial Filter Criteria) to find out the services or service chains requested by the user, a direct implementation of the personalization communication control server as part of the S-CSCF in the IMS architecture proves to be particularly advantageous.

According to a preferred embodiment, session personalization may be performed concurrently for communication sessions, in particular based on SIP, as well as for content sessions, in particular based on HTTP, with an overall session control.

There are several ways how to design and further develop the teaching of the present invention in an advantageous way. To this end, it is to be referred to the patent claim subordinate to patents claim 1 and 15 on the one hand, and to the following explanation of a preferred example of an embodiment of the invention illustrated by the drawing on the other hand. In connection with the explanation of the preferred example of an embodiment of the invention by the aid of the drawing, generally preferred embodiments and further developments of the teaching will be explained. In the drawing

Fig. 1 is a schematic view of a system for personalization of service delivery according to a first embodiment of the present invention,

Fig. 2 is a schematic view of a system for personalization of service delivery combining content download sessions and group communication sessions according to a second embodiment of the present invention, and

Fig. 3 illustrates an application scenario of a method for personalization of service delivery according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In general, personalization is understood as a process in which a consumer product is adapted to a user based on personal details. For being called real-time- enabled personalization, a dynamic personalization process has to allow the adaptation of service delivery for real-time and near-real-time services like voice communication or messaging. The proposed personalization mechanism - called Personalized Communication Control (PCC) server 1 which is schematically illustrated in Fig. 1 - is especially targeting capability interaction resolution in the user's personalized service delivery space. Capabilities to be considered here are the user device capabilities - especially when using multiple devices simultaneously -, the user's preferences collected in preference profiles, and the service capabilities (e.g. service media types, bandwidth requirements, and service provider policies). The user-centric personalization approach of the PCC server 1 allows for network-based, service-unspecific, and dynamic personalization for service invocation and session modification control in a multi- device and multi-session environment. The dynamic evaluation of personalization rules is designed to work across different services based on a dynamic analysis of all communications (ongoing, attempts, real-time, discrete) and also takes interaction between different service sessions into account.

The user-specific policy control component is placed on top of the session control layer, and is independent of the specific service and application itself. This makes sure that the technology inherently supports all standards-compliant clients and servers.

The technology focuses intelligence on the network side, hosted by the network operator or service provider. It does allow for interaction with decision points on the terminal side; however its main power results from the policy enforcement being automated as far as possible in order to reduce operational expenditure and increase organizational flexibility, agility, service velocity, and user transparency. This allows rendering the operator's service business into a one-stop-solution for service personalization integrated with the subscriber management. It permits e.g. the creation of personalization policies applicable for multiple services.

Turning now in more detail to the embodiment shown in Fig. 1 , the SDP (Service Delivery Platform) Personalized Communication Control server 1 architecture is strongly modularized and divided in four core modules. In the following, the components and their interfaces exposed between them are described in detail.

1 ) Session Management Module

The session management module is the core module of the PCC server 1. It drives the whole personalization process and triggers actions in other modules as appropriate. The main functions are the registration/activation procedures, session, establishment and modification control, multi-session management and multiple devices support. The registration/activation procedures manage the existence of a PCC instance on a per user basis: An instance exists as long as a user is registered with any of his devices. The functions for session establishment and modification make up the biggest part of the module. They handle the setup, modification, and release of any kind of session for person-to-person, person-to- application, and group communication. All communication of the user passes the PCC server 1 , which is acting as a back-to-back user agent.

During session handling, static user and device data is pulled from the data layer module as needed, and dynamic session information is pushed there, so the current state is reflected there and can, e.g., be used for monitoring via the application framework. The session management module supports multiple sessions as well as multiple device handling. Real-time decisions concerning session and device handling, e.g. which session to accept or which device to distribute media to, are asked from the policy control module event-based every time when relevant information changes. The session management module enforces those decisions; for this, it also controls the functionality of the media management module. Some minor functions of the session management module include receiving dynamic updates about device capabilities from user devices, or triggering the retrieval of respective active user preference profiles on registration of devices.

2) Media Management Module

The PCC server 1 puts itself into the data path of all user communication in order to be able to provide for integrated media handling over multiple sessions and devices. This media handling is done by the media management module, which contains functionalities for media mixing and filtering, multiple device media distribution and support for media tagging enforcement. The media mixing and filtering functions allow handling the media of a single session by adding, modifying, or deleting media types for a given session, or by temporarily muting particular media types or redirecting them to intermediate storage.

Additionally, media streams can also be split and the different media types moved between different simultaneous sessions on the same or on different devices, or multiple streams of different types can be joining into one session. Because of such flexible handling of media streams being possible, it is important to have a mechanism to enforce certain constraints, like for avoiding streams with privacy- sensitive contents to be distributed to public devices, or synchronized media types of certain sessions to be split. In order to enable the definition and enforcement of policies handling such constraints, the media management module manages media tags that describe special properties of media streams.

3) Data Layer Module

The data layer module is a virtual component storing all static and dynamic data to configure, control and monitor the user's communication sessions. It consists of a number of different database components for storing

• Static user and device data, pre-configured by a management application or other external means,

• Dynamic information about the state of all sessions, including e.g. media types per session and devices involved in each session,

• User preferences, device capabilities and user context information, • Policies.

The capabilities of each device are downloaded from central storage at registration time and can dynamically be updated by the device. The vocabulary may be an extension of the W3C-specified Common Configuration and Preferences Profile (CC/PP) and User Agent Profile (UAProf).

4) Policy Management Module

The policy control layer is the component that provides all policy decisions for establishment, control and personalization of multimedia communications on a per user basis. Policy decisions for a specific user are made by examining a prioritized set of generic and/or user-specific policies. It is possible but not imperative that users' specify their own policies, depending on their need. Policies are preferably formulated in the XACML (extensible Access Control Markup Language) access control language and can refer to dynamic registration and session information, device capabilities, user context information and user preferences. These attributes which policies can depend on are fetched from the data layer module when needed. Each policy specifies obligations that specify how to react; these obligations are forwarded to the session management module and enforced there. As different rules might be applicable, in a given situation, combination algorithms have to be chosen by the user or service provider.

5) Interfaces

PCC_DS denotes the interface exposed by the data layer module to the session management module. Via the PCC_DS interface storage and retrieval of static (e.g. preferences and capabilities) and dynamic (e.g. session-related) data is performed. Furthermore, the interface serves for persistent storage of dynamic state information.

PCC_DP refers to the interface between the data layer module and the policy control module and allows for storage and retrieval of static and dynamic data (e.g. preferences/capabilities). PCC_MS is the interface exposed by the media management module to the session management module. It is employed for control of the media layer based on session control decision enforcements.

PCC_PS denotes the interface between the policy control module and the session management module. Via this interface policy decisions in the policy layer are triggered and session control decisions (i.e. trigger of follow-up actions) are retrieved.

Fig. 2 illustrates - schematically - an embodiment for distributed modules of a Personalization Communication Control PCC server simultaneously controlling the personalization of HTTP- and SIP-based multimedia sessions in multiple device contexts. The modules of the PCC server are highlighted by a bold border. Signaling on personalization plane is indicated by solid lines, signaling on control plane by dashed lines, and data flow on media plane is indicated by dotted lines.

Again, as already described in connection with Fig. 1 , the session management module is the core module of the PCC server 1. However, according to the embodiment shown in Fig. 2, the session management module is modularized itself and can be divided in e.g. three modules. More specifically, two branches are spanned, a first branch being constituted by a personalizing SIP session control agent and the second one being constituted by a personalizing HTTP session control agent. These two agents drive the personalization process for group communication sessions on the one hand and for content download sessions on the other hand individually. The agents are responsible for policy enforcement according to information received from the policy layer.

Both agents interact on a personalization plane with a central personalization session control management server that is responsible for overall control and coordination. To this end the personalization session control management server interacts with the data layer from where it can receive user preferences parameters, as already described in more detail in connection with Fig. 1. For instance, if user preferences specify a maximum of three parallel sessions and the user has already two ongoing HTTP sessions running, the session control management server will accept only one communication session from the SIP session control agent. In order to achieve an overall analysis, the policy control module is implemented to interact with both the SIP session control agent and the HTTP session control agent on the one hand as well as the session control management server on the other hand.

As what regards the SIP session branch, a user who has entered the IMS via a P- CSCF (not shown), contacts the S-CSCF/SIP server on a control plane. The S- CSCF communicates with the SIP session control agent. Furthermore, the S- CSCF contacts the appropriate application server and instructs the application server to establish a media path to the user's device via a media gateway. In the specific embodiment illustrated in Fig. 2 the personalized media management module is embedded into the media gateway.

Turning now to the content download session via HTTP, the functional setup is quite similar. The session control is performed between a user's device and a HTTP server. Upon receiving a session enforcement instruction from the HTTP session control agent, the HTTP server instructs a content server to establish a media path for content download with the user's device. A content adaptation server with embedded media management module is provided on the media path.

An example use case for the concept of service-interactive, real-time-enabled personalization involving multiple devices is illustrated in the scenario given in Fig. 3: A user called Alice has two simultaneous devices with similar device and service capabilities. Fig. 3 illustrates the scenario time-wise, showing the actor's device pool as well as the converged view of session modification action between the two involved sessions. In the specific scenario, policy enforcement concerning different user preferences is emphasized.

Alice enjoys a video streaming session on her private communication device. Suddenly, her business partner Phil calls who is configured in Alice's user preference profile as high priority. Therefore Phil's incoming call results in two actions: it is signaled to her free business phone, and it is alerted on her private device, overlaying the video. When Alice accepts the incoming call on her business phone (2), her video show is automatically audio-muted, showing the video only, so she is not disturbed while talking. When the call ends (3), the show is un-muted again.

The system's personalization activity is as following: The personalization module in the session control path analyses the user preferences and device capabilities at any time. Recognizing the user's activities, the incoming session is evaluated and enriched with pre-defined actions (here:- alert to the active private device (1 )). It is then personalized for session establishment procedures (here: signaling to target device (2), and personalized with enriched session modifications across active devices and continued services (here: muting (2) the conflicting media of an ongoing service session when a new session is accepted, and re-activating (3) the media delivery when the concurrent session is closed). The advantages of this mechanism show in possible optimizations of the session establishment procedures (e.g. avoiding overhead in resource allocation handling), especially when addressing adaptation to multiple devices and different device and service capabilities.

Many modifications and other embodiments of the invention set forth herein will come to mind the one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains having the benefit of the teachings presented in the foregoing description and the associated drawings. Therefore, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the specific embodiments disclosed and that modifications and other embodiments are intended to be included within the scope of the appended claims. Although specific terms are employed herein, they are used in a generic and descriptive sense only and not for purposes of limitation.

Claims

C l a i m s

1. Method for personalization of service delivery in a packet-based communication environment, wherein users use single or multiple devices and are enabled to run multiple communication and/or content sessions simultaneously, c h a r a c t e r i z e d i n the steps of registering of said user's devices with a personalization communication control server (1 ), collecting information regarding the capabilities of said user's devices including dynamic modifications together with said user's preferences parameters together with the control of the user's current ongoing sessions, media and messages handling, and based on said collected information, specifying policies regarding preferred user actions, dynamically analyzing the status of all said user's devices as well as of all communication and content sessions and taking policy decisions on the basis of said analysis, and personalizing of sessions and their interactions by enforcing said policy decisions via obligations.

2. Method according to claim 1 , wherein said user's preferences parameters include static user's device-context and/or dynamic user's device-context and/or user's profile information and/or context parameters.

3. Method according to claim 2, wherein said context parameters include presence and/or location and/or context of situations and/or assignment of context-based actions.

4. Method according to claim 2 or 3, wherein said context parameters are received via one or more external sources, in particular via an external application framework.

5. Method according to any of claims 1 to 4, wherein said preferred actions include notifications of session invitations and/or modifications to or termination of existing sessions and/or modifications of/between devices and/or transfers of sessions between devices and/or to other networks.

6. Method according to any of claims 1 to 5, wherein said preferred actions include content delivery between equal or prioritized independent sessions for same or different application servers and/or content adaptation.

7. Method according to any of claims 1 to 6, wherein said preferred actions include enabling and/or disabling of devices or communication paths or communication services.

8. Method according to any of claims 1 to 7, wherein a session management module is provided that performs enforcement of said policy decisions.

9. Method according to claim 8, wherein registration procedures of said user's devices allowing for recognition of device capabilities and their dynamic updates are performed by means of said session management module.

10. Method according to any of claims 1 to 9, wherein a data layer module is provided at which said user's preferences parameters, said capabilities of said user's devices, said current status of user's ongoing communications of any kind and/or said policies are stored.

11. Method according to claim to any of claims 1 to 10, wherein a media management module is provided that controls the media distribution to said user's devices.

12. Method according to claim 11 , wherein said media management module performs media mixing and/or media filtering.

13. Method according to claim 11 or 12, wherein said media management module performs media tagging enforcement.

14. Method according to any of claims 1 to 13, wherein session personalization is performed for communication sessions, in particular based on SIP, as well as for content sessions, in particular based on HTTP, with an overall session control.

15. System for personalization of service delivery in a packet-based communication environment, wherein users use single or multiple devices and are enabled to run multiple communication and/or content sessions simultaneously, in particular for performing a method according to any of claims 1 to 14, c h a r a c t e r i z e d i n that the system includes a personalization communication control server (1 ) comprising a session management module for registration of said user's devices, means for collecting information regarding the capabilities of said user's devices together with said user's preferences parameters, means for dynamically analyzing the status of all said user's devices as well as of all communication and content sessions a policy control module for specifying policies regarding preferred user actions based on said collected information and for taking policy decisions on the basis of said dynamic status analysis, and means for personalization of sessions by enforcing said policy decisions via obligations.

16. System according to claim 15, wherein said policy control module is configured to specify policies regarding rules for service and/or media request interaction.

17. System according to claim 15 or 16, wherein said personalization communication control server (1 ) includes a data layer module with databases for storage of said user's preferences parameters, said capabilities of said user's devices, said current status of user's ongoing communications of any kind and/or said policies.

18. System according to any of claims 15 to 17, wherein said personalization communication control server (1 ) includes a media management module with interface to said session management module for control of media layer based on said policy-controlled session control decision enforcements.

19. System according to any of claims 15 to 18, wherein said modules of said personalization communication control server (1 ) are distributed into the session control path as well as into the media path.

20. System according to any of claims 15 to 19, wherein said personalization communication control server (1 ) is implemented as an application server in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.

21. System according to any of claims 15 to 19, wherein said personalization communication control server (1 ) is implemented as specific Service Capability Interaction Manager (SCIM) in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.

22. System according to any of claims 15 to 19, wherein said personalization communication control server (1 ) is implemented in the Serving Call Session Control Function (S-CSCF) in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture.