Major hardware and software vendors are teaming up to reinforce their strengths and shore up their weaknesses as the wireless industry marches to the third-generation of Internet services.
Involved in marriages and talks of marriages are Nokia Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Nortel Networks, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Siebel Systems Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc.
“These partnerships between hardware and software vendors are a trend that will continue as the wireless client or the handset becomes more of an active device on a network and becomes a large part of the client-server architecture as 2.5 and 3G are rolled out,” explained Larry Swasey, president of Allied Business Intelligence.
Nokia has teamed up with Microsoft, Nortel Networks has allied with Microsoft and IBM, and Lucent Technologies has joined with Siebel to create synergies across both aisles of the wireless space.
“These alliances,” remarked Adam Guy, senior analyst with The Strategies Group, “represent the increasing demand for bundled services,” stressing these relationship underline the need for vertical movements in the industry.
Swasey says the alliances may not mature until about 2005 and 2006.
“The partnerships set the stage to evolve applications that may be vendor-specific,” he said.
Microsoft has developed an integrated data center solution designed to help service providers offer the highest levels of application, storage and network availability for a range of managed services called the Continuously Available Managed Services solution.
Microsoft plans to offer its Windows 2000-based servers, Microsoft.NET Enterprise Servers and Microsoft solution-based Web services. The .NET architecture, which is already brewing anti-trust storm in the industry, provides the key components for creating and leveraging Web services.
Nortel Networks will contribute its Networks Optical, content networking and Intelligent IP solutions to help maximize availability of mission-critical applications.
“Microsoft and Nortel Networks are combining our individual strengths into a complete, easy-to-deploy platform for our customers to launch new hosted services,” said Pieter Knook, vice president of Microsoft’s network service providers group.
Nortel also has teamed with Juniper and IBM. With Juniper, Nortel aims to develop solutions for virtual private networks and bandwidth on demand.
“The answer to today’s networking challenges is not sheer capacity, but the ability to use that capacity dynamically by converging data networking intelligence with optical performance through cross-layer unification,” said Carl Showalter, Juniper’s marketing vice president.
At SuperComm 2001, Nortel said it was combining with IBM to roll out network solutions for eBusiness, which will offer storage, email and remote access, security, quality of service, content distribution, dynamic caching, virtual private Ethernet and content intelligent switching.
“Service providers can scale and expand their current portfolios to offer reliable, cost-effective solutions to their enterprise customers and profit from the high-performance Internet,” Brian McFadden, president, metro optical networks, Nortel Networks.
Lucent Technologies is working with Siebel to deliver integrated billing and business solutions. Lucent will offer its Arbor Billing Platform and Arbor Order Management software and Siebel will offer its eCommunications.
“Our combined solution will empower service providers to create effective and targeted sales campaigns for their customers,” said Siebel’s Richard Campione, vice president and general manager.
With Sun Microsystems, Lucent is working under a $500 million alliance that began in 1999 to deliver Lucent’s next-generation Flexent IP-based mobile network architecture to mobile operators. In March, both companies said they had achieved a major leap in the platform with Sun offering its recently introduced line of Netra Compact PCI servers for intensive IP applications for wireless networks.
“As operators worry about the cost and reliability of high-speed packet and 3G services, we are providing ample proof that the evolution to IP makes economic sense, and, through our strategic alliance with Sun, we’re setting the standard for others to follow,” said Joe Coletta, director for Lucent’s wireless networks group.
Microsoft said it is undergoing talks for cooperation with Nokia Corp.
“From a Microsoft perspective, … we would love to have an even deeper partnership with Nokia,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive to Finnish national broadcaster YLE news to promote his company’s new Office XP software.
“We would like in the future to have even closer cooperation around software both for devices as well as the way PCs work with wireless infrastructure,” he said. Nokia, however, is devoted to the Symbian operating system, which competes with Microsoft’s Stinger, which is set to hit the market later this year.
IBM and Mitsubishi are working together to develop low-power chips for Internet-enabled cell phones for messaging functions. IBM will offer components based on its silicon germanium chip for Mitsubishi to build into its cell-phone products.
