In the search for killer applications and other services that rake in revenue, independent software vendors are the new brides of wireless.
With software expanding, the value of the hardware space will continue to shrink in the wireless space. ISVs therefore are working with major infrastructure vendors like Lucent Technologies Inc. and Alcatel Corp. to provide new suites of applications and services for wireless operators. Some of the ISVs include IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Appium, Ecrio, Net4Call and Atsonic.
Nothing underscores the importance of software expertise more than the choice of Edward Zander as the chief executive officer of Motorola Inc.
“It is transforming the market,” said Tom Valovic, program director for IP telephony at research firm IDC Communications Corp.
“Many OEMs are shifting to ISVs,” remarked Katherine Owens Mills, director of marketing and program management at NMS Communications, one of the companies enhancing this trend with its plugging board, a hardware platform on which ISVs work in conjunction with vendors to write applications.
It means hardware will shrink, but it will never disappear, remarked Jack Kozik, director of network services architecture at Lucent’s Mobility Solutions Group. NMS provides boards to Lucent.
Valovic said hardware becomes less of a challenge to network equipment providers as it becomes more of a commodity, and the only way players can differentiate themselves is through software. He explained that much of the hardware is residing in the standard computing platforms of the infrastructure vendors.
Kozik, however, noted that the challenge is to provide general-purpose brands that are programmable. “You cannot anticipate what the needs will be in future.” Industry will have to catch up with capacity, he noted, explaining that hardware is scaled to be cost effective, but sometimes that collides with the capacity needed by both ISVs and carriers.
Voice over Internet Protocol is the major driver of this trend toward ISVs. Aside from NMS, other players like Nortel Networks Ltd., Snowshores, Convedia and Hewlett-Packard are providing the media servers for VoIP. But these servers work with building blocks or plugging board on which to write the applications.
The companies that provide these boards, other than NMS, include Israeli-based Audiocodes, RadiSys, Brooktrout and Intel Corp., which gained this capability with its acquisition of Dialogic.
Apart from VoIP, these board vendors also provide building blocks for streaming-video services, cameras, image downloads, prompt and collect services as well as what is called announcements, which refers to the low voices that remind callers how much time they left on their calls as the session tails off.
NMS’ Mills said the rise in hosted services also explains why the company created the boards, which is also part of its broader framework known as Open Access. Tier-one players do not want to integrate the various parts of the communication system. “What’s happening is a change of business model,” said Mills.
Lucent said it leverages its intelligent network platform known as the media resource server, which allows a wide array of media capabilities to run on it. The vendor uses NMS’ board as the basis to write software for its carriers. Lucent said it also provides its iLife Program and Software Developers toolkit that allows ISVs to download. The software vendors can download the toolkit and use it to write their programs.
Kozik said IBM used Lucent’s tool kit to develop applications for its customers. He said this trend enables a variety of ISVs to write different kinds of applications in conjunction with the major vendors and carriers with a view to determining the killer applications.
But this begins with the verticals in the enterprise space where ISVs provide applications specific to an industry like healthcare. “It’s not necessarily a mass-market thing,” said Kozik.
