Aepona’s acquisition of application server player Appium will make it easier for operators to create and deliver large numbers of applications and services quickly, Michael Crossey, vp of marketing at Aepona, has told Mobile Europe.
Crossey said that reaction to the merger has been, “very positive”
“We’ve done a lot of analysts briefings and they all see the sense in the deal from a solution and product perspective –with Aepona coming from deeper in the network with its network gateway product connecting different platforms, and exposing programmable interfaces to the application layer, and Appium creating and running services.”
Crossey said that the merger also accorded with changes in the Service Delivery Plarform market, where operators are finding they need solutions that let them work in a flexible and associative manner.
“The SDP concept is evolving and the next wave of SDPs will have less to do with being customized specially by a SI partner, and more to do with modern IT standard interfaces and telco web services such as ours are a key part of that.”
Crossey added that he didn’t consider the merger makes the combined company a competitor to the big bad names entering the SDP market, such as Microsoft, IBM and HP.
“Actually we work with Microsoft,” he said. “With the Connected Services Framework , we provide the telco capabilities that can be utilized as part of such composite services as Microsoft’s Mash-Up vision. We can set up a third party call from the network or send an SMS or extract location or presence information, which are all telco capabilities.
“What we’re promoting is that operators are starting to think about how they can evolve their business model to sell service enablers as well as just services. They have to expose themselves to third parties and let them innovate. Appium is about service creation and real time service execution, the application server where services are hosted in a carrier grade environment. Customers were asking for tight integration between the connection to network and the application server – so seeing a more coupled and integrated product makes it a lot easier for them.”
The following pre-prepared statement from Aepona usefully demonstrates how it sees itself differentiating itself in this evolving SDP world.
“The competitive landscape for Service Delivery Platforms is a complex one, but it can be broadly categorised into 3 areas: IT Software Companies, Network Equipment Vendors, and Independent Software vendors.
“Compared within IT vendors, the new Aepona possesses a unique combination of skills in IT / Enterprise software, including Web Services, and telecoms network protocols. Whilst IT companies are historically strong in areas such as SOA and Web Services, Aepona combines this competence with deep knowledge of the arcane world of telecoms networking, with its multiple legacy and next-generation standards, vendor-specific protocol implementations, and disparate networking platforms.
“Compared with the Network Equipment Vendors, Aepona retains a high degree of independence from the underlying network platforms. The new company’s broader product portfolio provides a much stronger offer for IN replacement projects, removing the vendor lock-in that our customers have had to deal with in the past.
“Compared with Independent Software Vendors, the new Aepona’s product portfolio is undoubtedly one of the strongest in the market, particularly in the area of Telecom Web Services. The SDP market is quite crowded and fragmented, but many of companies in this market are focused on specific niche areas such as content rendering, portals, device management, charging etc. Aepona is one of the only vendors in this market to offer a complete Service Creation, Telecom Web Services / Service Exposure, Service Execution, Service Interaction and Network Abstraction solution, as well as providing applications that run on top of these enabling technologies. Furthermore, we are one of the few companies within this category with a field-proven solution that has been deployed in highly-demanding operator environments serving millions of subscribers.”