Nortel first among the biggies to announce Voice 2.0 engine
Nortel has announced an add-on module to bring in Web mashups to the telco world. The module works over standard hardware across the CS and MCS platforms. Nortel has been able to achieve integration with the usual first set of suspects: IM, social networking, TV etc. There are also some interesting combinations of pre-integrated mashups available. Delivery channels are obviously the telecom service providers.
Most other vendors that come in the Nortel league have been working on such a module and the associated developer programs. However none have publicly announced such solutions/program yet. Nortel is the first one to do so. Among the large vendors, NSN’s CBVoIP offers web services based SDK but the vendor has not announced the capability yet; Alcatel-Lucent is in the process of creating such capability on its IMS applications server; Huawei has a developer partnership program going under its IMS Ecosystem project. Again nothing has been announced yet; Ericsson does not have a wireline specific Voice 2.0 program in place yet.
It seems like the right timing for a large vendor to announce the Voice 2.0 module. Voice 2.0 developers have so far gone direct to the consumer. With the VC funding capped for a while, we will are likely to see the remaining productize their solutions. That is where companies like Nortel and telcos like BT benefit by being able to leverage a bigger developer pool.
Nortel has played a role in several semi-autonomous Voice 2.0 developer programs of telcos like BT and France Telecom. That has given the vendor a better insight into Voice 2.0 compared to its competitors. Nortel also has partnerships in place with Microsoft that can bring in lots of web developers.
I am actually not clear whether Nortel works directly with developers or it has outsourced that process to IBM, but IBM is also in the Voice 2.0/mashup game itself. IBM brings in the SDP story. There is conflict between SDP and the IMS approaches to Voice 2.0. Nortel will no doubt be pursuing the IMS route.
