Lucent Technologies Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. announced a joint development and marketing agreement under which the two will create a unified messaging platform converging voice mail, e-mail and fax services on any device or media of the user’s choice, the companies said.
In this effort, Lucent will adopt Sun’s Solaris operating environment and its Internet Mail Server and integrate it with Lucent’s Octel Messaging Division’s AnyMedia Messaging open messaging platform as well as text-to-speech developments from Bell Labs.
The AnyMedia Messaging platform, announced in May, notifies users when they have received an e-mail message. With this announcement, that e-mail message will be forwarded to whatever device the user has, among other applications.
By upgrading Octel’s Intelligent Messaging Architecture-the backbone of the AnyMedia Messaging service-with an Internet and e-mail gateway, the companies said they hope to provide a basic platform capable of handling an “infinite suite of applications,” as well as the Java applets necessary for service providers or third-party developers to create their own, customized and proprietary applications.
The platform, expected to be available early next year, is aimed at telecom and Internet service providers for business, residential and outsourced enterprise markets. Several service providers are now beta testing the platform and expect to begin offering service next year.
“Anywhere, anytime, anyplace communications … that’s the power of what we’re talking about,” said Dr. Stuart Wells, Sun Microsystems’ senior director of Internet business services. “The market we’re talking about is huge. Anybody who has a telephone now has the ability to use the technologies that we have brought to the table today.”
According to Larry Frank, Octel’s service provider messaging group vice president, the platform is device and network independent. The platform architecture is expected to be flexible and open network-based to allow service providers to manage and reuse their existing infrastructure and customers to use their existing devices. This is an important factor in the growing market and demand for unified communications.
The ability for users to receive messages over a variety of different devices and spectrum is considered the future of wireless communications. For instance, service providers want to give their customers the ability to receive e-mail sent to an office computer account on a pager or smartphone.
Recently, Motorola Inc. signed a licensing agreement to incorporate Sun’s family of Java platform technologies into its portfolio of consumer and embedded products. Motorola also is in the process of acquiring Starfish Software Inc., whose TrueSync Technology Platform is a leader in the connectivity and synchronization space.
Lucent’s announcement with Sun is just the latest step toward creating a truly unified communications world.
“With this collaboration, the market will accelerate even faster,” said Wells.
Analysts agree.
“This is what we really need for true convergence,” said Larry Swasey, senior analyst at Allied Business Intelligence Inc. “We’re seeing everything coming together.”
That the announcement followed these other high-profile convergence deals is no accident. While devices that can offer increased functionality are important in a converged communications world, a platform that can benefit more pedestrian devices also is important, filling another piece of the convergence puzzle.
“We’re in a very complementary mode,” said Frank. “We want to be able to deliver the capability to enhance that device.”
“I think Lucent made the announcement at an important time because other companies are making announcements. Lucent is just saying `Hey, we’re coming too. We’re in this ball game too,’ ” Swasey said.
“The next thing that has to happen is that we all agree on a standard,” Swasey continued. “Then we’ll have a convergence of technologies.”
